The Power of Awareness: Lessons from the 100 Best Books for Work and Life with Todd Sattersten

In this episode, Todd Sattersten explores the art of awareness with lessons from his new book “The 100 Best Books for Work and Life.” He delves into how we can reshape the way we live, work, and become who we’re meant to be. Todd also discusses how mindfulness, Zen practice, and self-awareness can help manage emotions and navigate life’s challenges. He shares insights from his book curation process, discusses the importance of balancing personal growth with acceptance, and highlights how influential books can guide us through change, purpose, and self-discovery.

Key Takeaways:

• Exploration of Todd book, “The 100 Best Books for Work and Life”
• Importance of mindfulness and awareness in managing emotions
• The tension between striving for improvement and accepting life as it is
• Insights from Zen Buddhist practice and its application to personal development
• The impact of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset on personal growth
• The interconnectedness of personal and professional development
• The significance of self-awareness in aligning actions with values
• The role of curiosity in adapting to change and personal evolution
• Recommendations for influential books across various disciplines related to personal growth and life skills

Todd Sattersten is the Publisher at Bard Press, which specializes in business and personal development books and focuses their efforts on publishing one book a year. He is author of three other books, including The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. He has been featured in Fortune, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, and NPR. Todd lives in Portland, Oregon.

Connect with Todd Sattersten: Website 

If you enjoyed this conversation with Todd Sattersten, check out these other episodes:

How to Embrace Awareness and Let Go of Ego with Grace Shireson

How to Create Change at Work Without Losing Yourself with Melody Wilding

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Episode Transcript:

Todd Sattersten 00:00:00  Most of the time, what the author’s talking about is there are symptoms of the problem. There’s some kind of diagnostic that you recognize. What good authors do is they say, hey, reader, here’s the symptoms that you’re dealing with. But the problem is actually something else that maybe you haven’t thought of. And it’s that unlock that happens when they say, here, look this way because the problem’s actually over here and you’re not even looking.

Chris Forbes 00:00:30  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts. We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort to make a life worth living.

Chris Forbes 00:01:05  This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:15  When I first picked up Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, it was in the early days of my sobriety, but it gave me a framework that changed the way I lived. We all have books like that, ones that arrive at just the right time, shaping who we are and how we see the world. My guest today, Todd Sattersten, has spent his career identifying those kinds of books. He has a new book called the 100 Best Books for Work and Life, and it gathers the most enduring lessons from across business, psychology and spirituality. Together, we explore how stories and ideas can serve as companions on the path of becoming, reminding us of what matters and pointing us towards who we might still be. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd Sattersten 00:02:08  Thank you for having me.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:09  Eric, we’re going to be discussing your book, which is called the 100 Best Books for Work and Life.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:15  And I love a book about books. So this is that’s what this is. So it’s going to be perfect. We’ll get to all that in a moment. But we’re going to start in the way that we always do, which is with the parable. And in the parable there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Todd Sattersten 00:03:00  I love that parable. I should probably start off by saying I have a Zen Buddhist practice.

Todd Sattersten 00:03:05  And so when I hear that parable, what I always try to tune into is that both are true. Life has greed and hate and delusion in it, and it also has beauty and ease. and I think if we try to deny one or the other, that’s usually when we get ourselves into the most trouble. That would be my start of my non trying to give you a non-dual answer to that question. It does not mean that we should not feed the loving self that we are in the world, but it also means that we need to recognize that the suffering isn’t actually going to go away either.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:46  Let’s go into your Zen practice for a minute, because you and I know each other through our mutual friend Charlie, and we have a number of things in common. And I think I knew that about you, but I don’t know if we’ve ever discussed it. So tell me a little bit about who you practice with, where you practice, what your what your practice looks like.

Todd Sattersten 00:04:07  Sure. Yeah.

Todd Sattersten 00:04:08  I’ve been practicing Soto Zen for about 15 years now, and I practice here and I live in Portland, Oregon, so I practice at Dharma Rain. We’re one of the larger Soto Zen centers in the United States. We have almost 200 members. So it’s a wonderful, beautiful place to practice because there’s so many amazing opportunities just given the size of the sangha that we have. Yeah, yeah, it’s been a pivotal change. I started practicing when I was 40. I had three young kids. I realized that my wife was going back to school full time, and that I was not equipped to be a full time dad with those kids. They were, gosh, I think there were four, six and eight at the time, and I did not have the emotional capacity to deal with all of the stuff that was necessary there and then really gave me some better tools and better perspectives to work with that.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:00  Soto Zen is basically described often as just sitting practice, right?

Todd Sattersten 00:05:06  It is. Yeah. If we were going to have a Nike like slogan for it, it would be just set.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:11  Yeah. And so how does just sitting in your mind translate into the ability to have better emotional management?

Todd Sattersten 00:05:20  Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I’m a big fan of what mindfulness basically tells us is that if we’re willing to put our awareness really on anything, on any object, it changes the minute we do it. Just slowing down and putting our awareness on anything changes what it is. And I think that change is incredibly important, whether it’s our ability to let go of whatever that craving and attachment is. That’s kind of got us whirling and spinning in stories. Or if it’s I see the light shifting on the on the wooden floor in front of me. As I said, like just any opportunity that I’m willing to bring awareness to a moment. It always, always there’s opportunity to see it differently and for for there to be more fullness in that, in that experience.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:11  That’s beautiful. I would tend to agree. I was having a conversation with a coaching client today, and we were talking about whether awareness or consciousness.

Eric Zimmer 00:06:20  We’re working on her values, like what values, what’s important in life. And she was like, well, as awareness or consciousness of value. And I thought I had to think about it. And nobody ever asked me that question. And I don’t know that I know the right answer, but to me, no. To me, it is a prerequisite for being able to live any of your values into life. The way that we tend to go off track is we either don’t know what track we’re on. This is all going to lead into where we’re going with your book. We don’t know what track we’re on, or we’re not quite aware of the choice that we’re making in the moment. And so having some awareness and consciousness, the ability to sort of be tracking a little bit with like, here’s what I’m thinking, here’s what I’m feeling, here’s what I’m doing. That consciousness makes it so that we’re able to live out our other values. There is something to attention and awareness in and of itself, though that has value.

Todd Sattersten 00:07:14  I’d asked the teacher recently about this very question, and I may have been a little cheeky about it of like, well, you know, I don’t. Are you really like, really? Is this the thing? And they said, if you’re having the same thought about the same thing more than once, then you’re attached. That’s how quickly it happens. So think about that. Like, think about how often I’m here. We’re going to talk about a book, how attached I am to me as an author, to me as, as what kind of questions are you going to ask me? Rather than letting like I didn’t expect we’re going to talk about Buddhism at the start, but what a wonderful piece to let arise rather than being stuck to. Oh my gosh, can I talk about that? Is that okay? does that match with everything else that’s going on? Like, think about how quickly we form these selves around whatever it is that appears in front of us. Again, letting the moment arise, letting our awareness fall on what’s happening.

Todd Sattersten 00:08:11  I think we’ve wholly underestimate. We wholly underestimate the power in that and what becomes available to us when we can just start to see through the habit, energy and the karma.

Eric Zimmer 00:08:23  Wonderful. I want to turn our attention towards the book a little bit more directly, and you say early on in the book that you believe we’re all on a path to be better. This book is for anyone ready to invest in that path. So talk to me about better. You know, there’s an attention that underlies so much of this podcast, which is, in my mind, the tension between being better and all the ways that we can be better and our lives can be better. And then the converse is stop messing with it all. Just let it be the way it is. And I feel like that’s a tension that most of us are in a dance with. It’s one that doesn’t have a resolution, but thinking about it often is valuable. So in what you’ve gleaned from reading these sort of hundred best books on work and life, how do you think about that idea of.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:17  Sure, there’s lots of ways to improve, and and there’s a part of me that wants to do that and can do that. And I also recognize, and this is a lot of what the Zen training points us to is like, well, but everything’s fine just right now.

Todd Sattersten 00:09:31  Yeah. so maybe we can dance between those. We can dance a little bit with the Zen perspective and with maybe a more traditional kind of professional personal perspective, which is, we could start with Carol Dweck, right? Carol Dweck sort of says, listen, fixed mindset, growth mindset, fixed mindset says, I’m as good as I possibly could be. And we we tell ourselves some version of that so often, so quickly, so subliminally that I think oftentimes we don’t even notice it. We don’t even notice how quickly.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:08  And I want to clarify what you said there. We don’t say I’m as good as I can be, meaning like I’m the best possible version of myself. We mean, in whatever quality we’re talking about, we’re we’re as good as we’re going to get.

Eric Zimmer 00:10:21  We can’t really get better at that thing. So I just clarify on that.

Todd Sattersten 00:10:24  So my marriage is as good as it possibly could get. My relationship with my kids is possibly that it’s not possible that I could get a promotion at this company. Like, think about how quickly we form these very solid pieces of and cling to them. The other side of Carol Dweck is she said. You know, basically the people that are successful, people with the most amount of happiest have a growth mindset. They actually believe that things are moving and changing, and that life unfolds in front of us in magical ways all the time, and that there is possibility for getting better if we connect that with Andrew Eriksson’s work. He’s the guy who did all the work. The 10,000 hours you’ve probably heard from Malcolm Gladwell, do the thing for 10,000 hours and you’ll be so much better. Anders work is way better than that. He says there is no point that he found in his studies that someone couldn’t get better. Like there’s no point.

Todd Sattersten 00:11:20  Try to get your head around that for a second. Like he wanted to study how many numbers people could memorize and put in their head, like read a set of numbers. And how many more could you sort of read out? And nobody had ever done this before. He basically gets an undergrad and starts studying the undergrad. And it’s hard at first. You know, they’re doing ten, 12, 15, that kind of thing. And he gets this undergrad up to like 82 digits of the person can read a set of numbers. Walk away 82 digits. There are now people that can recite 70 000 digits of pi.

Eric Zimmer 00:11:52  Oh, come on now, right. That’s preposterous.

Todd Sattersten 00:11:55  It’s preposterous. So like that’s like. Oh, but they’re just memorizing. Like, I’m telling you, the minute that you tell yourself that story of. Yeah, but you’ve caught yourself in a fixed mindset. Zen would say everything in life is impermanent. And we think, oh, that means it doesn’t last. Know the power of that.

Todd Sattersten 00:12:15  The power of the impermanence, the power of the change, the seasons, the currents, the winds, the all the things is what makes life what it is. So I think it’s really important to understand that. However, it is like the minute you say better, you think, oh, I’m going to compare myself. And the comparison is usually where we get ourselves into the trouble, but not believing better as possible. I think is an equally difficult limiter.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:43  I agree, I think either side of that, you end up in trouble. Right. If you don’t believe, you can get better at all. What was really interesting to me about Carol Duke’s work is I thought a little bit more about she was a guest on the show a long, long time ago. Was this idea that we can have a fixed mindset about certain aspects of ourselves in our lives and a growth mindset about others, and so it’s not as it’s not as clean as, like, oh, I have a growth mindset or I have a fixed mindset, it’s really interesting to look and go like there’s lots of things where I think, like, I could certainly get better and then where are the areas that I’m like, well, yeah, but that I can’t get better there.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:19  Really. If you don’t have a growth mindset, then there’s no progress to be made. And then the opposite is, I think, only orienting to a mindset of getting better as the whole game and everything.

Todd Sattersten 00:13:32  Yeah, you’re probably chasing a comparison. You’re chasing some expectation, SPARCstation, some outside standard, you’re going to lead yourself into an equally difficult spot, right?

Eric Zimmer 00:13:44  Because a lot of the people who are going to read the hundreds best books for work and life, I’m sure I’ve got listeners, there’s listeners out there that are like, I need to read all hundred of those. Right. Like, I’m going to go get those. I’m going to, you know, and we we are seekers and we are on a, we are on an, a project to improve ourselves, which is wonderful. And as we’re sort of saying it, it has it’s like anything it has its side that can be less than helpful. So I want to ask a question because you wrote, I don’t know how many years ago you wrote it, but you wrote the 100 best books for business.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:17  I was at the title do I Have it?

Todd Sattersten 00:14:19  100 Best Business Books of All Time.

Eric Zimmer 00:14:21  Okay, great. And now you’ve circled back all these years later and you’ve done sort of the the 100 best books for Work and Life. Talk to me about that expansion.

Todd Sattersten 00:14:30  Yeah. What was really important to me about this next book was the fact that I felt like the framing on the other book was just too small. of course. Yes. I loved writing about leadership and marketing and strategy and business biographies and those sorts of things. But I think what I wanted to do with this book was say, there’s a set of life skills. You know, it could be just 100 best books for life. I wanted a set of books that I could apply more broadly. Like, for example, I’m a big fan of Angela Duckworth’s work in grit. Right? Is that a business book? Maybe it might be. Is it a self-help book? Definitely. I wanted the ability to draw from. I basically want to be able to walk into a bookstore and go, I want some stuff from business.

Todd Sattersten 00:15:22  I want some stuff from personal growth, maybe some stuff over from spirituality that people could relate to, maybe some body, mind, spirit over here. And the problem is we walk into the store most of the time, and some of the best books are hidden in places we wouldn’t even think of looking because we’re like, I’m looking for a business book. I’m looking for something to get my next promotion or get a raise. So I’m only going to go to the business section when there’s just as many wonderful books in other spots who could help you with the same thing.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:16  It is God’s own mystery to me which books get filed into which of those four categories? Sometimes, honestly, I really am. Like who? I’m sure you’re you’re a book publisher. There’s probably a process where somebody is deciding ahead of time where they want to be slotted, but I don’t understand it. I’m like looking at the spirituality section. I’m like, oh, that’s interesting. Then I hop over to the psychology section. I’m like, what? But wait a second, that book and then I’m in the mind body spirit.

Eric Zimmer 00:16:40  But I’m like, doesn’t have any rhyme or reason to it. To me, it’s sort of like you. I almost feel like those books should just all be thrown on the same shelf and let you sort of sort it out yourself. I mean, business you can. That’s a little easier to delineate, but once you get into psychology, spirituality, mind, body, spirit, it’s anybody’s guess.

Todd Sattersten 00:16:57  I have a theory here, Eric, that I think what’s happened in the last 20 years or so that neuroscience and this there are so many places that we’ve learned so many things about how the brain works. That and it’s showing up in so many different venues of our lives. It’s changing how we talk about marriage and partnerships. It’s changing how we parent kids. It’s changing how we see the work that we do, that it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between those books, because all of those pieces are influencing one another. So It’s all self-help. It’s all personal growth. It just is a matter of what frame probably speaks to you when you see that title and subtitle on the shelf of like, oh, that version of self-help might be what would best help me right now.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:47  Right. And it seems like you also wanted to sort of break this divide between thinking of our lives in a personal and professional senses. If those aren’t as if those are separate things.

Todd Sattersten 00:17:59  Yeah, right. If I read a book on relationships, if I read some John Gottman who’s, you know, he’s one of the leading experts on marriage and long term partnerships, to not think that that would impact other relationships in my life, whether it’s me as a manager with my employees, and how I need to communicate with them and understand them better, to think that that’s not going to change my relationships. If I’m sitting on a community board, a PTA, whatever the case might be. I don’t want us to section off these books into almost the same problem we were talking about at the top of the interview. I don’t want you to section these off, just saying. Only use these in these particular situations. Gosh, I really hope that you’ll use them in the widest range of situations possible, and that it helps you become an even better person in as many ways as possible.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:52  Yeah, there’s a book that’s in here. It was interesting. I when I picked up your book, the first thing that I did was, of course, I imagine many people would use it this way. I wanted to see how many of these books I had read. And then I also wanted to see how many people that are in these books have been guests on the show, and I think the numbers, like 25 of them, have been guests, and I’ve read about 35 of them.

Todd Sattersten 00:19:12  So that’s great.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:13  Yeah. And one of the books that right away I saw is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is a book that I’ve had a lot of people, particularly in the spiritual or mind body space, sort of react slightly odd when I say that’s one of my favorite books of all time, because I think it’s perceived as a business book, right? In many ways, I think that’s that’s the crowd. It was marketed to a lot, I think. And, you know, Franklin Covey then did a lot of work in corporations.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:44  But I think that’s one of the best books about life, about how to be a good person, about all these different aspects that that I’ve ever read.

Todd Sattersten 00:19:53  Yes. And I think understanding Covey’s journey to create that book, reinforces that. So he studied 300 years of sort of personal growth, self-help literature, going all the way back to Ben Franklin. And what he found was that there were basically kind of two threads of self-help. One was what he called principle based personal growth, and that’s what he wanted to write about. And so, you know, so many of his famous phrases, first things first, create win win situations, sharpen the saw. Like these are all like, so baked into almost the common psyche now of like. Those are phrases that we all recognize and even know what they mean. so he wanted to talk about that kind of self-help. What’s interesting is he said in the early 1900s, there was a new kind of self-help that actually, he thought was actually a little bit dangerous in that he’s a little bit of a for the fans of sort of Dale Carnegie and a little bit of, Napoleon Hill.

Todd Sattersten 00:20:55  Lots of fans out there of those. But he felt that those touched on more surface level things like get people to like me like that, that was important. And is that important? Sure. Yeah. You know, to have influence with people, you need to have good relationships. And but I think the work that he did in creating that book is what resonates with you. The timeless quality of the principles and the way he talks about those principles. We don’t read that book. I think it was 87 when that book came out. Like we’re pushing 40 years, on that book. Now we don’t say to ourselves, oh, that just feels old now. Know what he’s talking about. There is these timeless principles that I think show up based on his faith, to show up based on what he saw in the literature. And I’m not surprised that it resonates with you. And I hope more people will go check it out, because I think it’s personal growth 101. It’s a wonderful bedrock spot.

Todd Sattersten 00:21:47  If you wanted to start somewhere, start there and then go read some other books.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:50  Yes, I agree. As I was writing my own book, I couldn’t help but see all my influences in a certain way that maybe I had not seen them before. And and I remember that book. I got it as a cassette out of the library, and this would have been 1995. Maybe I was just getting sober, and I remember it was just a touchstone to me in those early days of my, my sobriety, and actually turned out to become the way that AA is sort of higher power based, and I had a lot of problems with that as a non theistic kind of guy. And it was actually Covey who gave me the idea of how to navigate that for myself. So I feel a great debt to that book. We just talked about one way is to go grab a Covey’s book and start there. But you’ve organized this book in a particular way to be used in a certain way. And in the introduction, you write about how someone might go about using a book that recommends you read 100 books.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:59  So how do you think is a good way for a someone coming to this book to approach it?

Todd Sattersten 00:23:06  Yeah, I think it goes back to our shelves in the bookstore problem. Right. That whether it’s a publisher that’s making a decision where it is or whether it’s a bookstore, literally like if I’m physically in the bookstore, if I’m online, what did my search term bring up? What was really important to me with this book is I wanted to get the books as close to what I thought the core problem was that someone would be working with. So the books divided into 25 chapters. Each chapter is what I think is a problem or a challenge. And what I prefer people do is think hard about something that they’re being challenged with, not something that’s easy for them, something that’ll be fun to read, but something that would be like, man, right now what I need is I need some work on goals. You know? I’m just not doing enough on that. Each section has four books in it in ten minutes.

Todd Sattersten 00:23:55  You could read that chapter, get a wonderful perspective on whatever challenge that you’re working on, and probably have a book you would probably go read afterwards. Certainly you take something away from the reviews themselves, but more importantly, you’d have a thread of something that feels right to you, like a perspective and approach that feels right to you that you could go explore more deeply.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:17  Eight years ago, I was completely overwhelmed. My life was full with good things, a challenging career, two teenage boys, a growing podcast and a mother who needed care. But I had a persistent feeling of I can’t keep doing this, but I valued everything I was doing and I wasn’t willing to let any of them go. And the advice to do less only made me more overwhelmed. That’s when I stumbled into something I now call this still point method, a way of using small moments throughout my day to change not how much I had to do, but how I felt while I was doing it. And so I wanted to build something I wish I’d had eight years ago, so you don’t have to stumble towards an answer.

Eric Zimmer 00:24:59  That something is now here and it’s called overwhelm, is optional tools for when you can’t do less. It’s an email course that fits into moments you already have. Taking less than ten minutes total a day. It isn’t about doing less, it’s about relating differently to what you do. I think it’s the most useful tool we’ve ever built. The launch price is $29. If life is too full but you still need relief from overwhelm, check out overwhelm is optional. Go to one you feel. That’s one you get overwhelm, right? And you make the point that I don’t know how many books are published in this space every year these days. It’s a it’s a crazy amount as a as a potential. Well, I guess not a potential as somebody who’s going to have a book out, I am well aware that the world is flooded with them. And this book is a really nice guide to some of what the most important work in those areas are. Right? Like we could debate, are those the right four books? Well, there’s probably 810 books that you could fit into there.

Eric Zimmer 00:26:08  But I feel in looking at this and again, knowing a lot about this space, I feel pretty confident looking at this like they’re all solid choices. They’re all a good recommendation of where to go. I’m curious about how this sounds like the sort of project that could make somebody insane, which is maybe it did make you insane, which is how do I pick the exact right 25 categories? Because, I mean, there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a whole lot of potential crossover. I mean, I know when we go to try and title an episode, right? I’m sort of like, what was that episode about? It can be really hard. You know, it can be hard because we’re covering a lot of a lot of different ground. So was it hard for you to find 25 categories? Did you have like 80 that you had to turn down into 25? What was that process like?

Todd Sattersten 00:26:58  So I don’t think getting to the 25 was hard, only because what was really important to me is I wanted to deal with common problems.

Todd Sattersten 00:27:05  Okay. I wanted to be I wanted these to be problems that people would easily recognize, well addressed within the literature. Like, frankly, if I publish a bunch of if there’s a lot of books being published in the goal setting SpaceX chances are there’s a lot of people who are trying to figure out how. Goal setting fits into their life. so my experience was I didn’t really find the categories as difficult. What I found more difficult was what you just described, which is. Take any one of these books we’re just talking about. Go back to seven habits, for example. Where do you go put seven habits.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:39  Yeah. You slotted it under habits. And I could make a pretty good argument. That’s the wrong place. And it’s also the right place, but it’s in the title. So you’re kind of like, well, it’s in the title, for crying out loud. I should probably honor the the title of the book. And it goes a lot of different places. Right.

Todd Sattersten 00:27:54  I could have put that in the focus chapter.

Todd Sattersten 00:27:56  I could have put that into relationship chapter. I could have put that in communication. I probably could name three other chapters. Communication. Sure. Right. Yeah. The reason like in that particular case, what I was looking for in the habits chapter is we had some other books that were very how to form a good habit. So Atomic Habits and tiny habits. One of the best researchers, Wendy Wood. Her book Good Habits, Bad Habits is incredible. The reason I put it there put seven habits there. As I said, let’s show examples of good habits, like what’s a book that shows not just the process or how your brain works, or on habits, but like what would be good? What would good habits look like that I might want to form?

Eric Zimmer 00:28:35  Yeah, that’s so interesting because the course that I’ve taught for years used to be called Spiritual habits is now called Wise Habits. It actually straddles those two things, right? And my current book is going to straddle those two things. It’s about how do you change behavior, which is sort of, you know, talking about habits.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:53  I’ve chosen to sort of leave that word alone for right now. That’s one part of it. But then what is worth changing? You know, what habits or mindsets are worth developing?

Todd Sattersten 00:29:05  So now we’re in the purpose chapter in the Hundred Best. Now we’re over in the focus chapter. Now we’re like now it’s like what? When you get to the next piece, what’s the thing that you find? Oh, I’ve either got to go deeper here. I’ve got to make a lateral move because my problem isn’t really this. Maybe it’s something over here that I need to work with instead.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:27  Yeah. Did you feel that for you after you went back and sort of. Let’s just pick a category conversations. You’ve got some great books in here. You’ve got one of my favorite books of all time in here, Crucial Conversations. I feel like that book has taught me more about how to talk to people than any. It’s just been it’s just great. It’s an outstanding book. So you’ve got a few different in here.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:51  Did you find that by looking at the different books in one category? Did you find your knowledge coherent in a certain way, or did you find, did you find a synthesis that allowed you to be like, well, I could actually sum this up more easily, or did you find that there were differences of opinion that were valuable enough to continue to honor? I mean, I’m just curious, like how it landed on you as you actually looked at these within a category.

Todd Sattersten 00:30:22  That is such an interesting question. I think what was important to me in each one of the categories, each one of the topics was I wanted a set of books that each one of them would surprise you with, sort of their take. and so here’s my beliefs on, you know, book publishing 101, which is I think people want to see you describe the problem that they’re dealing with early on in the book. And so you’re reading the book and they they’re telling you, hey, you’re probably working with this or that, you know, here you’re having some struggles.

Todd Sattersten 00:30:57  And the more you nod your head and say, yeah, yeah, that’s really great. Yeah. This is exactly this is exactly what I’m working with. I want to keep reading most of the time. What the author’s talking about is there are symptoms of the problem. There’s some kind of diagnostic that you recognize. What good authors do is they say, hey, reader, here’s the symptoms that you’re dealing with. But the problem is actually something else that maybe you haven’t thought of. And it’s that unlock that happens when they say, here, look this way because the problem’s actually over here and you’re not even looking. Those books, I think, are the best books. Those are the ones that get us to see past all the all the things that we already believe, that we think about ourselves and how the world works and so on. So what was interesting to me, or what was important to me, is I wanted to have four books that each one of them approached things from a different perspective.

Todd Sattersten 00:31:47  So let’s take the conversations chapter. I agree with you. I love crucial conversations. It is so approachable, the framework is so easy to understand, and you can see the spots where you might get in trouble. fierce conversations. Susan Scott. My favorite line in her book is the relationship is the A conversation. Just think about that for a second. If you’re in relationship with someone, if you’re not talking with them, if you’re not having a conversation, there is no relationship. That’s the core message of that book. And I think how often I get into relationships and I step back. I think the first thing when I’m challenged is one of my go tos is I step back, I get pensive, what’s going on? She’s like, you have to lean in difficult conversations. It’s from the Harvard Negotiation Project. Completely different perspective, but just as enlightening about how one might talk about it. Nonviolent communication, probably a topic and approach that, you know, your listeners would recognize, taught quite widely.

Todd Sattersten 00:32:50  Right. But very different approach, you know, needs and wants and, you know, what are you feeling and what do you need in a situation? Yes, commonality. But man, do those authors bring really different perspectives to those problems.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:26  What does difficult conversations tell us? That book? What are you getting there that feels really important?

Todd Sattersten 00:33:33  So difficult conversations again goes back to Harvard and it’s the Harvard Negotiation Project. So they’re talking about a very particular kind of conversation. Right. Okay. We’re at odds. You want something I want something. We’ve got to figure out the middle ground around it. But they really try to expand that out, saying lots of conversations are like that, whether we realize that or not, right, that we’re in some kind of negotiation. Maybe it’s a negotiation of understanding. Do we understand the the perspective from the same way? Is it we’re negotiating how much work each of us is going to do? We could go on and on, but it’s more than. It’s a pricing contract.

Todd Sattersten 00:34:10  And like, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Like take it out of the business context and just think about how often you’re actually in negotiation with somebody. And my key takeaway out of that book is that my line that I keep going back to is, and it’s really the message of almost all these books in the 100 best. You have to have self-awareness. If you don’t have self-awareness for one what you want. Being really clear that at the end of this negotiation, I want this to happen for myself. Two that you’re not listening really clearly to what’s going on on the other side and listening to what they want, not what you think they want, but as clear as you possibly can in putting down all the expectations that you have in that, and that there’s usually an identity that gets formed by the combination of those two things. And if you’re not aware of the identities and selves that are coming up as you’re having that conversation, you’re going to get yourself into a lot of trouble.

Todd Sattersten 00:35:06  And so self-awareness, I think, is one of the key points that they teach you in difficult conversations.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:11  Yeah. I mean, we’ve got crucial conversations, fierce conversations, difficult conversations. I’m working on a book called Fucking Horrible Conversations. That’s right. I’m just taking it. I’m just going one step beyond. Sure. Yeah. Yes.

Todd Sattersten 00:35:28  Yeah. Yes. it’s very funny to me that there were only so many places that you were going to go. Like, I don’t know how many more, but isn’t it interesting that I’m generally a fan as well of positive of positive titles? I think people read books more often that with a positive spin on them, and almost every one of those.

Eric Zimmer 00:35:48  Is a negative spin.

Todd Sattersten 00:35:49  It’s negative or difficult or even like even non-violent. They’re trying to turn the corner there. Right. But it’s but it’s based in. So what does that say about the conversations we’re involved in?

Eric Zimmer 00:35:59  Exactly. That’s what I think is really interesting Is, you know, how we resonate with the fact that boy conversation can be hard.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:09  You know, that’s the joke of f ING horrible conversations, is that that’s sometimes how we feel. I were like, I would rather do nearly anything in the world that you could name besides have this conversation. Yes. You know, short of physical torture, this is, you know, like, right after you’re, like, putting bamboo under my fingernails. All right, I know. No, thank you. No. Thank you. Conversations like, right below it.

Todd Sattersten 00:36:32  And we need tools. Yeah, right. And we still need tools, Eric. We still need tools. If we’re going to get any sort of shared understanding in almost any situation.

Eric Zimmer 00:36:40  It’s hard to do the thing you said there at the end that I picked up via different books that I hadn’t really gotten before was, you know, you think conversation, the whole game is that you got to be paying attention to what the other person is saying. But equally important is what you said right at the end there is observing what’s coming up in me, right? So I’ve got to.

Eric Zimmer 00:37:04  I’ve got to sort of have a fair portion of my attention on the other person, but I have to keep some portion of it on what’s happening inside me, because as those is those feelings and things inside me grow, my ability to listen shrinks and shrinks and shrinks, and we’re so often spiraling on what the other person is saying without really realizing that’s what we’re doing. And so to me, that was like a big unlock is like, oh yeah, I got to pay. I got to be able to hear them, but I got to see what’s happening in me too.

Todd Sattersten 00:37:35  We’re getting back to that. The fix versus growth mindsets that the smaller that space gets, as you described it, the more fixed we are in what we believe is going to be the solution, that’s going to believe that this could be the outcome that’s going to be satisfactory for us, that we’re going to be willing to accept. But the opportunity is when you keep that area as wide as possible. it just it creates more possibility.

Speaker 4 00:38:00  So there are a couple of words.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:01  Here that get lumped together that I’d like to explore a little bit. And the first is goals and purpose. They’re pointing in a similar direction. Tell me the you know, from the reading you’ve done and including these books, sort of like what’s the difference? And and how do we then move from what I think is a bigger term purpose to a more specific term like goals? How does all that connect through?

Todd Sattersten 00:38:31  So let’s start with purpose because I actually think that’s where you have to start. I think goals are just a some sort of fixed point of attainment, some at in the future that you set for yourself, that you move yourself towards. Right. If you haven’t got the if you haven’t done some work in that purpose space, I think it’s really easy to not know the direction that you’re going. It’s really easy to like set these goals that It seem that that either maybe someone else told you was a really good idea. Running the marathon was probably a really good idea.

Todd Sattersten 00:39:05  I’m going to do that 4 to 6 months of training and I’m going to push towards that. But if that doesn’t align with purpose, and the definition of purpose I like most is like, what are you made of? Like, what are you made of in this season of your life? And it changes. You know, I could say at 54 it’s different than it 44. It’s different in 34. Let me read the piece from Parker Palmer because I like his description. He says what we should do is pursue what he calls vocation. And he says this. He says the deepest vocational question is not what ought I do with my life? It’s more elemental and demanding. It’s who am I? What is my nature? Right? At first you go.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:57  Thanks, Parker.

Speaker 5 00:39:59  Okay. Thanks, Parker. That’s really great.

Todd Sattersten 00:40:03  But he goes on, and he says vocation at its deepest level is. This is something I can’t not do for reasons I am unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself, but that are nonetheless compelling.

Todd Sattersten 00:40:21  So can we slow down enough to put our awareness on paying attention to what we are drawn to? Like, where do we want to be? What do we want to be doing? Who do we want to be doing it with? I’m shocked it’s taking this long for me, but I’ve started every quarter looking at my YouTube history to look at videos that I’m watching. I look at my my Spotify playlist to see if I get in a cycle or a funk. What am I listening to? And a lot of times it’s pointing to an emotional tone. It’s pointing to something that my subconscious figures out before my conscious mind actually figures out. and yes, have a journaling practice. Yes. Like do all those other outside of your brain kinds of things to see the space between the thoughts better. Right. Yeah. But I think it starts with like it sounds really mushy and it sounds really like ephemeral, but I think there’s ways to it if you’re willing to listen. Does that resonate?

Eric Zimmer 00:41:20  It does.

Eric Zimmer 00:41:21  I actually interviewed a woman recently. Her name’s Wahine Vara, and her book, I believe, is called Selfhood Searches in the Digital Age. And she’s exploring this, issue we all face between sort of a love hate relationship with technology. And, you know, how these technologies that we depend on also exploit us for our information. But she unearths, like a decade of her Google searches, and she said it was the most revealing thing she has ever done, and it told her more about where she was in her life and helped her go back to where she was in her life than any journal did. And I thought that was fascinating. It’s kind of like what you were saying with YouTube. Like there’s something in there about what we are just drawn to, you know? And, and I think that when we start talking about purpose, we are also starting to talk about values. And when we talk about goals, we’re in this similar territory. And I think that’s all really valuable work to do.

Eric Zimmer 00:42:27  I also think there’s some real value in looking at what you seem to really want, that you may not even be proud of knowing saying that you want. You know, it’s like the unvarnished, you know, what is it that you really want? Because I think that’s also an important part of the overall mix. You know, and I’ve, I’ve heard, I’ve heard somebody say I don’t know who. And I thought this was a brilliant line that a lot of self-improvement is just about learning to want better things.

Todd Sattersten 00:43:01  Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:02  Which I think is really interesting. I like that that desire is the energy, right? I mean, it’s where the energy is, and it’s kind of back to where you started this conversation about, you know, these other parts of ourselves. And there’s a lot of information in those parts that if we try and just sort of banish them without understanding what’s going on there, we’re missing, you know, a really important part of who we are. And I think that’s on another level, sort of what, what Parker Palmer was pointing to and you pointed to really I think your YouTube and Spotify example is great because that shows like, what am I just sort of drawn to without really thinking about it, without sort of superimposing over it what I think I should be searching for, what I think I should be listening to.

Eric Zimmer 00:43:52  Just what am I?

Todd Sattersten 00:43:53  There’s a there’s another book in the purpose chapter called Designing Your Life. Bill Barnett is one of the authors, and they’re at the Stanford Design School instructors there. And one of the exercises they suggest is simply for a week, track how you spend your time. And it’s another one of those sometimes you don’t even notice the patterns and activities of the things. Yeah. that you naturally want to be next to the people. You want to be next to the things you want to be doing. Like I run a small, press, small book publishing company. We publish one book a year. It’s very particular that we published one book a year. And I know it’s because that’s how I want to spend my time. I could publish 20 books a year. Like, that’s what most publishers do. But I want to spend more time digging deeper with an author on that work. I want to spend more time with them over those 2 or 3 years when they’re making the book. I could have built this business however I wanted.

Todd Sattersten 00:44:51  But I’m self-aware enough to know. Oh, I want to go deeper with an author. I want to co-create these projects with them. And I think those sorts of pieces and understanding those. I don’t think it’s a mistake sometimes that you end up in a job and you’ve been there five years. I mean, it’s important probably at that point to look around. Who am I working with? What’s the what’s the mission of the organization? What actual activities am I doing? Like a lot of times at first when you get to a place you’re not sure, but over time you can start to notice patterns. And yeah, there might be things that annoy you, but you should also notice the things that are giving you energy that are keeping you there, so that when you go try to figure out whatever that next better thing is, as you describe, that you are bringing those things with you and not giving up the wrong things as you try to make change. Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:44  So looking at this list, a lot of these books, I see where they fit.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:48  I see why they fit here. You know, you’re like that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And every once in a while in one of your categories, I’m like, okay. Right. And I actually know a lot about this book and I can see why it fits. But I would love for you to tell me because it, you know, one of these things is not like the other things.

Speaker 5 00:46:06  Okay?

Eric Zimmer 00:46:07  Change. Managing transitions. Immunity to change, leading change. This all makes sense. These are, you know, and then you drop in when things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron.

Speaker 5 00:46:22  Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:22  Share with me about that book. I have a particular long history with that book myself. I’d love to hear you talk about it.

Todd Sattersten 00:46:28  Yeah, let’s have Pema talk to us first. We’re always trying to deny that it’s a natural occurrence that things change, that the sand is slipping through our fingers. Time is passing. It’s as natural as the seasons. changing as day. Turning into night.

Todd Sattersten 00:46:47  But getting old. Getting sick. Losing what we love. We don’t see those events as natural occurrences. We want to ward off that sense of death no matter what. I think if we’re not going to acknowledge the reality of, I feel like we’re like a full circle back to where we started, almost. But if we’re if we’re not to acknowledge the true nature of this existence, that the human existence is marred by these things, it’s marred by sickness, old age and death, and these are coming for all of us. And I think we try to avoid them. Sometimes we chase it. We think we’re running out of time. So we go running after it. And we set those goals because we want to make sure we do these things before we run out of time. And when we’re struck with one of those moments where we really see it clearly, we lose a parent. We lose a job almost in every one of those cases, we’re losing some sense of our identity where it gets raw and it gets really clear to us.

Todd Sattersten 00:47:50  there’s usually a moment there for us. There’s an opportunity for us actually to have see through that veil a little bit better and maybe grow in our understanding that things change. It is the it is the nature of this existence. There’s no way around it. and Pema just keeps coming back saying, if you don’t see it, you’re just going to suffer it one way or another. You’re going to. It’s going to cause pain. And while I love the other books in how they frankly want you to also be open to change and see how change is going to appear in different ways at different phases of change. It’s telling us changes how this place is built like this reality is based on it, and anything you do to do to deny that is going to cause you a problem at some point or another.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:44  Yeah, I think about this a lot as, as I am in my mid 50s. I’ve just found this an interesting age. I don’t think up until now I’ve reckoned with age, to the degree that I feel like I have the last couple.

Eric Zimmer 00:48:59  I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just it’s just more on my mind. It’s more there. And I think a little bit about this. Like on one hand, I, I work really hard to remain what I think of as having young characteristics. because there’s certain things that I see in, certain types of older people that I think are very characteristic of the, the age. And there are ones that I would prefer not to take on, like a certain, fixed ness in the way that I see the world and the way I think things are a certain desire or certain belief that things were always better in the past somewhere. and so but I’ve also started to think about like, well what aspects of aging should I be embracing. You know, I’m doing like this backpacking trip in a month where I’m doing 75 miles in four days of a backpacking trip. I signed up for this without really knowing what I was getting myself into. And there’s been a couple people my age who have dropped out of this thing already because they’re like, this is a stupid idea for someone our age.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:14  I push against that. But then I also to the point that we’re making here is it’s happening. You know, sickness, old age and death are coming, right? They’re, you know, they’re they’re they’re getting closer all the time. And so I just, you know, thinking about those things, I feel like in the past I always thought of them. They didn’t bother me much because they seemed a whole lot more theoretical. You know, you’d ask me like. I mean, I know young people who are afraid of death. I mean, you know, I know plenty of people who are like, you know, they’re afraid of it all along. I never really have been. But I can tell you that the sickness and the old age are starting to starting to look a little scarier from this vantage point than previous vantage points. And so I’m sort of mostly thinking out loud about how to embrace Pemdas advice there in my own life.

Todd Sattersten 00:51:10  I think the heuristics, as we get older, they just get more and more sort of solid.

Todd Sattersten 00:51:16  We think this is the shortcut I used last time, this this work just as well. And we find out, oh no, that path is kind of grown over now. Nobody goes this way anymore. And I feel like the solution is always curiosity. And being curious means I’m going to continue to inspect and look for what’s new in this moment. What’s new about me? What’s new about the persons you know sitting across from me? I have three kids that I was always behind. At every age, I was behind where they were. I thought I’d figured out at some point. Oh, they’re here now. Like, this is what they’re like. Here’s their personality. And I was already I was already six months behind. Yeah. So there’s wonderful things to be taught there. Yeah. But curiosity is like it’s kind of a funny I love it as a solution. And sometimes it’s accessible to me in this really great way and sometimes it’s not. And I keep trying to learn what it means to be curious in that way that I think that we’re talking about that allows things to be as they are, rather than some way in which I thought they were 10 or 20 years ago.

Speaker 4 00:52:31  I’ve heard,

Eric Zimmer 00:52:32  Doctor Rick Hansen say, he said that, you know, your self conception is, you know, always six months out of date, which I think is a very generous interpretation. I would argue that mine is often years out of date. You know, I realized, I mean, it was probably only in the last 3 or 4 years that I realized if you gave me a test, like any sort of personality test, I would answer that I was impulsive because there was a period in my life where, I mean, you know, you don’t get to be a a heroin addict without a certain degree of impulsivity and addiction. But I realized like, no, I’m not. I haven’t shown that character trait in decades. But yet that is how I would consistently describe myself. And I just found that really interesting. I think any way that we define ourselves too much becomes problematic. definitions are useful just right up to the point until they’re not.

Todd Sattersten 00:53:30  Yeah. When I think about that, Eric, I think my version of that is, I would say, if you knew me and my teens and 20s, people would describe me as very extroverted, like very like band music debate, like all the things where you’re expressing in big, loud lead in the play, like all the big ways.

Todd Sattersten 00:53:52  And it’s taken me almost till these last five years or so to realize I’m not an extrovert like that actually takes an enormous amount of energy. I was probably doing it for some other reason to be noticed. What I probably really am is much more an introvert, where I get much more energy actually from quiet and literally. Tonight I’m going to a silent reading party and I think, Eric, that it is the best thing I’m going to do probably this month.

Eric Zimmer 00:54:21  That’s great. I totally get I totally get it. I like I think that’s a great idea too. I’ve been on a number of silent meditation retreats. Yeah, they are hard, right? They can be very difficult, but they’re not talking part. Not a problem. Like I love it. Actually, I love that I am around people and with people, but there’s no pressure to say anything. I just think it’s lovely. I really like it, and I have learned for myself that on that last day, when the retreat ends and everybody starts talking again, I’ve learned that I want to be out of the building.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:01  Well, and before that, because it feels jarring to me, I’m torn because I want to get to know the people I’ve been around all week, but it’s just all of a sudden. And so I think a silent reading party sounds outstanding. I’m curious about who’s organizing this, though. And what are you reading? Whatever you want. Are you all reading the same thing? And then at the end is it non silent?

Todd Sattersten 00:55:22  Great question. it is at a farm. I live here in Portland, Oregon, is at a farm about half an hour north of the city, Portland.

Eric Zimmer 00:55:31  Is one of the only cities in the US where something like this exists. I’m pretty certain I’m pretty certain.

Todd Sattersten 00:55:37  And I’m paying 20 bucks to be there. Like, only important would I pay 20 bucks to sit in a farm field under a 500 year old oak tree and read a book for two hours with 200 other people? We did this last year, Eric, and it’s like going to a meditation retreat. The the shared that we’re all doing the same thing.

Todd Sattersten 00:55:59  We’re doing this particular way, you know, depending on what your spiritual beliefs are like. It’s almost like, I wish we could measure the brainwaves of everyone in the crowd or something, because I think there’s something shared in what we’re all doing at the same time. but I draw energy from those kinds of experiences now, and the extroverted experiences need to be metered, and they need to be energy needs to be stored up to be used in that capacity. And I think I think I’m still learning that I have to be careful in the places that I put myself into and how draining those places can actually be. This summer, I’ve had a couple experiences like that, and I still haven’t learned the lesson yet that I probably need actually something different on a more regular basis. And again, that gets back to purpose, to get back to self-awareness. It gets back to like understanding who we are and like respecting that, just respecting, but not here’s the other side, not using it as an excuse not to engage with others.

Todd Sattersten 00:57:00  Like I think introversion can also be you can hide yourself and so paying attention to that piece, all these things have these two sides to it.

Eric Zimmer 00:57:09  Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up. You and I are actually going to continue in a post-show conversation for a few minutes, because I did not get enough details about the silent reading party. However, if you’d like to hear more about the silent reading party and whatever else Todd and I wander into next, you can get access to the post-show conversations. You can get ad free episodes. You can get a special episode I do. Each week, if you’re curious about what’s on my Spotify playlist, my episode teaching song, and a poem that I put out each week will tell you exactly that. And so if you’d like access to all those things, and the really important part of all that is supporting this show, because we can always use the help. Go to one dot net. Todd, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

Todd Sattersten 00:57:51  Thank you for having me. This has been great.

Eric Zimmer 00:57:52  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend. Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity. But we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.