When I first read This Book Will Make You Dangerous by Tripp Lanier, I owned and operated a mechanic shop making $40k a week. I was burnt out, living in opposition to my values, and felt thoroughly trapped by the success I had created. When people asked me what I did for a living, I would say, “I polish turds.” I had some unconscious expectations that the success of my business would set me free and bring me peace of mind.
My initial reaction to This Book was meh. The title was very underwhelming to me, and initially the content was too. I had been listening to Tripp’s podcast, The New Man, for about two years and it had a profound impact on my life. Like the anticipation for Metallica’s Load album, I had nearly superhuman expectations of what the release would deliver. Unlike the Load album, I have found myself coming back time and time again. Three years and three reads later, I realize the lessons in it have completely transformed my life. This is a book about success that stands against the blinders on, grind-yourself-to-a-pulp culture prevalent today.
Tripp Lanier is a professional coach. After reading the book I reached out to him and we worked together 1-on-1. His work has inspired me to be a professional coach as well.
From the bio on his website: “Since 2005, he has spent thousands of hours coaching people all around the world to get out of the rat race, become an authority in their field, and make a great living doing the work they were put on this earth to do. Over the years he’s designed several businesses to support a simple lifestyle focused on freedom, ease, meaning, and fun.”
The introduction to the book has a brilliant lesson about unreal expectations. A doctor gets angry over sticking his fingers in the author’s rectum and finding feces. Unrealistic expectations set us up for misery. It also sets the tone for the rest of the book - playful, at times juvenile, but with deep shit being extracted from the toilet humor.
From Fear Based Outcomes to Experiences
The first chapter of the book explores how success can make us weak. We tend to make fear-based choices that are designed to protect what we already have, please the people around us to avoid discomfort in our relationships, or to prove to others or ourselves that we are enough.
This is where I was when I first read the book. My business goals were to get a 5-star review from every customer and generate ever increasing weekly incomes. I would panic when things would go wrong, and things inevitably go wrong every single day. I had a fear that displeasing customers would bring the whole thing crumbling down around me. My need to prove I was the best mechanic ever left me an anxious mess. Fear ran the show.
“We may like to believe that we’re living rational, purposeful lives, but most of the time, our unconscious fears, defenses, and desires to belong are driving most of the choices we make. Like a PR rep for some evil corporation, we’re just really good at making up “logical” justifications for our fear-based choices after the fact.” Most of the success literature I read up to that point helped me to justify the grind.
Even though I was reaching my goals, first $10k, then $20k, $30k, and finally $40k weeks, I was not creating what I truly desired in my life. I constantly felt like something was missing. I was just trying to survive. “But when we’re habituated to struggle and strive, we simply run, run, run.” I didn’t link my goals to what I truly wanted in my life. I just kept creating new larger goals thinking that would finally set me free.
“Whether we realize it or not, these external, measurable outcomes all point to the internal, subjective experiences or feelings that we most want to have in our lives.” How do we know we are successful? By connecting the outcomes to the experience and feelings they create.
There are few things in my life that I truly wish I would have had earlier. Tripp's idea that goals represent the brain's theory on how to shape experiences might have spared me a decade of my life.
Enter FAPL or FLAP or FALP or Whatever
The concept goes like this – our brain comes up with outcome goals – I want millions of dollars; I want to start a business or foundation; I want millions of followers; I want a mate in every city. These outcome goals are merely indicators of what feelings or experiences we want to create.
When I personally worked with Tripp, we devised a mental model where we installed four gauges on my chest to determine what I wanted when I was feeling discontent. These gauges were Freedom, Aliveness, Peace, and Love. This idea is covered in the book and in his podcast with greater depth.
Freedom is the state of mind between being trapped and having options or opportunities. It is a state of mind. “I’m free to do what I want even if it feels uncomfortable, risky, or might make me look like an idiot. I don’t have to let my need to protect or please or prove stop me from doing what I want to do.”
Aliveness is a range between boredom and feeling deeply present. “This can be such a powerful experience that we are often rewarded with a sense of knowing, Yes! This is why I’m on the planet!”
Peace is a range between being stressed and contentment. “Peace points towards a state of inner well-being and equanimity. It’s a calm that naturally arises when we aren’t eclipsed by fear or insecurity. Fulfillment, contentment, and wholeness are all words sometimes used to point to this experience of peace. We allow peace into our lives when we aren’t running away from our challenges.”
Love is the range between isolated and connected. “The truth is that love and connection can only thrive if we’re willing to drop the protecting and pleasing and proving we do in order to feel safe. Love requires accessibility, it requires us to drop the masks and armor and the “I’ve got it all together” façade so that we can simply be who we are with each other. And if we’re willing to do this, then we may discover that — more than comfort — love in all of its various forms is what we ultimately want to experience in this lifetime.”
Action, Resistance, Self-Sabotage
The second half of the book is about overcoming resistance and taking bold action while navigating self-sabotaging behavior. I will gloss over some key concepts for brevity. Following are a few highlights from my life that show how taking responsibility, playing, and leaning into fear have shown up.
We start with defining what we want, then taking responsibility for acting on it. When we are babies, we whine and cry until someone discovers what is wrong with us, for us, and then they take responsibility for taking care of us. Many of us continue this behavior well into adulthood. I know I did, just ask my wife. I told her she needed to tell me why I was so upset emotionally in a fight we had once. Whaa! Whaa! How embarrassing that my discontent and emotional immaturity about my business bled over into personal life. Thanks to Tripp’s work, I take responsibility for my own emotions and communicate openly.
My favorite part of taking action now is play. “Sri Sri Sri Spankneesh Ji once said in his thick, eastern Indian accent: “Listen to me. We cannot take this life so seriously, and I mean that seriously. Life is too serious to be taken seriously.” Humor and laughter are essential to our ability to lighten up, forgive ourselves when we screw up, and remember that it’s really not that big of a deal.” I set business metrics to have fun now, like a game, rather than as reflection of my own value.
There are significant sections in the book about leaning into our fear. I leaned into my fear to coach Crossfit classes, despite being introverted and so terrible I was cussed out twice when I started. I didn’t quit though. I consistently become better at it through persistence, and that confidence is building elsewhere as well. Now, I find myself publishing writing online, even though my current level of skill is mediocre at best. I know that things will not stay this way, and the only way to improve is to take action.
Criticisms
I found two reasons for my original distaste of the book.
For one, I would love to see more examples of what kind of experiences and memories Tripp has created both in his own life and in the lives of his clients. I want to know the down-and-dirty, gritty stuff they had to go through to make it happen. His authenticity is surface level, just enough disclosed so you say “oh, me too,” without actually going into any real life detail.
I want to know more about what is available to us when we step outside our comfort zone and take action on the principles in the book. What does life look like when we refuse to play small? Show us Tripp, don’t tell us.
The other peeve for me was the consistent use of conjunctions and prepositional phrases to start sentences. I find it makes writing more difficult to read and absorb when there are too many filler words. This is not a problem when you are in the author’s primary domain of audio and conversation. The audiobook is my preferred format for this book.
In Conclusion
In 2020, I started to redesign that mechanic business to get more freedom and started changing myself to get more peace that I so desperately craved. Unfortunately, a hurricane wiped out the business before any changes took place. Today I am building a coaching practice that aligns with my deepest values of being in service, traveling the nation, and creating great memories with people I love. I laugh more often. I joke around and let my inner child loose more often, even at risk to my personal image. I have created more experiences and memories worth talking about in the last three years than in the previous twenty. I have a Google photo storage problem to prove it.
I want this for you as well, reader. I want you to stop accepting life as it is, step into your power, and truly live this short life we have – especially when it feels a little dangerous.
All quotes from: Lanier, Tripp. This Book Will Make You Dangerous: The Irreverent Guide For Men Who Refuse to Settle. Lanier Creative Services, Inc. Kindle Edition.
Let’s chat!
Email me: Lee@LeeASmart.com
Thanks for reading! I greatly appreciate you!
Lee Aaron Smart
Professional Coach
A link to Tripp: https://www.thenewmanpodcast.com/2020/05/this-book-will-make-you-dangerous-tripp-lanier/