A Characteristic of Wisdom

Hi, I'm Donneda and welcome to off the shelf with Dr. Hanks. That's me. I think most of us know that reading is so important and there are a lot of studies. I'll, I'll look up some stats and give to you at some other time. I don't have them right now, but. You, they, they say reading is a big factor for success in life.

It can improve your stress levels, lower your stress, help you sleep, help you build your cognitive abilities, your thinking, your knowledge base. And what's really interesting is that it's also a factor in your overall happiness, that reading has a lot of. Because I can't read a book all the time.

And I think that will have very negative. Positive psychological effects when we do it. But I know that we have created a life that requires us to go, go, go. 100 percent of the time, and we don't really take the time to read it. On a regular basis. And even if we do, like, I'm guilty of this. I'll sit down with one book.

and just read the whole thing or skim through the whole thing in a weekend, but I don't really remember everything that Was interesting at the time, so it, it doesn't really impact my behaviors or change anything because I read it so fast that I don't have a chance to really digest it or put anything into practice.

So this off the shelf segment is my approach to let's stop that trend. First, let's get reading. And because I know everybody is busy and I'm busy too. What, what I want to do is just each week, find just 1 lesson or 1 interesting piece of information or knowledge that can help us improve our lives or be a better person or change our perspective or learn just 1 lesson from the pages every week and share it with you.

So we can all spend a little bit of time each week, being a little more intentional about reading and learning and continuing on that journey. And I also have created it's called a notebook marker. This was actually an idea I had back in the 90s and we're revisiting it. So you get the 1st look at that as well.

It is basically, it's just a 1 page sheet where I've got the title of the book that I talk about. I know it's kind of blurry on here, but when you download it, it'll be fine and some reflection questions that kind of directly relate to whichever book I choose for the day. So, in each week now, when you get these videos from me, you will get the video with the book and the lesson and my thoughts and perceptions on that, along with a sheet to download where you can put it in practice, think about it.

You can fold it up. It's really designed to be like, the size of a note sheet that you would keep in a book write on it. And then we have the worksheet or the reflection sheet that you can download so each segment should be less than way less than 15 minutes. I mean, I'm talking maybe 5 to 10 minutes each week, focusing on 1, So I'm going to give you a brief introduction to this book.

It's a solid idea. One solid force of action or. Suggestion or. Perspective on something. From one of the books that. We read. So the first. Book that I want to choose. Is from Henry David Thoreau. Walden is the name of it. And I had heard. Many, many years ago, I had heard this. Quote the same. The massive man.

Lead lives of quiet desperation. I don't know exactly how I came to know that quote or how, where I was when I first heard it. I don't remember any of that, but I do remember that quote, the massive men lead lives of quiet desperation. And for a long time that brought me personally, it brought me at least some comfort to know that as I was striving to Achieve and do more and get more education and get this job or that job or this promotion, make more money, do this, do that to improve my life.

And I was never really happy. With any of that, and I was just always striving for this happiness that I thought was going to come at the next achievement, after the next goal, or after this, or after that, and so I took comfort to know that a lot of people are quietly unhappy with their lives. It is hard to just go through.

Sometimes we. We just go through the motions. We get up, we have to go to work. We have to be with people. We may or may not even like, we have to do all of these things that don't bring us joy for the few hours on the weekend that does bring us joy. And even then how many of us on Sunday afternoon already start dreading Monday.

So we don't even get a full weekend. So the, it, it comforted me not because I wanted other people to feel bad. I mean, that's never, that never works for me at all, but it does, it did help me kind of understand myself a little and at least know that I wasn't alone, that I'm not the only one who feels this way and that there are other people out there.

The interesting thing about this quote is one day, I decided to go back and really look at what was the context around why he was why did he say that? What was the context around the statement? And so I did a little reading, like, before and after the quote, and was just Trying to get a good idea of what exactly was he referring to?

And basically there were a couple of things that I point that Pointed out to me right away. One was that a few sentences down the main thing that I hung on to if he's he said the massive manly lives of quiet desperation, but then a couple of sentences down, he says that it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

And I thought, wow, how often, and I know desperate acts or acts out of desperation. Unfortunately, they happen probably more than what we care to admit. I know I have, I have allowed myself at times to get so burned out and so defeated and so down. And yet I knew I wanted something better and I felt like the only way I was ever going to make this happen was to just completely shock the system and do something, you know, crazy to break the cycle.

And what he says, though, is that, and this is the part we really need to work on, or I, you know, I do, and I know other people do if you are desperate in the city, he says, you will be desperate in the country. So he is saying, like, if he's comparing and his walks of life, he went into the woods. He wanted to be one with nature.

He wanted to get away from the rat race and keep in mind this was written in 1854. So, his idea of the rat race and technology and city life is completely. I mean, it's like watching Little House on the Prairie compared to, you know I don't know something CSI New York or whatever. I mean, it's just crazy.

The difference if you think about it in history, but if you are desperate in 1 situation, and you make a desperate decision, or you make a decision. You know, when you're out of desperation, and you try to shock everything, shock the system with something, you're just going to take that desperation with you, and you may go into the country thinking you're going to relax and unwind and do all of these great things, but you haven't really solved any of the problems, you haven't really solved the root of the problem.

So, that is That is the first thing that out. This is the first option for our off the shelf weekly segment. It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. So, yes, we may feel we may feel defeated. We may feel down. We may feel burned out. We may feel alone, but fortunately for us. We are not alone.

A lot of people are experiencing these same feelings, and it's okay that, you know, life may not be exactly the way you planned. I think most of us would agree, life did not turn out as planned. But what we want to do is take the time to reflect and say, okay. So here we are. What can I do? What do I have control over right now?

What What can I do that makes sense to positively impact my situation right now, today, and what can I do to make tomorrow better? What can I do today to make tomorrow a little better? Are these small incremental things that I can be doing, even if it's just my mindset, my stress level calling a friend, talking to someone, laughing, telling a few jokes, you know, having a good time, whatever it is, what can you do today that is not driven by desperation, but is driven by something that makes sense, that is wise, that you can control, To influence your situation in a positive way for today and tomorrow and next week.

And let's do those things that are rational and logical yet satisfying. There is a balance there satisfying and start making improvements so that we can not be desperate and feel and not feel like we have to make some drastic. Change that's only going to make matters worse. It might solve a problem in one area of our lives, but then created a whole different problem in another area of our lives.

So I hope you like this segment. I absolutely love preparing for this. I love sharing with you what I read and my insights and perspectives and how it impacts me. And I would love to hear from you. If you found anything particularly interesting or helpful or not helpful just reply to the email.

It comes right to me. I'm a 1 man show right now. So it comes right to me. Reply to the email, let me know and also don't forget to download your notebook marker companion. This is this will be a weekly companion sheet. That you can print out if you want or. Save it on your computer. I don't have it's not a fillable PDF, so you won't be able to type on it unless you have the software to do that.

But it's just got some reflection questions and things that I think would be helpful for kind of processing this information. And yeah, so thanks for watching and I hope to see you again next week. Bye.