Today, we’re going to talk about what happens when we tell ourselves stories to fill in the gaps that are unknown. Our mind is a powerful organ…the most powerful organ in our body arguably. In 2018, I wrote a book called Preach to Yourself that looks at the power of our mind and the disconnect between what our heads know to be true and what our hearts believe anyway. It’s half manifesto and half tool-box…and this episode is brought to you by that book —Preach to Yourself.

This week my second son Cooper came home from school and told me that his classmates are all a flutter about an epidemic called the coronavirus. Probably connected to the 5th grade hallway alarm—the headlines about the coronavirus are bolded and in all-caps in the news growing more strident by the day. This coronavirus sprang up in the Wuhan province of China—and it’s since infected 9800 people in China alone and allegedly caused  213 deaths so far. It’s since spread to Australia, Cambodia, Canada, France, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, the UK and US, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. As of today, Friday January 31, Delta and American airlines have grounded flights to and from China. It’s all a big, heightened deal in the news.

How we tell ourselves a less fearful, truer, and more compassionate story?

LINKS IN EPISODE:

1 . Preach to Yourself -- My book about how to fight the lies we believe. ($7.99 right now!)
2. Whose Shopping Recommendations Do You Actually Trust?
3. Why Can't More Than 4 People Converse at Once?
4. The First 997 Young Women at Auschwitz (WaPo)
5. Kent Brantly on NPR and where he is now