On today’s show, Chris Cox Au.D., and Riley Bass Au.D. become bookworms! Beyond Positive Thinking by Robert Anthony is required reading at Audigy, and Chris and Riley give you their notes on this truly impactful book. This is the start of a 4 part series so make sure to listen to all 4 parts!
Listen to the Episode Below
Read the transcript:
CHRIS COX: Riley?
RILEY BASS: Chris?
CHRIS COX: You ready?
RILEY BASS: I’m always ready.
CHRIS COX: We can do this.
RILEY BASS: I was born ready.
CHRIS COX: I believe in you. You can do this. We can do this.
RILEY BASS: We can do this together.
CHRIS COX: We can do this together. Hi guys. Welcome back. We believe– we have such positive thinking going on right now that we can do this. Whatever is about to happen, we believe that you can do it also.
RILEY BASS: Absolutely. I totally didn’t realize we were already recording, and I thought we were just having a conversation about being ready to record.
CHRIS COX: That’s just how we are.
RILEY BASS: I didn’t realize that you were like, are you ready for life?
CHRIS COX: No, are you ready for this?
RILEY BASS: I am ready both to record and for life.
CHRIS COX: Good.
RILEY BASS: So double ready.
CHRIS COX: Double ready, how about triple ready?
RILEY BASS: Triple double stamp.
CHRIS COX: [LAUGHING] Look. I am excited because we get to talk about something that you and I have been discussing for several years now.
RILEY BASS: Donuts?
CHRIS COX: Let’s move away from the donuts.
RILEY BASS: [LAUGHING]
CHRIS COX: It’s getting to be an old stick now, isn’t it?
RILEY BASS: [LAUGHING]
CHRIS COX: Although donuts are very delicious. We are actually going to look at a book for this episode, next episode, maybe episode after that, maybe another episode beyond that. It depends on how much we talk. Our fine producer Will here is going to just take our words and whatever we’re talking about, spice them up, and make them make sense into a couple of episodes, like he usually does.
RILEY BASS: It’s a huge job for him to do that. He’s way under paid for having to deal with Chris and I on a regular basis.
CHRIS COX: And I quit tipping him a long time ago. I probably should tip him some more now. We’re going to go through a book. And some of you may have heard of this one, some of you may have not. But it’s one that we here within this company– it’s almost required reading.
RILEY BASS: Beyond Positive Thinking by Robert Anthony is, like Chris said, one of the keystone books here at Audigy. It’s something that every new employee receives a copy of it. And it’s something that is quoted very frequently around the office and in our day to day lives.
CHRIS COX: So we want to bring it to you guys in a way that’s easily digestible and pertinent to you as a young professional. And when we look at this, I mean, we’re definitely not the definitive authorities on this. Of course, Robert Anthony, the author of this, he’s done a lot of this sort of discussion and research and so forth, therefore putting this book together.
All we’re here to do it mainly shine a light on it and hopefully have you investigate it further and get you thinking along these lines that life is more than just positive thinking. Positive thinking and thinking positively about things around you is important. But we’ve got to go beyond that, right?
RILEY BASS: You have to go extra positive.
CHRIS COX: You’ve got to go positive and then beyond.
RILEY BASS: And we know that especially when you’re still in school, reading books for leisure purposes is difficult, especially with the load of homework and everything that is going on. So we know that that’s something that a lot of students say, I really want to read these books that are going to help me professionally, but I just don’t have time.
So hopefully you have time to listen to a 20 minute podcast, and we will give you guys the synopsis of what you would learn from this book.
CHRIS COX: All right. So let’s get into this, Riley.
RILEY BASS: We are going to try and get Robert Anthony on the podcast at some point.
CHRIS COX: We just decided this.
RILEY BASS: Yeah. Robert, if you’re listening, let us know and we would love to record with you. So hit us up. Tweet us at the Twitter.
CHRIS COX: Any Twitter works, really.
RILEY BASS: Any Twitter. Just put it anywhere
CHRIS COX: Just put it on Twitter. We’ll seek it out and find it. The main thing, Chapter 1– the starting point of making permanent and lasting changes in your life begins with understanding the difference between positive thinking, negative thinking, and right thinking. So what’s the difference between that?
RILEY BASS: It’s really knowing the difference in how thinking positively, thinking negatively, and knowing that middle area, how each one of those is going to affect you and how you can successfully navigate through each one of those. It always makes you think of that picture you see on the internet where the optimist has the glass half full, the pessimist has the glass half empty, and the realist is just standing there actually drinking the water.
CHRIS COX: That’s a good visual. And the example that the book uses is someone sitting down at the piano to play. Now, you can believe that you can play the piano like Beethoven. But if you’ve never practiced or you don’t understand music, it’s going to be pretty dang tough to actually play something that is coherent, much less pleasant.
So the idea is you can think positive about things, but you also have to understand the laws that are out there that are affecting the way that everyone lives. Those laws are like the law of gravity, the law of–
RILEY BASS: Motion.
CHRIS COX: –motion. Is that a law, motion?
RILEY BASS: It’s one of those really rare cases where unless you’re like a total anomaly, you can’t just sit down and play the piano. Of course, there’s those three-year-olds that can do that. But I’m not like that. I’ve been trying to be like that for years, and I’m not.
CHRIS COX: It’s probably because you’re not three years old anymore. You missed the window.
RILEY BASS: Well, you think I would get better with time.
CHRIS COX: You have to practice. You have to practice. That’s the thing. You don’t practice, I don’t think.
RILEY BASS: I don’t want to practice. I just want to sit down and just be excellent at it, you know?
CHRIS COX: So there you go. You’ve got this idea of wanting to do something, you have a positive idea of it. But you’ve got to go beyond that. You’ve got to think about– you have to have the knowledge and information around how a certain system works. So like playing that piano, you have to understand music theory.
You have to understand how the piano keys are laid out. And once you understand that and are able to master that, then you can sit down and start playing some Beethoven.
RILEY BASS: Right. And our experiences lead us to believe one way or another about ourselves. If we let ourselves believe that we’re never going to learn how to play the piano because we didn’t just sit down and start playing Beethoven, then we’re never going to get over that mindset that we can’t.
But if you have the mindset that I can learn this, I can do this, and you set those plans into action and you set yourself moving in the right direction, there’s no one dictating what you can or can’t do. All of your limitations are set by yourself. It’s like you see the guy with one like run a marathon, or the guy that’s 104 run a marathon.
You see all these things happen and you’re like, I could never run a marathon. But these people are doing it. Because no one’s telling them that they can’t do it.
CHRIS COX: And that’s huge when it comes to us as professionals. If I was in eighth grade, I would look at my current self and say, there is no way that you could have made it through all of that schooling– eight years, nine years, 10 years after whenever I’m thinking about it– of schooling it to do what you’re doing now– podcasting.
And I would have been in disbelief. And even back then, I remember thinking, I’m going to go to college. But that may be it, and I may not make it all the way through that.
RILEY BASS: You were forecasting yourself to be a college dropout when you were in middle school?
CHRIS COX: Yeah. At least it wasn’t a high school drop out that I was forecasting to be.
RILEY BASS: I mean, the only barrier set on you is the one you set on yourself. So way to overcome that barrier–
CHRIS COX: Thank you, thank you.
RILEY BASS: –graduate college. I’m really proud of you, Chris.
CHRIS COX: I appreciate that.
RILEY BASS: Defied the odds.
CHRIS COX: I’m the first one in my family to do that. I’m just kidding. Everyone in my family graduated college. Chapter one is introducing this idea of the belief in Positive Thinking, but also understanding that there is a system underlying all of it. And you have to be able to master that system and understand it to be able to see the positive results that you’re looking for.
You can’t just be ignorant to the world around and hope to succeed.
RILEY BASS: The thing about positive thinking is that a choice. You choose to think positively or you choose to think negatively. When you stop realizing and looking at what has happened up to that point, then you’re able to make that choice where you want to go moving forward.
We feel like we’re constantly in a state of waiting where we’re always waiting for the next thing, waiting to lose weight, waiting to be happier, waiting to be wealthier. We’re always waiting for when that time is going to be right. I mean, how many people have said, I can’t start my diet until Monday?
Because heaven forbid you start it on Thursday. It’s always one of those things where it’s always just one step away. And you have to realize that you’re doing that and consciously make the choice. Right now is when I’m going to change these habits to become or to achieve what I want to achieve.
CHRIS COX: And everyone out there that’s listening has achieved something. And you’ve most likely done it conscientiously. You haven’t just stumbled upon the success or achievement. You’ve prepared yourself for it. And a lot of the times– and what you’re talking about there, Riley– is that we’re conditioned by our past and what we’ve been taught and what we’ve learned and experienced ourselves.
And that certainly affects our actions from now on. For instance, my family is a very well-educated family. And I was expected to go to college from the time I was younger. I was expected to go to college. I knew I needed to go to college. That’s just what the family did. That’s what we all did.
And so for me, the whole college idea was I’ve got to go. Now, whether I succeed or not, that’s a different story. But I’ve got to go to college. And there’s no question about it. But there are plenty of other families out there who don’t believe in that, who have molded and discussed with their children that college is not a necessity.
And they don’t have to go, because none of them went. And so it’s just kind of a waste. That person making the decision, then, to go to college, isn’t as automatic as mine was where I am expected to go to college. I always knew I had to go to college. I’m going to college.
Those people have to make that conscious effort to step out of the norm and make a change and go to college and get a degree. So we have to make that choice, like you said. And that choice begins when we stop identifying with your conditioned patterns of the past, as the book calls it.
And Riley, I like what you said about waiting. You’re right. We all wait to do things, and things never get done then. The common one is with weight, but sometimes it’s other things like a paper that we’re supposed to turn in.
RILEY BASS: Were you a procrastinator?
CHRIS COX: No way. I got all my papers done.
RILEY BASS: So I was quite the procrastinator all through school, and maybe still am just a little bit of a procrastinator. And it used to be writing papers. It’s now when I have company coming over to my house, I wait till the last minute. And I’m trying to run the vacuum and dust the furniture at the same time and make sure everything’s done, when I could just be keeping up with things all along.
CHRIS COX: That procrastination does keep us from moving on and doing what we should be doing. Instead, we just like to be in our rut and we’re content sometimes, until something happens in the rut that forces us to make that change.
RILEY BASS: I blame Netflix.
CHRIS COX: This book shows us that we have to go beyond that. We have to believe in what we’re doing and our goals and take action to make that change. So how does this relate to those of us in the hearing health care field?
RILEY BASS: Did you ever get stressed out when you were in audiology school?
CHRIS COX: No. I was a pretty cool cucumber back then.
RILEY BASS: I knew you were not going to work into that for me.
CHRIS COX: I’m sorry.
RILEY BASS: Let me ask you again.
CHRIS COX: Let me ask you.
RILEY BASS: Fine, OK.
CHRIS COX: Did you ever get stressed out in audiology school?
RILEY BASS: Yes.
CHRIS COX: OK. I did, too. Really, honestly, I did.
RILEY BASS: It’s stressful. There’s a lot of assignments. There’s a lot of reading. There’s a lot of material. And especially early on when the graduation date seems so far off, it’s so easy to think, I’m never going to get through this. I’m going to be trapped in this forever.
Especially if you go straight from undergrad into graduate school, it’s just like, am I ever going to get out of a classroom in my whole life?
CHRIS COX: It just seems like such a long haul there.
RILEY BASS: It is.
CHRIS COX: Then you get to your fourth year, and you’re like, oh my gosh, it went by fast.
RILEY BASS: You get to that light at the end of the tunnel as you’re approaching graduation, and you look back, and it seems like it went by so fast. But there’s definitely those times where you think, I am trapped here forever and I’m never going to get out of this. And that’s a negative way to think.
CHRIS COX: It is a negative way to think, and it can limit the way that you make it through your task. Sometimes that belief or the disbelief in being able to do something creates a reality for yourself. And then that dictates what happens after that. Sometimes our beliefs– good or bad, or right or wrong– really give us the wrong idea of what we’re able to do in the future.
RILEY BASS: One of the things that I hear a lot in all of my conversations I have with AED students and new graduates– and it’s continuous, no matter first year, second year, third year, fourth year– I asked students what they’re interested in doing in five or 10 years after they graduate.
And a lot of them say, I would love to own my own practice someday, but I’m just scared it’s going to fail. And I’m scared I don’t know what I’m doing. And I always ask them, why? Why would you be scared of that? What’s holding you back? What are you waiting to change your belief that you know that you could do this?
There’s been a lot of successful private practitioners out there, and a lot of them don’t have a business degree. A lot of them have had to tough it out and learn to do it the hard way, basically. And they’ve managed to do it. So what’s saying that you can’t?
CHRIS COX: Yeah. And the greatest part about that is that they’re willing to take somebody who isn’t experienced and teach them all the things they’ve learned over the past 20, 30, 40 years to make it easier for them to be successful in a business. And maybe even their business.
Someone might take a young professional in and say, you know what, I want to teach everything I know. And when we’re done, you can have first choice of my business. And they get to retire and the new professional gets to come in and learn a ton, do it quicker than the business owner did it, and get a business out of it.
It reduces that huge risk of just jumping in and starting something on your own. But there are people out there that would rather start something on their own– clean slate– and build it from the ground up. Either way is perfectly fine, and we see it happen all the time.
But you’re right, that whole belief that, oh my gosh, how do I go from where I am now to owning a business? And a lot of that has to do with changing the belief that it’s going to be insurmountable.
RILEY BASS: Right.
CHRIS COX: It’s going to be something that they’re going to have to make a conscious effort to change the belief in their future.
RILEY BASS: And I get it. It’s a scary thought. And I know that when I was in audiology school, I was scared to think about owning a business some day. I have been educated and informed and I have decided to make the choice that I know if that’s what I wanted to do, I could do that.
I obviously made the choice to be doing these podcasts and working with students and telling–
CHRIS COX: Good choice.
RILEY BASS: –and telling you guys to make the choice. But I am confident that if the day comes where I make the decision that I want to own my own business and I want to open my own practice, I know I could do it. I know it’s going to be tough. I know there’s going to be challenges. But I’m confident that I could do it.
CHRIS COX: I believe you can do it, too, Riley.
RILEY BASS: Thanks, Chris. I believe you could do it, too.
CHRIS COX: I don’t know.
RILEY BASS: Maybe.
CHRIS COX: Maybe. But there’s a lot of the people that we talk with, the businesses owners that we talk to all the time, and many of them started their business out of necessity. Something happened in their career where they just they had to move into doing business on their own, whether they were working with an ENT in a small town and that ENT closed down and moved out, and they didn’t want to move anywhere.
Well, their decision was either I’ve got to move out of this small town, or I can start my own business and stay here. And that’s one of many, many stories like that where you just have to do it out of necessity. And that is where that big major change in the belief happens for some people.
Because you have to do it. And the world, the universe gives you this choice to do one thing or the other. And it gets you out of that rut, gets you out of that comfort zone. And you are then forced to make that decision. Some people can do that without the major life changing event, but a lot of the times, it’s that big change that makes them do the things that are a little more risky.
RILEY BASS: Right.
CHRIS COX: So another thing with some of our listeners that are new professionals, a lot of the times, they’re sitting in wherever they are, maybe not owning a business, maybe not even in a private practice, but wondering what does the future look like for us as audiologists.
Are we doomed? There’s are a lot of talk out there, especially recently, about what does the future of audiology look like? Especially when it comes to the over-the-counter stuff and third party billing and all of that, which I hope we were planning on doing an episode on that here coming soon. As long as the weather doesn’t keep us from doing that again.
RILEY BASS: Right. We’ve been snowed out for a few days.
CHRIS COX: So we hope to get into that a little more in depth. But there is a lot of this talk out there. A lot of it is negative. A lot of it is hand-wringing. And for those of us who are new to this whole thing, we don’t really know what to think or what our positions are, and what all of these implications are for our profession.
So I think for us, it’s a matter of understanding the system. Like we were talking about with the piano. We have to understand what are we working within, what are our choices, and how do we make change in our profession to move it forward and make it the ultimate profession for hearing health care?
[MUSIC PLAYING]RILEY BASS: So we are so happy to be sharing Beyond Positive Thinking with you, our podcast listeners. Obviously it’s really important to us, and we’re so happy that we can share it with you. We think it’s exceptionally pertinent to students where you are right now in your career.
It’s just very important to keep your thinking positive and keep moving in the direction that’s going to help you best achieve your goals and make an impact on your community.
CHRIS COX: So thank you for listening.
RILEY BASS: Yeah. We’ll see you for part two.