The Wisdom of Whistling: What I Learned From the World Whistling Champion

I’ve been listening to James Altucher’s interview with Chris Ullman, and it’s brilliant.

Among many things, Chris is the four-time World Champion of Whistling.

At one point in the interview, Chris diminished his training toward this lofty goal, and James called him out on it — it’s one of my favorite parts of the interview.

The essence of the diminishment was that there are people out there who think whistling is frivolous.

Chris shrunk under the weight of other people’s opinions.

Here’s a direct quote from a call I had with a client this week:

“It’s not worth anything if it doesn’t change your life.”

We discussed their desire to pursue something off the traditional path, and their resistance to pursuing it is fueled by their belief.

There was a point in the podcast when Chris discussed his whistling journey.

His passion, enthusiasm, sense of mission, meaning, and fulfillment poured out of the speakers.

His energy was infectious and inspiring.

What we dismiss as frivolous and not worthy aren’t frivolous and worthless if they make us feel the way Chris feels when he talks about whistling.

And when we talk about something the way Chris does, we change our lives.

We change them in ways we can’t even begin to understand, and that’s where we get stuck in the nascent stages of embarking on our journey.

We get stuck because we don’t know “How?” it will change our lives.

And we desperately want to know “How?” before we move forward so that our effort will be “worth it.”

Letting go of “How?” at the beginning of any endeavor is wickedly challenging, but we can take that first, often terrifying first step when we let go.

Reinventing my life after prison has required a ton of terrifying first steps, and the best way I’ve learned to do that is by cultivating self-trust.

Self-trust isn’t the belief that everything will work out okay; we have no way of knowing that.