An Excellent Wknd [26.14]
Some thoughts on listening & perspective
Happy Saturday, my friends!
Here’s hoping your weekend is filled with sunshine and rainbows and high fives and chest bumps.
Let’s get into it.
WHAT THEY SAID VS. WHAT YOU HEARD
Someone asks a simple question. Five words, maybe six. And somehow, by the time those words land, we’ve turned them into an indictment.
That’s less paranoia and more just how we’re wired.
Author David Brooks, in How to Know a Person, points out something humbling: even the very best listeners in the world — people who have spent their lives learning how to truly hear others — misunderstand what’s being said about 50% of the time. For the rest of us? We’re only accurately understanding about 35% of what someone communicates.
Which means the other 65%? We fill in ourselves.
And we rarely fill it in generously.
When someone we love asks if we’ve been working out, for example, we don’t just hear the question. We hear the subtext we’ve written for them — the judgment, the expectation, the implication that we’re falling short. We take their words and wrap them in our own insecurities until the original message is barely recognizable.
But here’s worth saying over and over: the story running in our heads is almost always louder than the one the other person is actually telling.
That doesn’t mean every question is innocent. Context matters. Tone matters. History matters. But before we react to the story we’ve constructed, it’s worth pausing long enough to ask whether it’s actually true.
Most of the time, we’re not responding to what they said.
We’re responding to what we decided it meant.
We’re in the midst of relaunching the Chase Club this month with some real structure: Daily Chase essays Monday to Thursday, a monthly 21-day challenge, and a Friday chat club to keep the work alive (plus ongoing access to the ChaseTracker app).
Right now it’s just $8/month or $80/year.
In May, we’re raising the prices — but current members will stay where they’re at. In other words, if you’ve been on the fence about joining, April is the window.
This is where the crew will be doing the daily work.
Come do it with us.
🎧 The 10-Point Drift Diagnosis: Modern Life Is Like a Lazy River
Exploring how modern life pulls you off course like a lazy river — and the 10 countermeasures to fight back.
🎧 The Most Important Question to Ask Your Kid Before Bed
A bonus episode about how a simple wins journal can help your kids build confidence — and the book that came out of it.
❤️🔥 The Daily Chase
Brief, focused essays delivered each weekday morning to Chase Club members.
#229: Lift Less, Get Stronger
On Monday, we’re working through nine specific distractions that are quietly keeping you from health, happiness, and a heart on fire — and how to recognize which ones have been running your life without your permission.
Then on Thursday, we’re digging into a Chase Club member’s question about what you’re actually hiring a coach for. The answer might surprise you: it’s not the program, the plan, or even the accountability. It’s a view of yourself you simply can’t get on your own.
🤙🏼 Patrick
P.S. Got a 5-Factors question for Ben? Starting this month, we’re bringing back listener questions to the main feed - and we’d love to hear from you. Please submit your questions here!