Hello, everyone! This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert, and you are in for a treat. So, I’ve just made a connection with this gentleman but already my face is glowing, I’ve got a smile on my face, and my eyes are bright because he just has this really cool twist on things, that I think you’re really going to appreciate. So John Vespasian is an author of eight books about rational living. So what I love about him already is this idea of like just real down to earth. Like, bring it kind of energy, like let’s just open the dialogue up and get real with each other. Which is completely in alignment with what we do over here at Super Power experts. So we’re going to talk to him about some of these, but he has a nice little twist in the sense that he looks at history, and so you know one of the superpowers that we talk about a lot of the mutations and adaptations of what is going to be brought forward in this evolutionary shift. And he’s got a lot to say about that. And so we’re going to talk with him today about Super Powered Self Growth. It’s not what you think. So please join me in welcoming the show. Jon Vespasian. How are you John?
Very well Tonya thanks for having me on.
Absolutely so John’s out in the Netherlands, and he’s lived in Germany, in France, in a number of other places. And so it’s a big, big, big, thank you to you for staying up late to play with us today. I really appreciate it.
OK, thanks, Tonya.
Absolutely. So the very first question we’re going to ask you is what are your superpowers?
Transforming irritation into practical solutions.
Well, my superpowers we are speaking about; transitional mutation, my superpower. I would say that what I have achieved, whatever it is, what is little or a lot, is from transforming my irritation into a practical solution. And I’m a person who gets sometimes very, very, angry, very irritated when things don’t work. Instead of crying and railing what I try to do is to find the practical solutions. And this is the whole approach of my books to be very much solution oriented, very practical, not so much psychological. I prefer to choose approaches that do not require a lot of emotional energy.
They just say that. That don’t require a lot of emotional energy that’s perfect so. So let’s talk a little bit about limitations. So other than you know you gave us one example, so what are some other limitations that you’d rather grant yourself and transformed that you’ve seen other people deal with in your in your research?
Well, my main limitation on my constraint for many years has been Languages. Because for different reasons, I have to move and live in different countries so I have to learn new languages. And I tell you this can be quite a chore to learn German or to learn French. But through the years I’ve developed a method to do it relatively quickly and inexpensively because I have no choice. So, in the end, it turned out very well. But again, I transformed what for me was quite an irritation and quite constrained into a practical solution by trial and error. And in the end, it turned out very well. But this is as I say “my way of thinking”. Instead of complaining that people don’t speak English everywhere, well you have to learn French, that’s tough luck but otherwise, you will not make a lot of friends in France.
So where did all this come from? Like this desire to kind of see things differently. I know you talk a lot about how it’s you know, you feel like personal development based on the power of positive thinking is limited. Where did this come from for you?
Logic is an expression of rationality.
Well, it comes from the experience of having things fail on many occasions. Because I used to be, I mean I still am, but for many decades, I have been reading books about psychology, personal development, Philosophy. And I have to tell you, most of them are super impractical. I mean you read all the big ground ideas about the law of attraction, and positive thinking. And these kinds of stuff which sounds very, very nice, but when you have to face difficult problems. Dude, you don’t really get the prescription for solving those problems, you just get the sort of motivation, sometimes you try to cheer yourself up. But through the years I became very much disappointed. Or at least very much skeptical about these ideas, and I started to look for an alternative. And this is what actually prompted me to start writing books about rushing and living, which is a different approach to personal development. It’s an approach based on facts, based on history, and based on logic. So I have this different experience that has pushed me to write these books. I tell you out of dissatisfaction with the kind of books I could find in the market.
So define rational living for us.
It’s a very simple idea. The idea that you can do, you will do much better in life when you try to solve problems when you try to make decisions, by thinking things through, by taking a step back, and to trying to make a logical decision. So it’s a very simple idea. To implement this idea in practical terms is super difficult, because all human beings, we are all quite emotional, we tend to panic when we’re facing problems, we tend to become suggestible, we believe in advertising, what we see on TV we believe is true. I mean, we have this very emotional nature which is we’re very close to animals in a way. Unless you push yourself to be rational, to try to make good decisions, you will make a lot of mistakes. And the whole point of my books is to try to make my readers or myself a little bit more rational, because even if you get 1 percent or 2 percent more rational, in the long term, you will make a huge difference.
So when you talk about rational, you’re talking about maybe overriding the natural tendency to go into the emotional energy, or how closely is rationality linked to logic.
Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun.
I would say that logic is an expression of rationality, but rationality sometimes is just the habit of taking a few seconds before speaking. I mean could be little things that can prevent huge problems. Let me just give you an example from my books about what I mean by Irrationalities compare to Positive Thinking. One of my favorite historical characters is a man called Howard Carter who was a very famous archaeologist. The beginning of the 20th century he discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt, and he became very famous and very wealthy. And the story is fascinating because Carter who was British, he spent 10 years of his life making holes in the ground in Egypt. Egypt is very hot in the summer and the guy was Yes, I mean every day was the same. He just woke up, he made holes, he tried to find this tomb. And those 10 years he was running out of money as well. I mean he was really against the clock. Everybody was telling him that he was crazy, that he would never find anything, that what he was looking for a happy village. Centuries ago that he had no chance to find anything new. Because in the 20th century, the professors and the experts, everybody thought that whatever was to be found in Egypt was already found. And the question is how could this guy basically in isolation, stay motivated 40 years until he actually became successful at the very end of the day. Yet he was actually running out of money at the end, he became successful at the very last minute. How could he actually maintain his motivation, his system, his structure for such a long time? I found the story fascinating and I look into the details. And I came with an explanation that I found very surprising. Look, Carter was not a very intellectual person because he never went to school. I mean he went to school I think like two years of his life. He never went to university. Everything he learned, he learned on his own. But eventually, he was very much focused. He learned to read the ancient Egyptians, the hieroglyphics the ancient Egyptian language. And he actually checked the sources. I also got to check different inscriptions on the temples, and he figured out that they were pointing to a certain tomb to have to be in that area. He checked different sources. He was the only one who actually checked because nobody bothered to learn the ancient Egyptian. He said, “it has to be here, I checked the sources”. When everybody was laughing at him, he would go back and check the sources and say “No, everybody is wrong, the sources are clear, it has to be here”. So he made a plan for excavations. He distributed the space in little squares and he made a hole every 10 meters. And eventually, he found what he was looking for. And he became extremely wealthy, and extremely famous. And this is the total opposite of positive thinking. Because Carter was not optimistic, he was not a very warm personality. He was a very modest and very quiet person, but he was very logical. He was very much persistent, very much focused. And this is the kind of philosophy that I think is very easy to follow because it doesn’t require you to be super motivated, it doesn’t require you to be super cheerful, the only thing that requires you is really to be organized, to be disciplined, to focus on the facts, and I think is the easiest, the easiest way to success.
So I replay a little bit of a devil’s advocate here, because one of, so the story you just shared about Carter, wouldn’t you say that part of what pushed him through those three years isn’t just the organization, but also the drive. And then where does that drive come from if not from motivation right?
Well obviously he has some motivation, but what I mean is that the motivation was based on facts. Because Carter, I mean he didn’t have a personal fortune. He was certainly not wealthy. The only way he had to finance his excavations was to get a sponsor; people he went to the United Kingdom. He talked to different people and finally he found an investor and they agreed to split 50/50. Whatever they found, he had to actually to keep sending reports to his investor who got also very nervous. And then he pulled the clock at the very last minute, Carter found what he was looking for. But the mundane the motivation by looking at the facts. Because you cannot imagine the kind of negative criticism he got. I mean he was really crucified by the newspapers, by the professor, everybody was laughing at him. He was really a very pathetic figure. Until he became successful and then, of course, he was on top of the world.
Right of course. And that makes sense to me. So you’re really talking about the practical application of steps that move you in a direction that’s for that rational piece comes in, correct?
Yeah. And I have read hundreds of examples in my books because the books basically they are compilations of biographies, a compilation of stories, that I found very interesting because they teach a lesson either for the positive or for the negative. I also have many stories of people who became extremely unsuccessful because they became very irrational. And yes, just to mention briefly one of the stories. Look I devoted one of the chapters of one of the latest book to the American chess player Bobby Fischer, who was a world champion in the 1970s. He was super famous, super wealthy, a very hard working guy because he actually quit school, he played chess for like 10 hours a day, and he became extremely good. And when he was on top of the world because he became world champion by beating the Russian champion, he went back to the U.S. He was on the on the cover page of all magazines, he was on TV all the time, and he was really making a good career. And He destroyed everything within a couple of years. I mean he made such an emotional mistake and such a stupid mistake that it’s impossible to believe. I mean when you read his biography, say how is it possible that this guy did? Because he was a chess player. He in principle, he was very logical. And he started to fight with the world chess federation about the rules for the next championship, it was a discussion a stupid discussion about points or something. He became so stubborn and so arrogant, that actually he didn’t want to play with anybody else. In the end, he went to play in Serbia when there was a U.S. embargo against Serbia. He went to the FBI, put it on the list of the wanted person, he was arrested at the airport in Japan, he was going to be extradited to the U.S., I mean it was really a horrible story for one of the most talented chess players in history. And I re-analyzed the story in the book because I found it so fascinating, that such a logical personality became so completely emotional; basically destroyed his life. So this is the kind of stories that I find very intriguing because we can learn a lot from other people’s mistakes.
Learn more about John Vespasian here: johnvespasian.blogspot.com
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