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The Observe and Rapport Newsletter
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A weekly guide of my favorite books, articles, products, and lifestyle habits.
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April 25th, 2025 | by Kyle Brennan
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Thought of the Week
The Five-Minute Rule
You're always 5 minutes away from feeling better.
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It doesn’t take a week-long retreat or watching Tony Robbins inspire you on stage. It takes five minutes. That’s it. The trick is knowing how to spend them.
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- 5 minutes of exercise—your energy shifts
- 5 minutes of writing—the mental fog starts to lift
- 5 minutes of reading—your perspective changes
- 5 minutes of deep breathing—your body goes, "Oh yeah... this."
- 5 minutes of conversation—your mood improves
If your day feels off, don’t try to fix everything. Just find five minutes and do something that shifts your state.
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You'd be shocked how your momentum shifts after just 10 bodyweight squats and 10 pushup.s
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A better day is closer than you think. You just need five good minutes.
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Article I'm Reading
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This article might change how you think about defending views you disagree with.
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I've always been a massive fan of Ryan Holiday — his books, his podcasts, and his ability to transmute an ancient philosophy with stories. However, recently I've noticed Holiday delving more into politics and it's been a big turn off for me. While it's often nice to know the political opinions of those you admire, I find it's far better to separate their politics from their craft.
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So when my Uncle Dick sent me this article about the U.S. Naval Academy cancelling a speech Ryan Holiday was intending to give, I expected the reason to be that Holiday was planning to trash President Trump or preach his left-leaning political views on the future midshipmen.
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But the truth turned out to be far more unsettling.
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The Naval Academy asked Holiday to refrain from mentioning the recent removal of 381 supposedly controversial books from the Nimitz library on campus.
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Banning books is a topic in which political views shouldn't even need to enter the conversation. Censoring thought, however controversial, is never right.
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Below is my favorite excerpt from the article [emphasis mine]:
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Asked if he would ban communist books from American embassies, Eisenhower resisted.
“Generally speaking,” he told a reporter from The New York Herald Tribune at a news conference shortly after his inauguration, “my idea is that censorship and hiding solves nothing.” He explained that he wished more Americans had read Hitler and Stalin in the previous years, because it might have helped anticipate the oncoming threats. He concluded, “Let’s educate ourselves if we are going to run a free government.”
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The 24/7 Availability Myth
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I recently came across a post on r/AskReddit that struck a chord"
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"People who don't reply until days later, why?"
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A user named Spizmack (fantastic username, by the way) responded with something so clear and compelling I was left wondering how I never thought of it myself:
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"It's a relatively (very) new phenomenon that basically anyone in your life gets access to you at all times. It was only 20 years ago that if you left the house for the day you were actually gone. You'd return messages when you came back hours or even days later. Basically I prefer this sometimes"
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In what other period of human history were people expected to be instantly reachable by dozens or even hundreds of acquaintances at any moment? This expectation of constant connectivity is not just unreasonable — it's unnatural.
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The world doesn't end when you don't respond immediately.
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I like to batch process my messages. I intentionally will set my phone aside for 1-2 hours so I can focus on the thing I need to do. Once I'm done with my work, I'll pick my phone back up and answer any texts or messages that piled up over that time period.
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There are obvious exceptions for people that have permission to break through my Do Not Distrub settings, but 80% of the time, the texts you're getting require no urgent response. And if it was urgent, they would call. Rarely is there someone on the other end of the line hanging off a cliff with one hand waiting for me to rescue them.
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*Frisbee's phone across the room*
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Exercise from Dr. Tara Swart
The Clearest Mirror We Have is the People Closest to Us
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I saw a great post on IG where Dr. Tara Swart urges us to dive deeper into the characteristics of the people we're inspired by.
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You're probably familiar with the assertion that you become the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.
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But Dr. Swart offers a more powerful way to reflect on how these people affect us:
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- Draw a tree with five branches. Write the names of the five people who influence you most.
- Now describe each of them with five words.
- Sit with those 25 words because they reflect you.
It might feel uncomfortable, even confronting. But self-awareness comes before growth.
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What I'm Watching
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I'm not gonna lie, Season Two of the Reacher series on Prime Video was a bit of a disappointment, but this season picks right back where the first season left off.
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You know when you read a good fiction book and build the whole world in your head—what the characters sound like, how they move, the vibe of the setting—only to have Hollywood butcher it on screen? Yeah, same. But Reacher (seasons one and three) nailed it. The voices, the music, the mood—it’s like they cracked open my brain and filmed exactly what I imagined. As a longtime fan of the books, it’s rare and super satisfying to see it done right.
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Based on the seventh book of Lee Child's series, Persuader, season three begins with a brilliant ruse in which Reacher hurtles into the dark heart of a vast criminal enterprise. Highly recommend!
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Parable That Rewired How I View Life
Conversation in the Womb
I recently came across a parable from Your Sacred Self by Dr. Wayne Dyer that reprogrammed my belief system about the afterlife.
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In a mother’s womb were two babies.
One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”
The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense! And moreover if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
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You don’t need to believe in the afterlife to feel the punch of this story. You just need to realize that what feels like an ending is often just a new room you’ve never entered before.
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Quote I'm Pondering
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"I once read in my physics book that the universe begs to be observed, that energy travels and transfers when people pay attention. Maybe that's what love really boils down to—having someone who cares enough to pay attention so that you're encouraged to travel and transfer, to make your potential energy spark into kinetic energy."
—Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes
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Observe and Rapport is a blog, Instagram, and podcast channel that discusses wisdom, perspective, and lifestyle habits gained from books and other historical forms of media.
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Top Books of 2024
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Browse my favorite book selections hand-curated by me. I also earn commissions so if you buy anything, those earnings get reinvested right back into this fancy newsletter ;)
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Affiliate Links!
I've had the fortunate opportunity to partner with some great brands that I love. Use the links below to find great hats, sweatshirts, and sunglasses
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- Huega House - 15% off first order with promo code: KYLEBRENNAN. My everyday hat is the Athletic Association in Green & white
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33 Life Lessons on My 33rd Birthday
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Thirty-three was a big one. Mostly because I became a dad. Our daughter was born on New Year’s Eve — a fitting arrival for a kid destined to reset everything. It’s been a beautiful, if slightly sleep-deprived blur ever since. I’ve only been “Dad” for less than ten months, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been preparing for the role for over …
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Depth Over Downloads: Why Spending Time with Books Still Matters
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Everyone wants faster information. But no one asks if faster information leads to better understanding — or a better life. In the age of AI and tweet-sized wisdom, we’ve confused information with transformation. But there’s a massive difference between knowing what a book says and being changed by it. The Delusion of Instant Learning In a recent interview, political journalist Ezra Klein admitted he once believed …
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The Jack Reacher Approach to Never Being Caught Off Guard
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There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, ‘Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,’ and an optimist who says, ‘Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.’ Either way, nothing happens.” —Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia I don’t read much fiction, but I’ve always been hooked on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. He’s not your typical …
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