Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking
Written and Narrated By: Jon Acuff
Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
Can’t help it; I just love Jon (Are We On A First-Name Basis Yet?) Acuff!!!
Dude, what can I say? If you’re looking for a MASsively in-depth Nonfiction-y kinda treatise, run, run like the wind AWAY from Soundtracks. Nope, not gonna get it.
What you WILL get is a 5-hour motivational speech from one of the funnest motivational speakers there is out there. All of Jon’s trademark self-deprecating humor is within from Epigraph to Bonus Ending (At least if you Pre-Ordered it, you’ll get the Bonus… but I can’t see it being denied if you didn’t…).
This starts off with the aforementioned epigraph of Jon’s wife Jenny asking if he miiiiiightn’t be overthinking things a bit. As do we all. Apparently, a survey of 10,000 people said that 99.5% of us groaned that we’re guilty of overthinking things, staying stagnant, remaining in ruts, too scared to move, self-defeating, self-defeating, KILLing ourselves with our negative thoughts.
Enter Jon the Spaz Acuff to our rescue. Seriously, I’ve listened to everything of Jon’s and have loved it all, so I feel I can dub him Spaz if I want to. Because, you see, the man starts stuff, and boy does he get sidetracked, or what? I Subscribed to a podcast he did aaaages ago and it was, like, six episodes before he got all interested in something else and left it all to wither on the vine. Started Feb. 2018? Yup, and ended by Apr. of the same year. And if you’ve listened to any of his other works, you’ll see that the man is Of Big Ideas, but then his life gets in the way. I’ve heard him, have witnessed what he’s done, seen him rabbiting off to the next big thing, and when I started this audiobook, I just HAD to Google his wife, Jenny. If you’re new to Jon’s work, lemme just tell ya: The woman is a saint!
So what we have here is Jon’s experience over the past 13 years of how he’s gone from Cog in the System to Bestseller and Motivational Speaker Extraordinaire. He STOPPED thinking: I can’t do it, and he flipped it to: Maaaaaybe I can. In this audiobook, he gives us the strategies to stop our excessive negative thoughts (Remove), shows us how to revamp and restock with positive thoughts (Replace), and continue to implement these strategies in our day-to-day lives (Repeat). Basically, that’s it in a nutshell: Remove, Replace, Repeat. For FIVE hours.
Can this be tedious and too much? I dare say, it's not. Cuz this is like sitting in the audience to a really funny, really goofy man, telling us of how he researched this and of how he’s worked it into his own life after being such a kinda sorta failure for some time. The first 33-years of his life? Nope. The past 11? NAILED it with seven books, being on the public speaking circuit, and raising two daughters who are healthy and happy despite his spazzing every now and then (There’s ALWAYS Jenny to pull him back from the brink and point out just why what he’s doing is NOT helpful!).
He picks pieces from those who’ve traveled the way before, heavily admires Zig Ziglar, offers ways to make our new thoughts more concrete and shows how new positive thoughts should imMEDiately be followed by actions to make them stick. Put it all on Repeat, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a new point of view, a new way of looking at the world. Yeh yeh yeh, I’ve been in therapy (NATurally!) for a gazillion (And six!) years, so this is something that has been slooowly pounded into my head, tho’ the ever-patient Sara calls it “reframing”. But it still sounds new when I listen to Jon, and it certainly sounds funnier when he says it (No disrespect to Sara). No this ‘tain’t as funny or as comprehensive as, say, Kevin Hart’s The Decision, but it certainly is a great addition to a person’s Self-Development Library.
Plus, as an audiobook, it has all the Asides that aren’t in the print version. Jon WILL talk, and he MIGHT talk your ear off, but that’s what makes the audiobook such great fun. I do so like being the beneficiary of the offhand thoughts, the rabbit holes he goes down, the extra thoughts he might have on a subject, all as conveyed by one quirky, quirky dude.
I’m getting older, and this Pandemic Year Off has me thinking about what I reeeeeally wanna do with the years (God willing) I have left to me. I simply don’t have the time to keep the self-defeating and fearful thoughts running through my head; I’m delighted to have my continuing journey through The Land of Reframing reinforced with this barely 5-hour Listen.
O Jon, Jon—can’t wait to hear what you get up to Next!
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