460: Restoring Reason! (with Dr. Travis Corcoran)

Brian Nichols  
faced with an uncertain future many business owners and technology professionals don't have time needed to invest in their business technology strategies and as a result are afraid of their technology getting outdated and putting their company and customers information at risk. The digital future is already here. But with all different choices in the marketplace, it's difficult to know which one will be the best fit for you and your strategic vision. Imagine having the peace of mind that your business is backed by the right technology investments that are tailored for your specific needs. Hi, I'm Brian Nichols and I've helped countless business owners and technology professionals just like you helping you make informed decisions about what technologies are best to invest in for your business. Voice bandwidth, cybersecurity, business continuity, juggling all the aspects of business technology is messy. Let me help at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash help and sign up for a free one on one consultation with yours truly to dig deep into where you see your company headed and how we can align your business technology towards those goals. Again, that's the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash ELP to get your simplified business technology started today. Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they are about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Monday there, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thanks for joining us, we had a wrap to last week we are talking about cryptocurrency helping solve pediatric cancer, talked about the freedom model fighting addiction. And today, we're gonna be talking about restoring reason with author Dr. Travis Cochran. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

Travis Corcoran  
Hey, thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me on, man.

Brian Nichols  
Absolutely. Well, thank you for joining us. And thank you for helping us restore some reason here. And that's where we're gonna lead the conversation today because we're in a brand new but restoring reason. And we're focusing on getting people to start talking about some of the issues and the problems we see in the world, but maybe through a little less emotional, and shall we say, more intensive lens. Before we get there, though, Dr. Travis Corcoran, please introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and what got you into this world of trying to help people restore some reason?

Travis Corcoran  
Hi, Brian. Well, I'll keep it real short about me because the more important thing is really about restoring reason restoring reason to politics, to, to business to investments or relationships. At the very least, if we can just restore reason to discussion. I'm a Doctor of Chiropractic. I work in the Netherlands, we manage about nine different practices. Previously, I studied philosophy, biology, nuclear engineering. And yeah, what I, what got me to write this book was, yeah, probably the same thing as you you observe in the world, that we seem to be a bit toxic with emotion. And we are quite deficient in reason. And this is why we see a lot of trigger people, and we see our liberty slipping away. So I thought what we need is the liberal arts are the arts of restoring the arts of liberty.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, and we also talk about the ability to have these conversations and maybe do so in a critical thinking way, which hasn't been looked at in positive light as of late which I don't understand why critical thinking, I was told is now a considered form of white supremacy, I think, which is a little scary if that's the the narrative, but thankfully, you know, we are having some people who are like yourself fighting back and I say fighting back, but more so just helping show where we've lost our way. And we've seen right now, there is as my the alarm here goes off. It's noon, by the way. Yeah, we see right now. There's anxiety, there's despair, depression running rampant in our society, and people are looking for alternative ways of doing things, and maybe just trying to take a step back and unplugged from the sensory overload. So let's start things off with your book. Um, what was the initial, I guess, launching off part that made you say, I need to write this book.

Travis Corcoran  
Like, like I was saying earlier, it's just this constant observation we have were friends, family, colleagues, that people I want to help clients in our offices, what I see is my fellow human beings being pulled around by the nose, led by their emotions. And I used to have this term and I'm sure you've probably heard it too, like ruled by emotion. And I'm now fat. I'm rephrasing that I don't think we're ruled by emotion, yet we have one voice of reason and that's what should really be ruling our mind. But, and I used to sit well, people are ruled by emotion. But the actual truth is, no one's ruled by emotion, you're ruled by others that elicit the emotions. So until you take some sovereignty and responsibility for your mind. Someone else whatever institution, individual or ideology elicits the emotions. That's what rules the individual that refuses to practice critical thinking.

Brian Nichols  
And right now we're seeing there is definitely a push Back big tech, education, academia across the board, it seems right now, you've been told to stop thinking for yourself and we see this right? trust the experts go out let let your thoughts be determined for you. How do we get to that point? Travis?

Travis Corcoran  
I think, comfort man times times are good. And people just allow this to happen due to indifference. Right? It's a very, it's I think it's due to intellectual laziness, everything, you said it perfectly, everything's just provided for us, I used to give the example of you heard this right? Teach a man to fish, he never goes hungry, give a man a fish, and you'll need a fish the next day. This is what these big institutions do. They want to they just want to be the sole provider of fish so that we stay dependent, and we lose our liberty.

Brian Nichols  
I see this with and by the way, I apologize. The we have to make sure that the fire halls alarm works every single day at noon. So that's the noise that the audience hears in the background. But going back to them, you're talking about the giving people the fish and stuff, teach them how to fish I used to do as my sales team back when I was training my sales team, I could give them the answer to the problems they're facing. Brian, the prospect won't get back to me, Brian, this person hung up on me, what should I do? And I could give them you know, here's what I would do in your situation. But I'd say well, let's kind of walk through what what did you do? What and then let's maybe reverse engineer, why did you go that route versus in a different route? And I think right there is giving people the opportunity to take a step back and actually, to your point, think for themselves ask themselves the questions. Why? Why am I doing this? Why is there is there a reason I'm doing this? Is there a reason that I'm not taking the initiative? And I think right there, we're starting to see, there's been this this bridging of worlds almost you and I just had over the past few days. I mentioned here in the intro we had Jim on the show talking about it was Mark Sheeran, by the way, for folks, if they want to go back and listen the episode on Friday, fighting addiction using the freedom model. And it was he was basically going up and taking down the traditional 12 Step systems that are out there and saying no, no, you as an individual have the ability to to make your life better by simply taking control taking autonomy of yourself. And he was going through and saying how you're It's funny how things kind of work out how your traditional self help mentality doesn't really work. And I thought it was interesting, because you have actually in your your book, that approach saying, No, your typical approach to self help, doesn't actually help it actually hurts. Can you elaborate a bit more on that, please?

Travis Corcoran  
Yeah, Brian, that was probably my favorite part, my favorite part of the book to write, I probably could have done another 20 pages. And why that doesn't work is because the majority of those self help programs or self help, advice is based on emotion somehow to control or regulate emotion. They all put emotion at the centerpiece. And the problem with that is that emotions are their reactions. They're automatic, it's not something you it's not something you control or nurture, directly. Anyway, I'll say. And I can give an example to explain how that is. But what we do have control over what's not a reaction is our thought. intellectual thought is not a reaction thinking requires intellectual rigor, it's a process. That's why it's there's a difference between an emotional reaction and a thoughtful response. So this is why all those things fail. Because they don't work on you. They're just messing around kind of with the symptoms by playing with the emotion, you don't really achieve anything, it's. And furthermore, that's why they're so popular. It's easy to buy these because they appeal to emotion. And they don't require any real intellectual rigor. So there's a big drop off of this, I don't really have to do anything, I just find a guru or self help person that spends a lot of romantic cliches to me that make me feel temporarily good, but really make no permanent change.

Brian Nichols  
Mm. Yeah. And you also, as you're talking about that, in the book, you started, talk more on the idea of focusing on the trivium. What's the trivium?

Travis Corcoran  
The Trivium that comes from Latin? Sure, yeah. Trivium. It's a via VN. So that's like the plural for via and try three, right? So it's this, it's really the first three of the seven classical liberal arts, those first three, they deal with the quality of the mind the other four, I don't really talk about those much, but they deal with the quantity of the environment, the arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. And I'm not that concerned. We're not there yet. I think first we should work on the quality of our mind. So those first three the trivium is traditionally knowledge, understanding and wisdom. But they also be called more classically, once academia to cold. They were called grammar, logic rhetoric, but for like The best way for people to digest this just think input, processing and output much like a computer. So knowledge is the first liberal arts. That's a ledger of what we know knowledge. So we acquire knowledge. And we do that almost every day. And knowledge can be correct or incorrect. In fact, it's funny the word science today, your trust, the Science Trust, the science, sciences comes from the Latin it's a CRA or science. And that means to know CRA means to know knowledge. Or if you look up the definition of science, it means a body of knowledge. So biological science, that's a body of knowledge of science, knowledge or science is, is always improving, we we look for contradictions, inconsistencies, errors, and we remove those. So knowledge is concerned with being correct. The second level art logic, that's more concerned with an understanding of of the knowledge, right, these are two different things, knowledge can be correct or incorrect. Understanding or logic that is true or false, depending on the formal structure of the arguments. And then finally, is the third liberal art, which is rhetoric or wisdom, which is an expression of that knowledge and understanding something that our current politicians? Well, I don't know, they used to be really good at it. But now I think everyone has comfortable enough to see through this empty political rhetoric.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, well, and let's, let's maybe focus on that a little bit that the contemporary applications of what we're seeing here, we just spent the past two years being told, and you said, the magic words, trust the experts trust the science. And your average person, for I would say, maybe a few months was on board with that. And then as the narrative started to change, and the experts are to change their expert opinions. But the you look back, the science wasn't changing. Despite the argument, while the science did change, it didn't really change. We see right now there is this demand. And this, I would say, in our target market, a desire for people to restore this reason, right? And start talking about things in a reasonable way. So let's apply the book to what we've seen happen over the past two years. If I were an average person and wanting to, you know, restore some reason or political discourse, how would I go about that?

Travis Corcoran  
Well, yeah, you actually talked about how that just occurred? Naturally, the example you gave how in the first couple months? Yeah, people were kind of on board. That's because there was a giant appeal to emotion and emotions or reaction. So of course, it's initial, I mean, no matter how much you studied logic and critical thinking, you cannot turn off your emotions. Yeah, thankfully. Right? Because that's where compassion also comes from. But this collective example you have were at the beginning, everyone was kind of taken in? Well, yeah, of course, that's the appeal to emotion. It's a normal reaction to be afraid, I guess. Since that's what the message was delivering. But what you saw is like, the, this was a great indicator to like, it was a good filter to know who the most critical thinkers were in your, in your circle in your network. Because it was only a few months later, where people started to go, Wait a minute. If this is science, then why is the science different across national borders? Right, slowly, but surely, you begin to find contradictions, errors in the reasoning, logical inconsistencies. So this is exactly what the trivium is used for. We have knowledge, we're not yet certain if it's correct, or incorrect. And that's why we have logic, we should check our premises. Does that does the conclusion follow from that? This is exactly what was. And then the third and final liberal art is, yeah, we should be able to discuss this with others, we shouldn't be able to have good rational discourse, and what you were saying earlier, yeah, big tech is already monstrously against that, that's the censorship is a great indication of where they stand.

Brian Nichols  
Well, we all saw it, right? Whenever there was an alternative viewpoint and an alternative fact, which I hate that expression just made my skin crawl. Whenever we saw that, right big tech would go out of their way not just to either, you know, reduce the outreach of that person or individual or organization, but in some cases, just outright cancel them just just completely obliterate them, D person them. And that was scary. That was really scary, because I've had really good friends who we all went to the same liberal arts college, we were all taught the very, you know, the trivium. We were taught that and to see some of the people who I went to college with, just like act like none of that existed and they just fell right in line. And that right there maybe was the scariest part to Travis is that so many people did fall in line and maybe Maybe that's a little bit of a red flag. And I guess that's partly why your book is so important. So to those people, the people who just fell in line, what can we do to help get them on board and see the error of their ways?

Travis Corcoran  
You know, you brought up an example earlier, when you're talking about your sales team, you said you'd like to ask them questions, that's the best thing to do. Most people when they dig in, it's because they, when they refuse to think critically, or they're stuck in this emotional, reactive state, I guess, the first thing to do is make them feel safe, because they're in a very sympathetic stress response is very defensive, it's fight or flight. They're either just want to get out of there, or they want to like dig in and argue with you, right? And it's very emotional, unproductive, the reason they're that way is because they're afraid they're afraid that they're, they're so attached to perspectives. And that's the first thing I do, I try to say, it's not my idea, it's not my perspective, I go, here's an idea. See, the moment we start using possessive pronouns before my idea, my belief, my perspective, then it's, we internalize it, we don't put it on the platform where we can both observe and look at it. And just have a great discussion. What, how about this perspective, but people are saying, Here's what I my thoughts? What about here's up thoughts, use an indefinite article before Him. If we start with that, and then let them know that it's safe, and like, Hey, I understand what I understand how you feel, understand this, blah, blah, blah, can we just talk about this, I just really want our standard point of view, how you got there, where it's coming from, and then ask questions to demonstrate that you really care. When you're asking question that forces them to think it's hard to be really emotional, and thinking at the same time. And when you brought that example of about your sales team, if any of them were emotional, okay, how do these leads? Hey, let me ask you a question real quick. To answer that they have, they have to start thinking. Right. So that's a great technique when you have someone who's really high, like, highly emotionally. Yeah. Activated, I'll say, asking them questions is a great way to force them to begin thinking and to turn those emotions off. They might quickly go right back. But when I say ask questions, I mean, legitimate questions, not like, what the hell's wrong with you? or so? You know, that's not a legit question. If you ask questions to understand, it's gonna force them to think the Socratic method isn't so popular, or as popular as it is for no reason. Right?

Brian Nichols  
Yeah. Well, and I, I love the fact that you, you're talking about asking great questions, because we just had on the program last week, I think it was two weeks ago, Tim Walker, he's a sales legend. And we talked about that the art of asking great questions. And that is imperative. And I know my audience is going to be just, you know, rolling their eyes, cuz I always say everything is sales, whether you realize it or not, you're either selling yourself an idea of, you know, a good service, a benefit a product ever, maybe you're selling something. So with that in mind, you have to be able to effectively articulate your ideas, but you do so not necessarily by just saying how great it is. But by getting the person to think getting them to put themselves in the shoes of either a challenging the status quo idea they had before, or challenge them to see what it would look like to explore a different alternative. So with the tail end of the conversation, we're already approaching travel, I can't believe it, I want people to be able to feel like there are some actionable steps that they can take to right now. If they feel that they're fighting this, this battle against reason, they're trying to restore the reason to their, their their lives, but also to the lives of others around them. I know, obviously, the step one would be for directing them towards the book, and we're gonna talk about that at the end of the conversation. But what would you say in terms of actually getting some systematic things right now actionable things, whether it's in life or business that people can start to do immediately and see some more tangible results in their lives firsthand.

Travis Corcoran  
I would say the first thing and this in my experience, this dismisses 80% of problems with conflicts things like this, or you're making investment decisions as well, to find your terms. Like you said, everyone's selling all the time. It just so happens that our, our governments, they're selling ideologies, and they're very effective at it, unfortunately, and they sell our freedoms down the road. So I mean, I'm trying to so like a better life. I want to I want to restore reason, I want to restore reason to this crazy world. So I'm selling an ideology as well, that I that I have a strong conviction is better for the world. And what I would do is how I start is defined terms. Define your terms. It's amazing how I can watch or observe to people are you and stepping back. I think they're actually in agreement there. They just don't understand the words they're using. A great example that right now is like liberal and conservative as if these are opposites or something, right? I mean, I'm very conservative with my healthcare, I'm conservative with investments, I'm conservative with things I do, right. I'm not risky or extreme or radical, that would be the opposite of conservative, liberal. I'm also very liberal i the actual etymology of the word liberal is LIBOR and et al, from Alice Of or pertaining to over pertaining to LIBOR, which is the Latin root for freedom. So I am all about freedom. And I just happen to be conservative, these are not opposites, right? So when we can just put that aside, people stop identifying with words and the definitions and concepts that have been given to them by their yeah by propagandists and begin to think for themselves. That's a great first step, define your terms. And then second, understand the difference between thoughts and emotions. They're not the same thing. What is the response? What is the reaction? I know, it's difficult for some people, they have this conviction bias that the feelings are so strong, but you really have to check yourself. And if you can start there and distinguish the difference between thought and emotion, you're definitely on your way. Right? They're not the same.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, well, alright folks, there you go. If you think that what you've heard thus far, is definitely piquing some interest. Well, I have awesome news, you can go to the website and Travis, I'm gonna direct you now to to to help point the audience in their way away, but they can get the first chapter of restoring reason entirely free. So Travis, we want people to be able to not only get that first chapter, but also we want folks to go ahead and buy the book. So let's give some folks a call to action here.

Travis Corcoran  
Yeah, great. If you guys are interested, there's no strings attached, you can go to the website restoring reason.com. And there, you have the opportunity to download the first chapter for free, it's going to tell you quite a bit about what the book is about what to expect. And the approach that I take. We've looked at, we looked at the intellect as if it has been murdered. So you walk on to a murder scene. And the first thing you want to look at is who are the suspects. And the suspect should have means motive and opportunity. And though I've list some of the suspects, which are academia, big tech, I could go on that just read the book and see if you get to see if it's what you liked. The first chapter is free, no strings attached.

Brian Nichols  
Awesome. All right, folks, there we go. There we go, folks. Um, so what we're gonna do is for the folks in the audience who want to go ahead and check out the awesome, but we'll include the links on the show notes, it'll be really easy. Just click your artwork, it'll bring you right to Brian Nichols, show.com. Or you can find not only the first chapter of restoring reason, but also you can find all these social media links all the links possible. And with that being said, Travis, let's let's leave the audience with this. And I want maybe if you could put a nice bow on this episode. And this is probably the most unfair question in all podcasting. But what would be the one thing that if you had to go back and look at your book, and you give it to somebody, you say, here's the thing I really want you to take away from this book, it is blank.

Travis Corcoran  
It is this, the quality of your life depends 100% on the quality of the actions you take, and the quality of the actions you take is 100% dependent on the quality of the decisions you make. And your the quality of your decisions depends 100% on the quality of your mind. So if you're not cultivating and nurturing your mind, then you're neglecting the quality of your life, and you're the only one to blame. I wish everyone the best and I want a better world a better life, I want you to have a better life. And that starts with your mind.

Brian Nichols  
You'd love to see it. Dr. Travis Corcoran, thank you for joining the program. And with that, folks, if you want to go ahead again and grab that cost. Awesome, awesome copy. There we go of restoring reason. Yes, chapter one will be available in the show notes. And we'll make sure we include the links there for folks to go ahead and get a copy of their own. But with that being said, thank you for joining us on today's inaugural episode of this episode for the week of The Brian Nichols Show. Dr. Travis Cochran. Thank you for joining The Brian Nichols Show.

Travis Corcoran  
Thanks, Brian. Man, it was a it was a real blast, man. I love your energy.

Brian Nichols  
Thanks for listening to The Brian Nichols Show.

Unknown Speaker  
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Brian Nichols  
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