Hi everyone. In today's podcast, Talia and I are going to review a helpful resource for homeschooling parents. And this is a book that is also very appropriate for your kids curriculum. So really quick, before we jump in, I want to take just a moment to explain some context of what we're, of what we're going to talk about. It is based on a method of study that involves biographies and autobiographies. So you might've heard biographical research or life history, and it is exactly what it sounds like. So the approach is essentially doing a, a study of someone's life, their experiences, and. And then from that, you learn about the history or the culture or social context, other things that help shape those experiences. And it's very, very effective. Especially with, um, especially with audible books. You can use this with very young children. I say this as an engineer who did not enjoy or appreciate history while I was in school. An example I have of, to show how effective it is, is a book that I really enjoy listening to called Team of Rivals. This is about Lincoln. And it was written by a woman named Doris Goodwin. And it basically explains how he came to be president and his relationship with his cabinet, which was his rivals. Hugely interesting, even as an engineer. So today's podcast, we're going to use this kind of technique in the book where we're reviewing is the art of learning by Josh Waiskin. I hope you enjoy. And with that, let's jump in.

You have to be able to get past that the opening move and have enough endurance and mental discipline to get through to the end of the game. And that's the comparison he had between the high time preference and low time preference.

he applies the same type of methodology that he did in chess matches into martial arts. You could apply that to anything. You could apply that to yourself and becoming the best homeschooling parent. Ever.

The highest level athletes all learn this from their performance coaches, but for whatever reason it doesn't trickle down to common education

you're not going to go through life and not have setbacks. So your, your choice is what do you do about it? Right. if you read this book and you're inspired, maybe you can learn to invest in loss and use it to make you yourself better, use it to advance your goals.

For the homeschoolers out there, I would encourage you to use living books like this as much as possible

Welcome Bitcoin homeschoolers. Today, Talia and I are going to look at a resource that you might not expect would be helpful. But as you, uh, as we go through this conversation, I think that you'll find, there's, there's something in here for parents and there's something in here for, for kids. Specifically, we're talking about the book called The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin. Josh Waitzkin is best known as the person that the movie, Seeking, uh, Bobby Fischer was based on.

In search of Bobby Fisher. From a

Alright, thank you. In search of Bobby Fisher. So, from a homeschooling standpoint, the first thing that I want to say is to be open minded about how we teach kids and not just give them a list of facts. The idea of using biographies, or in this case, maybe, An autobiography. This is a way of helping someone really understand the context of what some of these historic figures have gone through. And in this case, this person is still alive. So I guess maybe not historic, but it's a lot more personal than a list of names and dates, and especially if you listen to it on audible, you can actually hear it in their own. On voice for, the reason Josh Waiskin kind of hit, he had a few things for, for me personally, he talks about a lot of concepts that we as parents can use to be better teachers. And he also has a very interesting story, so you can either take away pieces of this. And how you teach or maybe for the older kids, they can actually read it themselves. So depending on the age of your, your students, they can be, they can take different things from it. So, all right, tell me, do you, we, I have a list of things to, deep dive on this thing. Is there one particular area that stood out that you'd like to start with?

Well, in referencing what you said about reading autobiography as a way of kids learning, it's, it's basically if you, if you know the Charlotte Mason method, it's basically equivalent to what they're saying about learning through living books because authors who write. On a subject that they're absolutely passionate about have a tone and a voice that comes through that is absolutely absent for Things that you would read in a textbook that's by a subject that's written by what they would quote unquote call experts, but The emotionally it's flat. And as human beings, we relate to things emotionally first and foremost. And so learning, reading a living book written by an author who's passionate about the subjects is absolutely the best way to get your kids interested in the information itself. So for people who are not interested in chess or in Tai Chi and the martial arts aspect of Tai Chi can still learn a lot about his learning process because you do get emotionally sucked into his stories.

Yeah, his stories, they're about what he went through. Learning the stresses, people who cheated on him, how he dealt with that when he got to martial arts, he basically went from literally knowing nothing to, to world champion. And he's a deep, deep thinker. So he, he thinks about the longterm, he doesn't call it low time preference, but he definitely thinks about the longterm and he's definitely anti fragile he'll, he'll hit a setback. Someone will do something and it'll upset him or he'll lose or whatever it is. And he will journal and he will say, what, what state was I in at this time? And then he'll go back and then he'll, he'll study more. He, he talked about the number of times that he would review his games and what he was feeling on them. The number of times that he would review his tapes from the martial arts. So I would, I just want to get this out, out in front. To me, he exhibits the qualities of someone who can really get into flow. And. There's, uh, my understanding of, of, of flow that you, you need to have clear specific goals. And he definitely did that. He had these long term objectives. You need immediate feedback. And this is where he just excels and where the, there's a ton to learn in from the art of learning. And then the challenge has to be something that's outside your current skill level. And so he just, he applies the same type of methodology that he did in chess matches into martial arts. And to me, that means you could apply that to anything. You could apply that to yourself and becoming the best homeschooling parent. Ever. You could apply that to teaching your kids on how they can get into flow, how they can deal with setbacks, how they can deal with stress, how they can, how they can learn. And you can apply it to your career. You could apply it to anywhere. It's, it's, it's, uh, I think it's really a good, the, the name of the book being art of learning. Really captures it and he just proves it with two very different areas and he makes a lot of analogies between them. And and then tolly you you hit on this he uses a lot of stories in this thing So this is something you can actually listen to it's not dry at all Some of the stories will really pull you in all right.

Me add something. Let me add something. So, he draws in an actually, he doesn't draw an analogy. Um, he states in the book that this is referencing his chess games. He said that who he was as a person was absolutely reflected in the way he played. And so you can't really separate the two. And I've heard people say that your success can never, you can never out success the strength of a character. And in that way, if we. Allow our kids to listen to this, or even if we listen to it and then relate the lessons to our kids, we can stress the importance of not the accomplishments or the outcome of your efforts, but rather your personal growth through the journey, because he does reference that over and over again as he's going through the difference, the struggle, the struggle of losing and then having to maintain his composure when he was under pressure and how he was under pressure. Overcame those mental, growth milestones.

Maybe we can tell a couple of the stories that he, what he did. So the, the ability from a game theory standpoint of being able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and seeing it from their perspective, he's a master at this. He, he, he would, regardless of whether it was a chess opponent or a martial arts opponent. He really did. He really went deep on what they, what they were thinking, how they reacted, not just like their, their strategies or their techniques. He would go really deep. And then he would use this, this, this adaptive learning. He was getting constant feedback and, and it wasn't just like, Hey, good job or bad job or whatever, you know, whatever after a chess match or another match. This was a matter of saying, well, if you tell someone feedback or you give someone feedback right after they've had a challenge, they're not ready to receive that. So even knowing when and how to communicate that, that feedback. He would, he would even adapt, he would continue to adapt not just his techniques, but he would continue to adapt his learning techniques on how he would do it. And the idea of these constant feedback loops is really, really interesting. And you start off with, he talked about making smaller and smaller circles. You'd, you can start out with, with whatever it is, you've got to learn the basic things. And then once you're, once you've mastered those, and you can learn the next level of the basic things and the next level,

The

The thing that sticks out to me is In today's society, there's always somebody to blame, right? No one wants to, it's not like we teach responsibility. At West Point, we'd say, one of your responses was, it was like, yes, sir. No, sir. You could say, sir, may I ask a question, but it was no excuse. He didn't, it was one of your responses was not, someone else hurt me. Or someone else cheated and he gave specific examples. So there was a, an individual when he was going through his, his chess career, who would intentionally distract his opponents. And he would get up and talk to you. It's like he was speaking another language, Russian or whatever it was, or he would tap or he would do, he was doing things that were clearly against the rules. And one reaction could be to go and complain. You go to the judges and you say, this guy, this, this kid is doing stuff. That's, that's really bad. And he's, they're doing it on purpose. So one of the things that Weitzkin did is he went back and he figured out

So,

how basically to, to use that to his own advantage on, he changed his techniques playing with that individual. So first of all, what is the trigger? And he could recognize the trigger. Okay. He's using the technique. And then he had practiced how to respond to that. And basically. He changed the game on this person. Yes, it wasn't and it wasn't just a matter of going say hey someone else You need to go police this guy. He did the same thing in martial arts. He was talking about the the championship It was like every two years it was in Taiwan and he got into what the culture was like and he was going against a very popular local champion and There were blatant, blatant, blatant things, times when the judges would do things that favored the opponent, like they, the opponent knew changes to the rules ahead of time, but they wouldn't tell the foreigners until the last minute. And then they would try to, they wouldn't give them food. And then when they wouldn't eat, then they would immediately call them there. So now they're in a bad state when, um, they're not in a less ideal state when they're competing and they just did. And then there was the calls that they made and there was all these different things that were part of the culture. That essentially it's like the referee basically favoring one, one team. So the next time he went back, he had changed a lot of different things. And in the moment when these things would happen, he was able to still focus. So long way of saying in this world, there are going to be people out there who do things to, to hurt you, who don't play fair, bad things are going to happen. So it's, it's a lot more than just the psychology of. The opponent and thinking through step by step, it's also knowing yourself and really understanding yourself. Now imagine if you had those skills, imagine if your kids had those skills, how much better off they would be. I

I think the illustration he made in the book was staying soft. So in the case when his opponent was cheating, he could get angry and allow that to break his concentration, or he can train himself to work with it and win despite the cheating. So that was a self improvement moment rather than a anger, uh, lash out or just play victim kind of mentality. And obviously it's, it's unfair. Nobody's going to question that statement, but You after that, what do you do? and he always just dealt with it and worked with what he had to work with and Then try to figure out a way to beat it one example he gave was the the time when he was crossing the street in New York and this lady Next to him had her earphones in and she looked at the down the wrong side of the street stepped off the curb And a bike messenger almost hit her instead of realizing her mistake, which was that she wasn't paying attention and she looked down the wrong side of the street, she turned and yelled at the bike messenger that was speeding away. Well, as she was doing that, she missed another car that was coming around the corner and she was hit. So the lesson was, You can recognize your mistake and correct your own actions, or you can focus your attention on blaming and then potentially hurt yourself even more in the long run.

Right, you're managing stress at a level that most people just don't, don't do. So it's the soft zone. Yeah, that, that was excellent. Another, another area that he talked about was investing in loss. So throughout the book, no matter what he was talking about, no matter how frustrating and how bad things were, and he would document in his journal how he felt. I, I'm mad, I'm hurt, I'm this, I'm whatever, but he, he actually embraces the idea that you have to make mistakes. You have to have losses. And if you, if you embrace loss as a way to, to take from it something that can make you better than. Then you're, you're basically in, it's weird. It's a weird way of saying it, but you're investing in the loss. So you have to get yourself out there. You have to take action. And then from a feedback standpoint, it's not just saying I had that experience and then I want to go forget about it. It was more of the, it was much more of a, let's, let's dissect this thing. Let me go and see the eye movements of my, uh, Opponents, they're the smallest way that they would shift their weight or not shift their weight or maybe someone would change their breathing right before they would do a certain thing. I mean you're telling my new, but he didn't start there. He had a, um, he went through a lot of, a lot of pain and,

through a lot of, a lot of pain and, um,

also lose enough

That you are continuously improving. And that is a very difficult balance to achieve. And that is down to the player or the competitor and also a great coach in the book. He also makes a comparison towards the end of his chess career. He was losing his passion and he Was trying to break through to the next level and he had a change of coaches and he had two choices He had one coach who was exceptionally Single minded about the best way to train the students So his approach was to break the student down so that he can build them up in what he believed was the optimal way and his way of playing was very very different from Josh's natural inclination to play The other coach spend the first part of his coaching with a student by observing the student and how the student played. And then his method was to help the student excel in the way that the student naturally played. So two very, very different approaches. And Josh makes a comparison between the two of them. One, the one that he chose to go with, Which ultimately ended his career was the guy who made him feel like he shouldn't trust himself because he was instructed to think, what would his coach do? And in that way, he started to ignore his instinct. He felt like he wasn't playing himself. He watched, he felt like he was watching himself play from a distance. And so. That balance of encouragement and correction, that's a fine line to walk. And so he made that comparison, and I think it's really helpful for students, not students, for homeschooling parents to think that way. You know, to, to pay really close attention to, to that balance of teaching and encouraging.

Right, and it might depend on the student too, right? It's not going to be the same for each, uh, student. The, the second thing about that is, he gave a lot of thought to who he wanted to be coached by. This wasn't a He was very much going to make the future he wanted, and he gave a great deal of thought to who was right for him, even though, like your, imagine telling your friend, Hey, you're, you can't be my business partner anymore because we've reached a new level.

So,

terms of his, his coaching. He had grown close to these, these individuals because we spent a lot of time together. So he was thinking about the bigger picture. And so not only did he recognize all the things that you just said, but then he also had the courage to, to make a decision, right? Also, he talked about the beginners, I don't know if he called it the beginner's mind, but he, he was always open to new, new perspective and approaches no matter how experienced you got. And I, and I think he mentioned that, for example, a lot of chess clubs the coaches would be tempted to just teach the kids a whole bunch of starting moves, right? A whole bunch of things.

And

Initially, this, depending on the age, this can be very effective in terms of helping new chess players do very well against their opponents. But in longer games and things in tournaments and like that, it doesn't necessarily help them there. And, and his approach was to focus on the fundamentals. And so. He just kept learning and learning and learning. He, he

can I, can I correct you actually? So, The example you're giving about the kids who are learning chess, what the difference, the differences between what he believes is. The best way and what a lot of chess clubs teach their students is the chess clubs teach their students to memorize aggressive opening moves Whereas josh started by being trained with three pieces on the board. He was He was learning the ending moves when there were very few pieces on the board. And so he learned to understand the nuance and the power of each individual piece so that he could make sense of. Chaos in the middle of the play and his strength was in the ending of the game. Whereas these students were taught with the, what you would call, um, high time preference because these were elementary school chess coaches and their job was to make sure that their students placed high that year. And so if they were a third year

student coaches,

They didn't care that the students would not progress beyond seventh or eighth grade because they were, they had done their job making these kids into champions in the third grade by teaching them or having them memorize aggressive opening moves. Aggressive opening moves work if you are competing against other new players.

chess players.

But when you get into the more experienced chess player games, you have to be able to get past that the opening move and have enough endurance and mental discipline to get through to the end of the game. And that's the comparison he had between the long, the high time preference and low time preference. If you have a long term view and Josh did because he was looking, he was looking at. A

long

term view. What's another way of saying it? He was just

low time preference.

was, yeah, he was just looking at, you know, how would the student develop eventually versus the coach of one grade year and the chess club training that was offered in that year. Does that make sense?

sense? Yeah. So I, yeah, I don't disagree with everything you're saying. I remember, I recall what you're, you're talking about. And I, I think I, the, the point I was trying to make, and maybe I blurred them together was if you're, if you're always open to, even when you get better, let's say you've, you've trained up to a certain high level. Some people just stagnate there. They don't make it to champion. And he was always open to keep on learning new perspectives, new approaches, new. Techniques knew whatever, what it was. So the, okay, here's a different example. He gave, he was in the gym and he said he wanted to get better. So he, he was starting to get paired up with, some giants of a, like some huge guy who was also like multiple black belts, whatever else. And this opponent of his, but usually just,

he

just dominate whoever he was in the, in the dojo with him. And. He kept every night going back and doing it again and again and again, even though he was literally getting thrown to the mats and literally getting whatever bruises you get from being tossed around so much. But through time he, he was learning the techniques. He was learning the tells, if you will. And That person stagnated where they were, whereas he was continuing to get better and better looking for new things. And he eventually was able one, one day when he was there, he was able to, where he got to throw in and it got to the point where he was able to beat this person who physically otherwise would, should be dominating him. And then after that, the guy didn't want to, didn't want to fight him anymore. So Josh's approach was, I'm going to keep fighting this guy who's a lot better than me until I figure it out. The other guy was, as soon as he had someone that actually beat him, he wanted to stop. Because he could dominate everybody else. And so, the other guy was not a martial arts champion, and Josh was. And I think it comes back to Josh's perspective on always being open to new experiences. Perspective approaches, no matter what level you've reached, no matter what level of parenting, what level of schooling, whatever. So different than what you were saying, still an important lesson, I think.

Well, the thing about the, the Um, kids were taught the aggressive opening moves and will win quickly. And what they, the way that they will compare their scorecard with each other would be how many moves did you make before you won? So that was their scorecard. And when they got older and they didn't win all the time anymore, these kids all quit. And that kind of goes back to what you're saying is.

That,

that sense of anti fragile mentality, that cannot happen if they're always winning. That's why that investment in loss is so important. Uh,

Hmm. Yep. Uh, there, there are a couple other areas that I thought were worthy of, of. Trying to put it incorporated into your, your homeschooling experience, because again, these are things that I would like to learn. I wish I had learned earlier technique wise. And there's, there are things that had. Had we been able to teach our own kids some of these principles, I would love to have more deliberately taught some of them. One of the ones, and I know that, Talia, I know we talked about visualization with our, with our, with our kids, but the, one of the examples Josh Wason goes into in depth about visualization and how he uses it to prepare for, Matches how he prepares for how he's going to handle his feelings and things. One of the ones that stuck out to me was he had, he had broken his, uh, I think it was his wrist. He, he, he broke something in his hand and the doctors basically said, you're not going to be able to compete at the world championship that you've been preparing for. And. They basically said, you're going to cast for this long and then you're going to get it off like a week or so before then there's not enough time for you with all the muscle atrophy to, to recover. And he would still continue to work out for the rest of his body, like his weights and things that he could, except for the one that was immobile with the, with the cast, but he was visualizing using it the whole time. And when he actually had the cast off, they, the doctors were amazed at how. Little atrophy had actually experienced during that, and he was actually able to go back and compete and, and the, the, I don't want to ruin the punchline, but he does end up winning. So the, the power of his, and I'm, and I'm not saying you're going to go out there and heal yourself, but, but man, he, he really put in the work with visualization. I mean, he really would, uh, would do that. And that is a skill that if you could teach a young kid, you know, And just so that they think that visualization is a normal type thing to use to prepare. And then afterwards, how to handle those failures and all those other things we just talked about. These are great anti fragile skill sets to, that can really help our kids out as they, as they grow. So anyway, did, was there anything from a visualization standpoint that stood out for you?

Yeah, I I think I, I shared a study with the kids when we were going through homeschooling. And the example was, two, two study groups, one study group played musical scales physically on the piano every day for a certain amount of time. The other group played it only in their mind for the same amount of time. And at the end of the study, they were supposed to play the scales and the group that. Okay. Did the visualization actually performed better I can't reference that study you can probably Google it but I I remember talking about it with our kids because it is so powerful and is so Unconventional it the highest level athletes all learn this from their performance coaches, but for whatever reason it doesn't trickle down to common education

Yeah, including visualization. I don't think we're experts on it, but including visualization and what you teach your kids, uh, that's pretty, pretty important. Another thing that I, that I thought would be a good habit to teach kids would be the learning journal. And it's more than, um, like I've already referenced it a couple of times in the conversation. But he would go back, for example, and look at his tapes and not just like, whether it's chess or the martial arts, and he would look at them and look at them and look at them again, and he would go back to his journal and he would link the two together. So. What had gone on before that event, what, what did he miss during it that he could now the time had passed and he was more calm, he could, he could identify and then make a plan for it. But he would realize, Hey, I really was thrown off my game

at

this point because this is what I was feeling. And he would, he would have kind of this insight about himself. But it was only because he had been keeping a journal of his, his, his progress and was able to go back and then apply it. So it was, it was, it was more than just keeping a journal and then you, you don't go back and look at it. It, this was a matter of, he was proactively using it as a, as a tool. And for, for super young kids, just the habit of journaling is, is probably all you would need to do. Uh, but I, I would think that, you know, junior high, high school, being able to go back through past experiences and. And link, link of what you were feeling, how did you prepare, et cetera. That's an interesting thing. I don't, uh, I think very, very, very few people or a very small percent of the other population would do that. And the ones that are doing it are probably the ones that have some kind of professional coach, but nothing stops you or their kids from, from doing that. Anybody can do that.

That

That was another thing too, is that these are all things that there was nothing that he said where you said, man, he just had a God given skill and nobody else can do anything. The things that he was listing out were like, it was like, wow, those are things that anybody can use as a tool. Maybe not everybody will achieve the same, same level, but there's nothing about these techniques that, that are only, you know, for some given select few of these, the things that he listed out for these different learning techniques, anybody can apply. And again, I go back to, wouldn't you want your kids to have that, these kind of lessons. So even if you only took one thing from the book, as I, as I think about this, if we were sitting down with someone like in person and talking about this, even if you took away just one thing from the book that can help improve either you or your kids, uh, your, your habits in your life, like, You, you would want to do that. And, um, you know, don't trust us, you know, verify for yourself. Don't trust verify. Um, the worst that you have is you lose a couple hours, few hours listening to an audible book

Doing it. Um,

doing it. Um, but I liked the journal. Did you, did you have any thoughts on the journal?

thoughts on the journal? I think the journal is a great idea. I don't think it's practical for a lot of people. So, you know, take from it what you can and don't feel like any, you have to do any of it. Take, take from it what you can and what you can apply. And that's the most important thing. Another thing I want to mention from the book. It's something that we've already talked about before in the previous episodes, but I just want to reiterate because it is, it is a common cultural

belief

I believe that I think we should try to overcome, which is this whole notion of talent. I just hear so many people say, Oh, I'm just not good at math, almost like, therefore they shouldn't have to try kind of thing, or I'm just not good at writing. I, I suck at spelling or something like that, like talent, Trump's effort, and he makes it. A point in this book that if that as parents, when you give feedback to your kids, the nuance is what determines that the belief in one way or the other, the, the talent versus effort. So for example, if your child comes home and she's gotten an A, In math and you say, Oh my gosh, you're so smart. You're so good at math. You're really highlighting the talent side. But if you say something like, I'm so proud of you, you work so hard, then you're emphasizing the effort side. If she comes home and she gets, let's say a C. In English, you can, you don't have to say, Oh, you know, terrible at English. It's just not, it's not your strong suit. You can say something like, well, maybe next time you work a little harder on your paper and ask your teacher some questions. That's what she's there for. She can help you. And then you emphasize that. The effort is what is the most important. And in that way, you also empower your child in whatever pursue, you know, it down the road. A book I would like to recommend is called the talent code. And it specifically addresses this, this notion of talent versus effort. It's a very, very small book. You can look it up on Amazon, the talent code.

on Amazon. Yeah, no, I remember you talking about that previously. So some of these concepts are going to tie. We've now, a lot of these things tie into each other, so we can kind of go more quickly through them. I have a note here about the idea of incremental learning and the feedback loops. So we've talked about how he would break down things. He'd start with whatever it is and they have his circles and he would get smaller and smaller and keep on, refining. You should explain

what that means.

So Yeah. I wish I could do it as articulately as he does, but I mean, when you, when you first go in to learn, for example, martial arts, or I guess you could even use a chess, you're, you're not going to try to learn the same type of things that a master in those areas is going to be focused on. Right. You don't, you don't go to a novice in martial arts and talk about the opponent's breathing and where their body weight is and whatever else you're just, you're going to, you need to learn the muscle memory. Of the most basic movements so that you can, you can get those down and the same thing with chess, like you said earlier, where he learned how each piece worked and he learned how each pairing. So this is how the Knight and the Bishop work together. This is how the Rook and the Bishop work together. This is how the Knight, I mean, and then you build up and build up and you eventually get to the point where you're working on strategies. High level strategies as opposed to just starting with here's an opening move. Here's your strategy on that

Well, I will explain it the opposite way. So I'll use Tai Chi Chan as an example. When you're a novice, you follow the teacher and you understand the general, the steps, you know, the choreography, the general way you should, lift your arm and the way that you should put one step forward and bend your knees and that kind of thing. So very general things, but eventually as you get more and more advanced, you start to get into this really. Really nuance things like where is your hip when you stand? Is it in the center of your right foot like your hip weight? Is it to the left? Is it to the right? Is your weight on your big toes, your weight on your heel? So when you get more advanced you you start to break down each movement into smaller smaller pieces It's the nuance in the nuance is how you win and improve your skills. Not the big flow. So it's like a 10, 000 foot You know like Bert's eye view of what's going on and then eventually you, you funnel narrower and narrower into the nuances. I think that's what you're referring to, right?

Well, I liked the way you explained that. And that makes sense a lot with a lot of his examples of, of what he was looking for when he was. What, when he was getting to the highest levels of competition, the, the smallest of details and how much time he spent on the things that he never would have even been able to notice before, because he was trying to learn the, the, I think he used an analogy of like learning to drive, right? Like you, first thing you need to do is like, like the car needs to move. And so you just like learn how to use the gas and the brakes, right? Uh, the nuances of. What's the weather like, the distance one driver is keeping from another. Are they, how much are they moving or swaying? Does that mean that they, maybe they're, you know, they're, they're sleepy or on drugs or something like you. I forget what he used like that, but you, the nuances of things, you can't see those details when you first start out. Because you're just focused on the big, you're just learning the big, the big picture of things. that's the also like the muscle memory too. Like you, you can't focus on the smaller things. If you're still trying to do the basic things, all right. Um, Yeah, but they, incremental learning, feedback loops, the deep focus. We touched about that early on immersion. He, he certainly, uh, Waze can, he is, he goes deep, he goes really, really deep on anything that he does. And I don't know if everybody. It has that, um, the willingness to, to go as deep, but on the, on the other hand, let's, let's talk this quickly to, to tools and technologies that are available today, we've talked about that, like the whole idea of Jeff booth and tech where technology is going. It's very. You know, Bitcoin thing, it's that's deflationary versus money, but you look at where AI is today and you look at all the, the, the different things we have, you can, you can get creative and use technology to help with feedback. Just the fact that you can record things, um, at different levels. And now, now you could even probably put some of those things you could play. If you were competing in chess, you could probably put that into an AI, AI program. Let it analyze it for you to, um, I don't know. I haven't tried that myself, but if you want to look at where your heart rate is and you're breathing, you can get like a Garmin watch and you can get feedback on, you know, how, how different things I, my point is, I don't know exactly how to do. I do. I just know that., Get creative in how you use technology and you don't have to get to a world class level to have some benefit in your life. And there's a lot of things available today that can help with feedback. So that was my thought on, uh, on the feedback loops.

Well, taking that tiny little step further, he talks about how when you become ultra focused, you can notice the tiniest thing that's happening within your own body. So you're talking about wearing a garment for biofeedback. But I have found through meditation that you know how people say, take your pulse and you got to find your, the vein on your neck or the vein on your wrist, and then you can count the heartbeat. When you pay attention, you don't need that because you can feel your heartbeat on your skin. So when he's in flow, when he is absolutely focused across the table from his chest competitor or across the floor. You know, with his Tai Chi Chen competitor, he can feel their breathing, he can feel the flicker of fear, he can feel everything that they're feeling as if it's his own because he's paying that close attention. And I, I think even as we're relying more and more on technology to give us feedback, don't forget how powerful we already are within our own body.

body. When we started off this discussion, why did we pick Josh Wadeskin? And part of it is you can learn a lot from like we were talking about, like a, an autobiography or biography. He actually does have a lot of techniques where he says, here's my, my toolkit for that. But one of the things I liked about it is he's a model. Like he has a, there's a, I have a mental image now of someone who knows how to get into flow based on his ability to. Go through all the things we were just talking about and one of the reasons to pick him. I'm sorry you went

just ask something as you're mentioning the flow thing? I thought one more thing I want to talk about from the book that he shared with us that I think would be really interesting is one. I remember when the kids were really little, we were told that babies needed a quiet place to sleep that when it's nap time, it's like the phone is off the you, you pull down the shade, you close the door and it's like silence and quiet. And you it's almost like you have to create this environment in order to help your baby sleep. And he was talking about how when he was playing chess, if there were external, um, Like interruptions. So, for example, when he was facing the kid who was very, very, What's it called? Underhandedly tapping his

his, uh,

chest piece when he knew that Josh was making a decision because he can read Josh too. That, that little imperceptible noise was picked up by his subconscious mind and it distracted him. And then he said what he did going forward was to train himself to be able to focus. in the middle of chaos. So he would turn up all different genre of music and blast it in his room as he's trying to focus. And that was how he trained his ability to focus. And I think that it's really important as parents, we train our kids to be able to focus in the middle of chaos, because the condition is never going to be perfect. And if we If we tell the kids that conditions have to be perfect, as in turn off your music, as in pull the shade down, you know, you have to sit in your chair and everything. Everybody has to be quiet. Everybody's a tiptoe so that you can focus. Then then that's that's really doing your child a disservice.

Mm hmm. No, I, I agree with that. Um, it's interesting. So where, where I was going is. The one of the reasons to read this book is he's interesting. He has a ton of really cool, interesting stories throughout. This is not a, this is not a, and then I did Y and then I did Z and then I did whatever. He has all kinds of interesting stories in there. So it's real life. You can learn from it from, from a parenting standpoint, you, you can, you can learn how to deal with stress better. We can learn how to deal with setbacks better and distractions better. All of us can learn this even at a, as an adult, we can do better with that. But there's also things you can take away from it for your kids, no matter what, what level they're at. You just have to adapt what those. What those concepts are. So if you're trying to teach how to embrace loss to, uh, an elementary age student, that's probably gonna be different than. A middle aged student and the things that you would ask in a high school,

necessarily embrace loss

Yeah.

learn from loss, I think.

he embraced it. Yeah, that's what he called the investment in,

He called it investment in

investment in loss.

embracing loss.

I took it. No, I took it as he's embracing loss. That was my interpretation of it. He, he was seeking that because he knew that's how he would get better. He intentionally. What he would, those were the, he didn't get better by just winning, right? He didn't get better by having things come easy. All of his points where he got to the next level were because he had a challenge and he had to overcome that challenge. It was the loss. It was a distraction. It was the feelings. It was not being able to focus, whatever it was. I took it as he really embraces it when he says, invest in loss. Like he's saying, instead of me getting mad about this. Um, this is my fuel. This is making me better.

he did describe it as somebody when he would lose a game. He described it as somebody ripping the heart out of his chest and stumping on it on

floor. I would

call it embracing loss. He literally is investing in loss so that he can learn from loss so that he can win.

did he do after he did that though? He didn't give up.

He didn't give up, but he did, he did emphasize the importance of stepping away from the game. So he talked about his, his family taking him fishing. After big competitions, he would just go on a boat and be on the beach and chase, you know, run around with the, the The kids who were, who were there, they're his playmates. And he was able to really fully step away. And you know, when he said he would come back from a competition, like some famous world competition and his friends at school would just say, how'd it go? He'll say, I want to be like gay. And then they will be outside playing football. You need that mental break from this intensity of

and competing

learning and competing and things like that. And I think that's. That's something that's important for

but he, but

know as well.

what, when I mean embrace it, yes, he had that break. He came back to it when he was in a different, more calm state. But he still went through the tapes. He still went through his journal. He still went through whatever feedback he could get. He didn't just take a break and then come back and

No,

practicing. He was, he

it. He faced his losses. He didn't shy away from his losses. He learned from his, his losses. And in that way he got

he got better. Right. And I don't think most people, I'm trying to use his words, I don't think most people would invest. That time to rip apart in great detail, their losses. Most people would say they're probably glad it's done. What does he do? He embraces it and he goes back and says, I'm going to go work through this. I'm going to figure out what happened. And yeah, he had a lot of moments where things didn't go his way, but that's, I mean, that's part of why this is an interesting read.

I can't remember who it was. It might have been Zig Ziglar. Uh, he's the sales coach and the, the phrase goes like this. If you want to, if you want to succeed faster, you got to fail even faster.

Right.

If you want to succeed fast, you got to fail even faster.

Right. Yeah. That, that to me is investing in, in the loss. So if you teach, if you teach your kids that, or you learn that. Then yeah, there's, you're not going to go through life and not have setbacks. So your, your choice is what do you do about it? Right. And he, if you, if you read this book and you're inspired, maybe you can learn to invest in loss and use it to make you yourself better, use it to advance your goals. So I'm just saying, that's how I took it that he's embracing this thing. That,

Okay. So, so I would encourage. For the homeschoolers out there, I would encourage you to use living books like this as much as possible because you can have lots of really lively discussions with your kids at the dinner table. They will take away from it what they need in that moment. And the beauty of hearing lessons in story form is that we remember them. Because if you just give them a lecture and you just give them the nuggets, they're not going to remember. But if you tell them the story when they need it. It'll come up for them. So yeah, more living books. Check out this one.

It's a

It's a great read. And, um, I really think that the family can have some really interesting discussions.

really interesting discussions. I think that is perfect advice. Yeah, the more living books and then having the discussions about them so that you can actually get, you know, literally have a human discussion, not be on there just texting or whatever people do now. So um, I think we wrap up right there because that, that's what I would take away from this thing is if you don't, don't trust us, verify, get the book yourself. And if you don't, then get a different living book. But the concept of using them, like you said, It's a huge, hugely effective way of reaching others and making an impact. Plus you get to learn some pretty interesting stuff. Well, thank you everybody for, for joining us. We'll be back next week until then. See you, see you later.