The following is a chapter-by-chapter review of Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) [Amazon] [The Nerdist]

This post will cover two chapters tonight. Both are short. Neither of which I can speak with any great insight on. However, Chris has experienced both of the topics intimately.

The first of the last two is about addiction. Chris speaks candidly on his podcast about his addiction. It’s something he overcame. While he is the first to insist that anyone with an addiction should seek help, he also reminds readers that there is more than one way to kick a destructive habit. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all treatment for addiction. For him, it took will, vanity, and a good therapist.

The second of the last chapters is about coping with success. I admit to having a couple of minor brushes with fame. There was the drama award I won in college and my ten seconds of fame on Japanese TV in 1992. What I do know is that success should be enjoyed. It can be fleeting. More importantly, success isn’t the actual goal. Success is just a pleasant side-effect of a life being well-lived. Chris, on the other hand, understands what sudden success feels like, especially for the unprepared. He knows how it takes a happy moment and turns it into a swirl of paranoia.

These last chapters close the Mind section of the book. Upcoming are the Body and Time sections. What’s interesting to me is that the mind is the least controllable of the three. Yet, without some awareness of the minds effect on our well-being, we have no hope of mastering the other two aspects. I think it will be worth it for me to re-read this section.

The following is a chapter-by-chapter review of Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) [Amazon] [The Nerdist]

I really didn’t make plain the overall format of the book in my first review, and you are probably sensing a trend in the chapters so far. So let me clear things up. Chris Hardwick has divided The Nerdist Way into three parts: Mind, Body, and Time. We are still in the first part. It’s important to work through this first part and spend time with it. With coming to terms with the motivations, demotivations, and outright traps in the mind, the other two parts of the book are pretty much useless.

Chris (I’m going to switch to the first name mostly because I feel that he would want you to feel like the book is a personal conversation with him) uses this chapter to help help with one of the most crippling things the mind can do to a person: throw the body into a panic attack. The previous chapters have dealt with all of the issues that can contribute to a panic attack. Chris even outlined a lot of tools to help mitigate the onset of an attack. Still, sometimes the mind will sneak in a solid punch and try to drop you.

I have had only one panic attack I can recall in my life. It is truly harrowing. For no apparent reason, the mind grasps a hold of thought and starts to whip it around in your skull. The next thing you know, your brain is stirred up into a tempest. Shortly after that, rational thought is out the window. The heart is racing and breathing is quick and shallow. You are looking for exits and/or crawl spaces. The problem is that your legs feel useless. For some, this is a regular occurrence with very predictable triggers. I have a hard time imagining living with this kind of condition. The once was enough for me.

While he reiterates the fact that he is not a therapist, Chris understands this condition well. At it’s very heart are emotions born deep in human ancestry. While humans have crawled to the top of the food chain, parts of us still have not crawled out of the mouse hole. Humans no longer fear predators. That doesn’t mean that our minds won’t concoct one for us every now and then.

A part of Chris’ definition for a Nerdist is a person’s capacity for deep focus on a given subject. It is this attention to the minutiae that sets a Nerdist apart from many other people. The drawback he points out is that this deep focus must have something to focus on otherwise it will turn inward. At that point, things can go wrong. Suddenly, the dull ache in a joint becomes arthritis. Next thing you know, you are making a trip to the doctors and expecting to hear that you have some fatal degenerative bone disease.

Stop. Breath. Use that big brain and attention to detail to truly evaluate your current state. Then relax. Panic attacks, it seems to me, happen most to those people that are the least prepared. Sure they have thought of every possible conclusion for that splinter in their finger, but they haven’t weighed the odds on any of those conclusions. Every last one has equal value. Eventually, the balanced weight of possibilities starts you spinning until things go out of control.

It’s funny, but life works a little better when things are not in balance. There is very little difference between a life that is constantly spinning and one that is standing still. Neither of them seem to be going in any particular direction. With properly weighed options, a life will find a direction to travel.

Chris writes:

So find a thing! Learn it, like it, live it. Give yourself the gift of options. (pg.58 hardback ed.)

I like to quote Curly (Jack Palance from City Slickers [IMDb]:

Do you know what the secret of life is?…This (holds up one finger)…One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.

Everything Chris lays out in the previous chapters is designed to help a person focus their attention on what’s really important, assign values to options available, and move forward. By honestly assessing the circumstances, our abilities, and the options available, it is possible to alleviate the effects of panic attacks, if not outright eliminate them.

The following is a chapter-by-chapter review of Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) [Amazon] [The Nerdist]

First, I need to drag Hardwick and his publishers out on the carpet. The Nerdist Way includes several links to various and sundry resources. This is a good use of new media and insures that Hardwick can keep his materials timely. If properly used, he could even include errata. That said, the companion website for this book, nerdist.com, is not up! What? C’mon! Examples not pictured in the book are supposed to be at the site. Sigh. I am crest fallen. Yay, verily I despair. Wah.

Why is the above important to me? Well, Hardwick describes some charting techniques that I am not quite picturing in my head. I’d like to see those charts. And just to be thorough, I am following the examples. I have started my Character Tome and began to outline my image for the life I want. When references in the book come up, I want to be sure that my attempts check against them. Hardwick! (w/ Col. Klink fist pump)

The previous chapter focused on dealing with an inner voice that says, “Skip the salad. Go for the Twinkie. You’ll be happier.” It seeks to undermine your goals by making you happier now. Tonight’s chapter focuses on the inner voice that seeks to undermine your goals by making you feel like those goals are out of your grasp and will always be. It poisons the apple.

Laziness, apathy, and quick rewards are pretty easy to correct compared to this inner voice. It’s like having Joan Crawford in your skull (youngsters, go look her up [Wikipedia]). We will beat ourselves up with unwarranted judgements and outlandish prophecies. Self-doubt is truly the most difficult monster a hero can face.

Hardwick provides several techniques for negotiating with, if not just outright silencing, that voice. Most useful is probably just writing out the undermining comments the inner voice says. It gives a chance to see concretely those statements that you are making about yourself. Better yet, you get to weig their value. See just how ridiculously hard on yourself that you are.

Once, the boogeyman at the back of your mind is thrown out into the light, it becomes shrinkingly small and easier than a rust monster to beat.

The following is a chapter-by-chapter review of Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) [Amazon] [The Nerdist]

The more I think about last night’s chapter, the more the idea is appealing to me to do something with it. Self-help books really aren’t my thing. So far though, Chris’ thinking matches some of my own. So, this weekend I am going to begin my own Character Tome. (My character name is still up for debate. Maybe Theodin?) I’ll add separate posts to track progress.

Tonight’s chapter is probably the most difficult one so far. It’s about defeating an enemy. It’s probably safe to say the whole book from this point is about defeating an enemy. It’s not apathy or forces beyond our ken. The enemy sleeps with us and stares us down every morning. This enemy is always with us. You got it. The enemy is us.

Facing this yellow bastard down is nothing but toil, but the rewards make legends. Hardwick doesn’t put the terms in quite so deep purple prose, but those are the stakes I think. Let’s face it, nothing worthwhile comes easy. Learning is struggle. Refining skills is struggle. Getting those skills in front of other people is struggle. Human’s live lives avoiding as much struggle as possible. We fall into patterns that are comfortable to us. Struggle is the opposite of comfort.

The reason we seek comfort is that comfort feels good now. We forget what accomplishment feels like. We forget that there are greater joys than comfort. Working for them is the only way to attain joy in accomplishment. But then again, TV and a bowl of chips is pretty good, too.

No. No. Off. Bad dog!

See what happens when we face big goals. We retreat into what’s comfortable now. To keep us there, the brain fills our heads with doubt and irrationalities.

Hardwick has some suggestions to help redirect the doubt and crack the irrationalities. I won’t spoil that for you. This chapter also begins to flesh out the form that the rest of the book will follow. Each section in this chapter is capped by a Characterize block. These blocks have suggested questions that you the reader should reflect on. Write them down in your Character Tome. See the weight of the responses on paper. Do the doubts and irrationalities make sense?

In the end, we get in our own way more than any outside force. Ironically, the one element we can claim to control is our minds.