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I just had the honor of spending the afternoon with some of America's great veterans who've served in our war and protected our country. And in that conversation, I was asked the question, how do I take all of the stuff inside me, all of the pain and the stress and the anxiety, and how do I compare that to what I'm reading in a book so that the book can become useful and I can actually improve my life with it? So today I'm going to share with you what I told that amazing veteran and hopefully it will help you as well. Let's get into it. Welcome to this week's, week's episode of the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I'm your host, where I believe it's more important to read well than to be well read. So grab your favorite book, open up your notes, and let's get ready to learn something fascinating. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Read well podcast. My name is Eddie Hood and I am so honored to be here with you today. I am dressed in. These aren't my fancy clothes by any means, if you're watching me on YouTube right now. But right after this, I'm gonna be heading back out to an incredible event by a company called Warrior Rising. Warrior Rising is a nonprofit organization that I had the honor and blessing of attending this afternoon. It's a, it's a. This organization that helps vets when they come home to not only find purpose, but to turn their incredible ideas for business and growth and opportunity into real companies. So these veterans get to go through a series of educational modules. Once they pass those, they can begin to pitch their ideas to all of these community members who doing quite well for themselves and raise money in support of this new business. So I spent the morning getting the opportunity to sit in this big room and watch these incredible veterans pitch their businesses. And all of these people sort of listen to these pitches and begin to donate or invest or whatever it might be. Afterwards, we had a really cool networking event and oh, by the way, I'm not one of the multi billionaire people sitting in the room investing. That would be great. But I was there with a friend. I was invited to go because he knows that I'm interested in little business ideas, right? And in that process, afterwards in the networking, Yvette came up to me and asked me the question, you know, what is it that you do? And I told him, well, I'm a podcaster and I teach people how to slow down, read books, take notes and apply the ideas. And he said, wow, that is really fascinating. And he told me about how he loves to read books, often in audible, because as a vet, he's on the go. He's busy running his business, doesn't have a lot of time to sit down and read a book. And my first comment was audible. Listening to books absolutely counts as reading. He asked me that. He said, does this count as reading a book? Because I've been told that it doesn't. And I was. I just wanted to hug him. I'm just so proud that he's reading. Right. But he asked me, he said, you know, when I'm done, I feel like I'm inspired in the moment, but I don't have access to that knowledge after I've finished the book. Why is that? And how do I actually take the good stuff and apply it to my life? And here's what I told him. There's this really great book out there called the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It got popular because Julia is somebody who is set up to help creative people unlock their potential. And in the book she wrote the Artist's Way. It's a fantastic book that has a sort of a combination of a spiritual journey along with a creative journey to help you find your inner best self. Now, I'm not, you know, historically or along the lines, a spiritual person. I'm the philosophy guy, I'm logical, all that stuff. But I love this book. I absolutely love it. And I think we can all learn something from spiritual journeys. But within this book, what made it popular, and you've probably heard of it, is is a practice in there that Julia teaches her clients called morning pages. Morning pages are the way to sort of unlock yourself and find out what you truly think, what you truly feel, so that you can create your best work. I thought about that in relation to this vet and somebody who's really got a lot sort of locked up inside and he doesn't know how to unlock it. I'm not a therapist. I have no idea how to help with that, but I do know how to help people read books. That's what I do for a living. And so I brought up Julia Cameron's technique, morning pages. And the reason why is because that practice has helped me significantly understand who I am. Here's how it works. Every morning, what you do is you grab a pen and a piece of paper, actually three pieces of paper. And the rule is you begin writing in the morning, and you're not allowed to stop writing until you've filled three full pages of stuff. Now, most of the time, the stuff that hits that page is gobbledygook, right? It's just. It's all over. It's like you're writing about the color of the walls. You're writing about the uncomfortable, comfortable nature of your clothes, how tired you are. Maybe you'd rather be back in bed. But as you start listing all of the stuff in your conscious mind, you run out of things to write about, because three pages takes a minute to fill up. There's only so much you can write about that's in your forefront of your mind. And so as you keep forcing yourself to write, because you have to, to fill up the pages, you begin to write things that are deeper down in your subconscious, stuff that really matters in your life, stuff that will change who you are, what Once you understand that about yourself. And so I challenge this vet to do this practice, you know, every morning, sit down for three pages and just write until he fills that. Now, the question he asked was, how do I get more out of the books that I read? Because I can't seem to unlock it with all of the stuff I have pent up inside. So I challenged him when he does his morning pages, and hopefully this works for you as well, is to begin writing about what you had read in your book. Just let it go, and you can write anything you want. But the rule is you can't stop. So, for example, you might say, I just read this really good book. By the way, my book recommendation today is going to be Tayari Jones's book Leaving Atlanta. We'll talk about this in a minute, but let's say you had read Teari Jones and you are going through this. You'd maybe start at the top. Maybe you might say something like, wow, I had no idea. These horrific things happened in Atlanta back in the late 70s and early 80s. It's hard that things like this happen. Other people have gone through challenging things just like me, because I served in the army and I experienced this, and I learned this from this character who handled their challenges. And maybe that's something I can apply in my own personal life. You can see how once you write without stopping for three pages about what you had read that morning, eventually you'll stop describing the passage and you'll start getting to the subconscious stuff about how the passage applies to you and why it's important for you. Once you can get that on paper, you get it out of your head, you crystallize it, and you realize, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that this was inside me. This book relates to that idea, and then you can start to create sort of a path for yourself to apply that idea. So let's do the book recommendation this week, and maybe this will help you a little more to understand what I'm talking about. Terry Jones, I'm recommending her this week because I was in a conference with her. I wasn't with her. I was listening, and she was presenting. She's such an incredibly talented author. She is what I would call a literary fiction author. She writes these books that are just really grounded in human experience and love and suffering and all of that. But this book, I shouldn't speak like I've read all of her work. I've only gotten into this one, Leaving Atlanta, but she's got so many other highly acclaimed books. Leaving Atlanta is the story a fictional story? This is historical fiction, by the way, seen through the eyes of three amazing kids as they experienced the thing that happened in Atlanta in the late 70s and early 80s. If you look it up, there are these horrible deaths that occurred. Murders, really, lots of kids. Almost 30 different kids were. Were taken, Their lives were taken because of this thing that happened. You should go look it up. So this is a dark book about a dark experience, and it's seen to the eyes of innocent people, right? These kids as they're watching this unfold now. This is this. I thought of this book as I was speaking with this vet because vets are our veterans that have served our country and helped us with our freedoms, have seen hard things, have gone through hard things. They've lost important people in their lives. One of the gentlemen I was talking to today, many of them in this room had lost limbs and were in wheelchairs and what have you. And these were young men, strong men who have given everything for us. And so it just made me think of some of the books I've read where characters have gone through hard things. Because I have never been to war. I've never had that terror in my life. And so there's not a lot I could offer this incredible hero other than to say, look, if there's something in you that you want to unlock, you're a great person to do that. You grab the pen and the paper and you just write for three pages, and eventually some of that trauma will come out. Some of the stuff you learned from your reading session that morning will come out. And I pretty much guarantee that at the end of three pages, you're going to learn something about yourself that will hopefully help you in a coping mechanism, bring you some joy or at least some clarity. So I hope this helps you today as you're trying to figure out how to get more from your books. I taught a class this morning on the art of deep reading, and somebody also asked this question, and I made the comment that simply to read the book is only the first step to reading a book deeply. Not every book is meant to be read deeply, by the way. Right. Most of them we can just read for entertainment and go, oh, that was nice. That was enjoyable. But every now and then, you'll come across a book that you really want to read deeply. Just like the veteran, he's got books in his life where he wants to pull those lessons out and actually do something with that information. Those books, the books you know, would just improve and change your life if you took them seriously. Those are the books we want to read deeply, and they're specific to you. Once you know what those books are, then you can sit down and begin this process. As you read, spend some time in the morning, give it 30 minutes and be with that book and read it. But then set the book down and do your morning pages for three pages. Just write about what you read, how it made you feel, what you learned, what scares you, what excites you, what brings you joy, what brings you passion, all of the things that make you human in relation to the work that you've just consumed. And you will begin to not only remember this work, but apply it in your life. All right, I hope you liked that. I hope it helped you. If so, leave me a comment down below. Don't forget to like and subscribe all that stuff that makes the YouTube channels work and the podcasts, all of that. Some of you have been leaving me testimonials in Apple podcasts as well as Spotify. I can't thank you enough. That is helping the podcast find new listeners. So if you haven't left to say a testimonial yet, please take the time to do that. All right, thanks. And as always, remember to read slowly, take notes, and apply the ideas. See you all next time. If you'd like to take your reading to the next level, then head on over to thereadwellpodcast.com there you'll find daily posts on how to read well. You'll also get access to all of my book notes and tools for becoming a better reader. And as always, don't forget to read slowly, take notes, apply the ideas. Thank you for listening to the Read well podcast.