The Art of Manliness - #309： Going Blind to See More Clearly

00:00:00.000 Brad McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast site. Something

00:00:18.980 we all take for granted until it stops working the way it's supposed to. While most of us will

00:00:23.040 only have to deal with the annoyances of less than 20-20 vision, my guest today went from

00:00:27.320 fully sighted to completely blind when he was a teenager. While terrifying and debilitating at

00:00:31.480 first, he learned that losing his ability to see the physical world actually allowed him to see

00:00:35.780 reality from a sharper perspective. His name is Isaac Litsky and his new book is Eyes Wide Open,

00:00:40.520 overcoming obstacles and recognizing opportunities in a world that can't see clearly. And today on

00:00:44.640 the show, Isaac and I discussed how he went blind and his initial reaction to losing his sight. We

00:00:49.420 then dig into the insights he gained about resilience, humility, and Theodore Roosevelt's

00:00:53.680 man in the arena that allowed him to move forward in life. Among his accomplishments since going

00:00:57.180 blind are graduating from Harvard Law, clerking the U.S. Supreme Court, working at a high-powered 0.99

00:01:02.020 law firm in New York City, and turning around a struggling construction business that now earns

00:01:05.860 over $70 million a year in revenue. Oh, and while he was doing all that, he was also busy being the

00:01:10.900 dad of triplets. If you feel like your ability to move forward in life is hamstringed by limitations

00:01:14.900 or you struggle with being resilient to setbacks both big and small, Isaac is going to show you that

00:01:19.040 it's all in your mind and what you can do to see things as they really are. After the show is over,

00:01:22.780 check out the show notes at aom.is slash Litsky. Isaac Litsky, welcome to the show.

00:01:35.020 Thanks so much for having me.

00:01:35.980 So you just published a book called Eyes Wide Open, overcoming obstacles and recognizing

00:01:40.180 opportunities in a world that can't see clearly. And I got to say, it's one of the most inspiring

00:01:44.640 yet grounded books I've read in a long time. It's all about your experience of starting going blind

00:01:50.120 as a teenager and learning how to thrive. I wouldn't say in spite of, but also because of

00:01:54.980 your blindness, taking that into account. And we can talk about that here in a bit. And you've also

00:01:58.660 had a really interesting career spanning entrepreneurship and the legal career. But before

00:02:02.940 we get to your adult career, and before we get to you going blind, we got to talk about,

00:02:07.320 for nostalgia's sake, your stint as a child actor, because I'm sure a lot of people are

00:02:11.020 listening to the show, seeing you on this short-lived show that happened in the 90s. So can you talk a

00:02:15.100 little bit about your stint as a child actor? Sure. So I grew up acting. I did a diaper commercial

00:02:20.720 when I was about six months old, and it was pretty much all downhill from there. So I did, you know,

00:02:26.440 maybe 100 to 150 commercials growing up. Some big parts and some very small things, some small parts

00:02:31.460 and some big things. And then my lucky break, so to speak, was when I was cast as the role of Weasel

00:02:36.840 Weasel on NBC sitcom Saved by the Bell, the New Class. So I moved out to Los Angeles at the age of

00:02:43.900 13 to star on that sitcom. And it was quite an experience. It lasted a season, right? Or two

00:02:50.600 seasons? The show, I only lasted a season on the show. I think the show went on three or four seasons.

00:02:56.020 I'm not entirely certain. Gotcha. Well, looking back on that experience as an adult, are there any

00:03:01.080 takeaways? Like, did you see something that was sort of like, did you learn any life lessons from that or

00:03:04.820 about this whole idea about seeing things clearly that you write about in your book?

00:03:08.840 Were there any takeaways you took from that experience being Weasel on Saved by the Bell,

00:03:12.540 the New Class? Sure. So, you know, I was diagnosed with my blinding disease also when I was 13. So

00:03:18.240 right around the time that I moved out to LA to do the show. So I had kind of a lot going on in my

00:03:24.340 world and in my mind, frankly, in those times. So I think that the sort of a juxtaposition of those

00:03:31.840 two things going on really sort of highlighted for me, emphasized for me, the sort of odd

00:03:38.300 character of, you know, celebrity or quasi-celebrity and the tendency in that industry out there to

00:03:45.880 focus on, you know, appearances and what others think about you and what success should look like

00:03:50.480 and all that. And it seemed to me, it's almost a cautionary tale. It seemed to me a reminder that

00:03:56.160 I should live my life really more focused on what was important to me and what had value,

00:04:00.620 you know, for me. Right. I mean, you talk about in that experience, I remember it stuck out to me,

00:04:04.700 was that you were like instantly famous from the get-go because like they announced the show,

00:04:09.740 the cast live, or they did something special for it. And you were on these teen beat magazines all

00:04:15.560 over the place. And you instantly gained this following without even doing the show yet. Like

00:04:20.120 people knew who you were and they had, you had a fan base. That's exactly right. So the original

00:04:24.240 show Saved by the Bell was wildly popular. You know, those actors kind of grew up and went off to do,

00:04:29.400 you know, a show called Saved by the College Years or left the show or whatever. And so with

00:04:32.300 the Saturday morning time slot, they sort of basically did a redo of the show with, you know,

00:04:35.760 with a new class, which I was on. And yeah, because of the popularity of the original show,

00:04:38.840 they did this nationwide search and it was all publicized. And we did, you know, weeks of publicity

00:04:43.040 photos and, you know, public appearances and fan mail and all sorts of stuff before we had

00:04:50.440 taped, you know, a minute of the show. It was very strange.

00:04:53.400 Yeah, it is very strange. We can get to the whole idea about appearances over reality here in a bit.

00:04:57.660 So you mentioned at 13, you found out you had this degenerative disease that would cause you to go

00:05:02.880 blind. So what exactly caused you to go blind and how did it progress to where is the point you are

00:05:07.740 now where you're blind?

00:05:08.820 Sure. So I have a disease called retinitis pigmentosa or RP. What RP does is it causes a sort of slow

00:05:14.340 deterioration of your photoreceptor cells. So if you picture like a jumbotron screen in an arena and

00:05:19.820 imagine like sort of all the, you know, millions of bulbs that, you know, make up the image on that

00:05:23.360 screen, it's kind of like the back of your eye. The retina has these photoreceptor cells that,

00:05:27.280 you know, respond to light and produce this little biological magic. Imagine you're watching

00:05:31.700 my life kind of as a movie on that screen and the bulb starts to randomly break over time.

00:05:38.040 That's what it was like for me. So, you know, at first you might not even notice that it can be

00:05:41.920 a little bit annoying. Parts of the screen get worse than others. And depending on what you're

00:05:47.480 looking at and where it falls on the screen, it might, the image might make sense to you or not

00:05:51.140 make sense. So sight sort of gradually went from, you know, the, the illusion of sight is this sort

00:05:57.620 of, you know, objective reality, the sort of universal truth that's out there. It's sort of

00:06:02.400 passive. And, you know, we even say seeing is believing, right? That's kind of how we experience

00:06:05.940 sight. That illusion, you know, really was sort of, you know, shattered for me in a remarkable way.

00:06:12.320 And I literally saw firsthand that sight is this creation of the mind that is personal,

00:06:18.420 that is virtual, that involves far more than just information from the eyes. And that in an

00:06:25.880 interesting way, the disease was almost kind of part of the cure. I mean, I literally saw,

00:06:31.440 you know, the power we have to create a reality that we then, you know, experience, live, feel

00:06:38.100 as, as truth as something beyond our control. And that insight is really what ultimately

00:06:43.480 brought me, you know, tremendous joy and fulfillment and success in my life. And it's

00:06:49.280 why I think that going blind was really one of the best things that ever happened to me at the end of

00:06:53.120 the day. That's amazing. But before you got to that insight, what was your initial reaction when

00:06:56.660 you learned as a 13 year old boy that you were going blind? You know, at first I was terrified

00:07:02.720 and I knew that blindness was going to ruin my life. I didn't think it, I knew it. You know,

00:07:10.160 I knew that I was not going to be independent, that I would cease to, you know, achieve. And I

00:07:15.540 would, you know, I was certain I was going to live an unremarkable life, kind of small and sad and

00:07:19.780 probably alone. I didn't think any woman would love or respect me because I wasn't going to love

00:07:23.660 or respect myself and sort of on and on and on and on. And, you know, these were lies. I mean,

00:07:29.740 these were fictions born of my fear, but I believed them. They were my reality, you know,

00:07:35.640 until I learned to see through them. And, you know, we all, all of us, you know, confront fears

00:07:39.640 and then all of us sort of awfulize. It's a term psychologists use. I love it. I think it's a

00:07:43.940 perfect term. The really pernicious thing about fear is, you know, like I was saying, we, you know,

00:07:47.200 we can experience our fears as truth and then they often become self-fulfilling. They perpetuate

00:07:53.660 themselves precisely because we believe them. Yeah. I've experienced that awfulizing firsthand. Like you,

00:07:58.740 I went to law school and I remember after exams, I would awfulize, I would get done and I would do

00:08:04.360 the postmortem in my head and think, oh my gosh, I missed that issue in the essay. And because I

00:08:09.960 missed that issue, I'm going to make a D and because I made a D, I'm not going to get a law

00:08:13.260 review. And because I don't get a law review, I'm not going to like get a law firm job and my life

00:08:17.840 will be ruined. It felt real, but it's not real. It's not real, but it feels so real. And, you know,

00:08:22.300 the sort of remarkable moment in my life and the development of kind of this vision that I was

00:08:28.880 blessed with is really when I was able to make the connection between the way we experience the

00:08:36.980 sort of fundamental contradiction between sight being sort of a creation of our own making.

00:08:41.780 And yet we feel it as sort of truth, right? We create our own reality and believe it.

00:08:45.640 And I was able to kind of make the connection between that and the way I was experiencing my

00:08:51.260 fears. And that was really an aha moment and led me to think, well, wait a minute, you know,

00:08:57.400 what are all the other ways in my life, in our lives that we all are, you know, really shaping

00:09:03.800 our lives without necessarily knowing it. And the truth of the matter is we're doing it every moment.

00:09:11.320 I mean, literally all day long, every moment, whether we understand it or not, whether we like

00:09:16.960 it or not, whether we believe it or not, um, we are choosing who we want to be and how we want to

00:09:22.280 live our lives in every single moment. Um, you know, that was such an empowering and liberating

00:09:28.020 realization for me that, you know, again, it's, it's, it's turned out to be one of the best things

00:09:32.880 that ever happened to me.

00:09:33.540 There was this point you made in your section about, you know, these fears, this awfulizing

00:09:38.020 that I thought was counterintuitive, but it just made a lot of sense to me is when you and your

00:09:42.840 family first learned that you, and I guess your siblings also had this disease as well, or some

00:09:46.660 of them.

00:09:47.100 Yes. Two of my three older sisters have the disease.

00:09:49.260 Right. Well, you, you all threw yourselves into finding a cure. Like you and your mom started a

00:09:54.020 foundation to raise money for research to find a cure for this and you did fundraisers and things

00:09:59.180 like that. But you write in the book that this quest to find a cure, you were just playing into the

00:10:04.580 hands of your fear of blindness, which seems counterintuitive because you're thinking, okay,

00:10:08.560 you're actually taking action. Like you're facing your fear by trying to take it head on, um, by

00:10:13.360 trying to find a cure and raise money for it. But how would you say that that quest was playing in

00:10:18.480 the hands of your, your fear?

00:10:20.320 Yeah. You know, our fears can perpetuate themselves by kind of, uh, keeping us on the sideline,

00:10:26.780 right? The, the way fear spell remains unbroken and by kind of tricking us into playing our own

00:10:32.420 part. And often, you know, that happens with sort of, we manifest for ourselves sort of perceived

00:10:36.900 heroes and villains and people or forces or circumstances that we, you know, we believe

00:10:42.960 have control over our fate and we kind of outsource our destiny. So, you know, my heroes were these

00:10:48.620 research scientists, you know, my villain was blindness. And, you know, I thought, as you said,

00:10:53.220 I thought I was sort of proactively sort of charging, you know, forward and doing something

00:10:57.720 productive about my disease and the fight to cure it. And in reality, I was really playing into this

00:11:03.940 narrative of fear of my fears. That blindness was this awful fate, this death sentence, right?

00:11:09.760 Like these scientists just had to save me. I had to find this Hollywood ending, you know, where I

00:11:15.240 would, you know, get the cure, right? You know, just in the nick of time, so to speak. I don't regret

00:11:19.680 for a second, you know, by the way, my efforts on behalf of the research community, and I would very

00:11:23.700 much love for them to be successful in curing the disease. However, you know, I really was playing

00:11:30.400 right into the hands of my fears by committing myself to, you know, to cheer on these heroes of

00:11:36.600 mine and fight against the villain. And meanwhile, where did that leave me day in and day out? You

00:11:41.480 know, it left me not doing a darn thing to learn about going blind or being blind or to, you know,

00:11:46.720 take control of my life. So you talk about you had this aha moment. What was that moment? Was there a

00:11:51.580 specific moment you can remember where you stopped running away from your fear of blindness? You

00:11:55.620 stopped seeing it as the villain and sort of just let it go and try to embrace it?

00:12:01.620 Absolutely. So in my late teens, early 20s, I went to visit with an occupational therapist,

00:12:09.360 a low vision rehabilitation specialist, someone who works with folks who are losing their sight or

00:12:13.460 have lost their sight. I, at this time, was very much living this sort of race against time and

00:12:18.620 blindness as a villain and science as my heroes. And I showed up kind of assuming that we were going

00:12:25.660 to be sort of talking about that narrative, right? Blindness and this awful fade and doom and gloom.

00:12:31.700 And Chris, her name was Chris. She wanted to talk about specific, you know, concrete,

00:12:37.100 actual solution for my everyday life. So, you know, I walked in the door, she wants to talk about,

00:12:41.460 do I use a cane? And I'm, you know, I'm thinking, no, I don't use a cane. I mean, I see too well to use a

00:12:46.040 cane and she says, well, do you bump into things? And I'm getting frustrated because I like, I want her to

00:12:50.820 understand how little I care about bumping into things, right? I'm thinking, you know, bumping into

00:12:56.100 things is not my problem, right? The cane is a, was like an arbitrary detail here, right? Like I can handle

00:13:01.260 now, I can handle today. You know, the problem is I'm losing my sight and there's nothing I can do about it.

00:13:07.200 You know, one thing led to another, but there was this moment when she said to me, you know, Isaac,

00:13:12.320 if you use the cane, you would bump into things less and you would hurt yourself less. It sounds

00:13:19.740 like such an obvious point. It is an obvious point. But for me, that was really the, the sort of epiphany

00:13:26.600 moment where I just, it just hit me that everything I thought I knew about going blind or being blind

00:13:33.560 was the lies of my fears. And worse, I hadn't done anything to learn about going blind or being

00:13:41.460 blind. So in essence, I was choosing, choosing to believe and choosing to live, you know, this awful,

00:13:50.680 you know, doom and gloom, terrifying life that hit me hard to realize that it was, you know, it was a

00:13:56.880 choice I was making. I wasn't aware of it, but it was a choice that I was making. And, and it really hit

00:14:01.780 me, you know, in the heart in her office that day that I, I'm going to make some better choices for

00:14:06.320 myself and I'm going to take control of my life. And so besides the cane, she introduced things like,

00:14:12.000 I guess, text readings. And I guess at that point you were like, had to like make your screen really

00:14:15.340 big on your computer to read text, but now they had software to help that read things to you. Right.

00:14:20.000 Yeah. I mean, it was awesome. Uh, you know, when we can, uh, when we can stop focusing on,

00:14:26.100 you know, the, uh, you know, the, the, the doom and gloom scenarios and when we can, you know,

00:14:31.040 you know, take discrete specific challenges and look for solutions, there's just no end to,

00:14:37.220 you know, what we can accomplish and how we can make our lives better. So yeah, I mean,

00:14:40.940 you're absolutely right. The cane was one thing, you know, she taught me about screen reading

00:14:45.460 software, which is software that I use now to interact with my computer, you know, like voiceover

00:14:50.800 on Apple products or something people might be familiar with or whatever. It's amazing. I can do

00:14:54.480 anything with my computer or iPhone or I gadget, but you know, that a sighted person wants to do.

00:14:59.280 She taught me about that. She taught me about a technique called sighted guide where you can use

00:15:04.300 to walk with a sighted person naturally and safely, right. Where they can kind of get really great

00:15:10.200 information from them about kind of what's going on. She taught me about ways to organize my shoes

00:15:14.900 and my clothing so I could, you know, pick out what I wanted to wear and on and on and on. And,

00:15:19.160 you know, like I said, I mean, it's not easy. It takes a lot of effort. It takes discipline,

00:15:23.680 you know, it takes commitment, but the choice is ours to confront the real, true, discreet

00:15:30.480 problems or challenges that we face, as opposed to sort of staying off on the sideline and this

00:15:36.200 sort of fantasy of our fear. That whole insight was really powerful to me because I think all of

00:15:40.480 us, I mean, I'd be going blind, but we have other things that we see as a constraint and we think our

00:15:45.760 lives would be better if we can just get rid of that constraint. And maybe it would be easier,

00:15:49.200 but instead of spending all that energy trying to tear down this constraint that might be impossible

00:15:54.280 to get rid of, it's better just to embrace it and try to work within those constraints that you

00:15:59.440 have. There's no doubt. I mean, every single person has challenges, has fears, has struggles in their

00:16:04.780 lives, you know, loss of a job, loss of, you know, ending of a relationship, loss of a stuff, whatever it

00:16:09.180 is. And we all confront this stuff. And, and then, you know, beyond, beyond sort of a fear or, or, or

00:16:14.620 crisis, you know, we all make self-limiting assumptions about ourselves, right? We tell

00:16:19.620 ourselves what's, what's wrong with us. You know, we tell ourselves what other people think about us

00:16:24.160 when we really have no idea. We think we have, you know, we don't necessarily embrace and appreciate

00:16:29.240 our strengths, but we certainly, you know, perceive weaknesses in ourselves. And we think we

00:16:34.780 understand the role of luck in our lives and on and on and on. And all these things, as you say,

00:16:39.020 are really within our control, you know, to really look at, to explore with awareness and

00:16:45.540 accountability and, you know, shape the lives we want. I mean, that you think of the circumstances

00:16:51.620 that people have confronted, I like to say that always you'll find people who have done far more

00:16:57.080 with far less and been far happier doing it, right? I mean, you hear stories of, you know,

00:17:01.140 concentration camp survivors, you know, POWs who spend years in the most, you know, unimaginable

00:17:06.820 conditions, you know, and yet there's always examples of people who thrive and transcend and

00:17:11.320 even find joy and meaning in, in circumstances in which, you know, you'd think those things could

00:17:16.600 not possibly exist. So, I mean, if that's true and it is true, it can't be the circumstances we

00:17:24.360 confront that dictates the quality of the life we live. It just can't be. It, it, how those

00:17:30.960 circumstances manifest themselves in our reality, in our lives is within our control.

00:17:35.680 It's very existential. I'm liking this a lot.

00:17:39.420 You're kind. I'm passionate about it. I mean, you know, we, we have this awesome power. We really

00:17:45.660 do to shape the lives we live. And it's also our responsibility. You know, I wrote the book because

00:17:51.320 I really want other people to see what I see. It's brought me to a great life. I want my kids to

00:17:56.620 read the book, you know, when they get a little older too.

00:17:58.240 All right. So let's talk about the great life you've had after you had that aha moment. Let's

00:18:02.080 talk about your first tech startup. You started right out of college. So I think there's some

00:18:05.240 interesting insights from that as well. So you started a tech company right out of college,

00:18:08.220 right? How did that go? And what lessons did you learn from that experience?

00:18:12.220 Yeah. So I started a internet advertising technology business with my brother-in-law in June of 1999.

00:18:18.800 I was, I was 19 years old and I graduated from Harvard with a degree in math and computer science.

00:18:23.500 And, you know, it was right at the height of the internet craze. And we thought, you know,

00:18:29.460 you know, it's our turn. Giddy up. So we started this business and very quickly, you know, found a

00:18:34.980 fancy loft space in Silicon Alley in Manhattan and attracted some venture capital and started hiring

00:18:42.260 like crazy. And then the bubble burst, so to speak, violently. And the term sheet, I said,

00:18:47.720 we secured capital. We didn't secure capital. We had a term sheet. We had a signed letter of intent.

00:18:51.660 Well, that was pulled because the world fell apart and suddenly we were broke and not paying

00:18:57.240 ourselves and had to figure out a way to actually make money, right? It wasn't about, you know,

00:19:02.440 eyeballs and volume and an ad impression, you know, like we needed actual dollars. And ultimately,

00:19:08.260 I, you know, I think that's the reason the company survived because instead of making the same mistakes

00:19:14.440 that a lot of folks made in the industry of continuing to, you know, raise exorbitant amounts

00:19:19.780 of money and spend it on, you know, marketing and craziness and not really actually focus on a

00:19:24.800 business model, we had to, you know, roll up our sleeves and focus on making some money.

00:19:28.420 It was a real rough couple of years, but ultimately we turned it around and we did raise some venture

00:19:32.880 financing. You know, we hired our own bosses at that point and it became kind of like a real job,

00:19:36.800 which I was never looking for. So I split after a couple of years to go back to Harvard for law

00:19:41.760 school.

00:19:42.000 It didn't end up selling and like you didn't make any money on that deal, right?

00:19:44.740 Like people thought like you made millions of dollars, right?

00:19:47.860 That's exactly right. Years later, years later, um, the business sold for $230 million.

00:19:55.660 A lot of folks in my life assumed that I was, you know, very rich when in fact, uh, at that point,

00:20:02.820 I no longer had any equity interest in the business. It's a long and complicated story,

00:20:07.040 but basically, uh, uh, I didn't have, I didn't make a penny off of it.

00:20:11.380 Was that tough? Like thinking like, Oh, I missed out on that. Like that. Do you have like

00:20:14.440 feel that loss aversion or were you just like, ah, whatever?

00:20:17.980 Uh, no, I mean, I, it wasn't, it wasn't mine to lose. I mean, I, you know, I made all the

00:20:22.600 decisions that I made along the way and, and, you know, I was really pleased that the company,

00:20:26.780 you know, found some success and I was pleased for the folks who were still there and you can't

00:20:30.240 really lose something you never had, you know? And frankly, by that point, I was doing my own

00:20:34.120 thing, you know, I think it was living in DC, either clerking at the Supreme court or practicing

00:20:40.100 law for the justice department and, you know, doing my thing.

00:20:42.120 Yeah. You went on to Harvard law, graduated, you clerked for, uh, Sandra Day O'Connor, correct?

00:20:47.420 Yeah.

00:20:47.560 Which is fantastic. Phenomenal. A lot of law students aspire to that. What happened after

00:20:52.000 your clerkship at the Supreme court?

00:20:54.320 So I was blessed to even, even before I got to court, I had this awesome job. I worked for

00:20:58.620 the justice department and I litigated appeals on behalf of the U S in the federal appellate courts.

00:21:03.420 So, you know, I'm a year out of law school and I get to brief and argue my own appeal. And then

00:21:06.820 kind of, I wouldn't say lifelong dream, but certainly a very longstanding dream of mine

00:21:11.380 was to clerk at the court. I would, I'm fascinated by the Supreme court. And anyway, I really wanted

00:21:15.880 to do it. So I realized that dream. And then I kind of do the sort of obvious thing, I guess,

00:21:22.780 or, you know, the, the easiest thing, you know, frankly, and, and, and took a big, you know,

00:21:27.220 huge signing bonus from a big international law firm and got the fancy job in office and all

00:21:31.820 that. And I was, I was miserable. Now I want to be crystal clear. There are, you know, there are

00:21:37.560 plenty of folks who can and do find value in practicing law and find success in it or meaning

00:21:43.880 or, you know, enjoy it. And, and they're built to do it. And that's great. I have no problem with

00:21:48.000 that. The problem is I'm not one of those people. It just, it wasn't, it wasn't for me. So I made a,

00:21:54.180 I guess an unconventional move and basically abandoned my legal career to buying a small

00:22:02.000 residential construction company in Orlando, Florida. My wife and I moved with our then

00:22:07.760 infant triplets. They were maybe, what were they like six months old? We moved from a apartment

00:22:12.920 in Manhattan to a home in Orlando, Florida. I think that's an important point to make.

00:22:16.960 The idea is going along with this idea of being able to see clearly, right? I think a lot of people

00:22:21.920 in your situation, they would have done the exact same thing. If they just got down to the Supreme

00:22:26.180 Court, of course, that's what you would do is you would go to a big firm because you think that's

00:22:31.120 like, that's, that's right. And the money's great. It's prestige, it's money. It provides a comfortable

00:22:36.400 living, but yeah, you're right. There's some people are made for it, but there's a lot of people who

00:22:40.320 aren't made for that sort of life and realizing that and having the courage to shift course. I mean,

00:22:46.500 that, that takes a lot of, you know, chutzpah to do that. You know, you have to see clearly.

00:22:50.780 Yeah. I mean, or am I wrong? Did, did it not take a lot of chutzpah? Like you just knew what you had

00:22:55.340 to do and you did it. No, no, it certainly did. It was not an easy decision to make, but at the core

00:23:01.020 of a living and leading eyes wide open is an uncompromising, almost a brutal honesty with

00:23:08.780 yourself and introspection and certainty about what has meaning to you, what has value to you,

00:23:17.900 what, what your definition of success is. I mean, folks, uh, so often labor to meet someone else's

00:23:24.620 definition of success or without any, any sort of goal or definition of success in mind to begin

00:23:29.600 with. And that's just such a shame. So, you know, I, I really sort of drive, try to put my money where

00:23:35.660 my mouth is. And, you know, I have this vision, I have these ideas about how I want to live my life.

00:23:39.600 And, you know, sitting there at my desk in the, you know, skyscraper right off Bryant Park in

00:23:45.060 Manhattan, I, you know, I could, there was no escaping the fact that I was unhappy and I didn't

00:23:50.460 like what I was doing and I couldn't come up with a good reason to keep doing it.

00:23:52.840 And so going on this theme of facing constraints instead of running away from them and embracing

00:23:58.920 them, um, you bought this construction company in Orlando, but come to find out it was sort of a

00:24:04.540 limit of a business that had a lot of work you had to do in order to make it profitable. So,

00:24:08.560 I mean, he talked and just sort of summarize the trials you and your partner went through to turn

00:24:12.720 this business around. Sure. So my college roommate and closest friend, Zach,

00:24:17.440 and I decided to partner up on this deal. He would keep his fancy day job in the world of finance,

00:24:25.260 but he'd help me, you know, look for the business and pay for it. And, uh, and I'd leave behind my

00:24:29.660 fancy day job and run it, you know? So we, we spent five months looking at businesses all over.

00:24:34.860 It was my sort of primary focus. He was certainly very involved too, but, you know, we found this

00:24:39.940 business and meticulously analyzed, you know, the financial data. And we thought, look, this company's,

00:24:45.060 you know, not breaking any records by way of success, but it's getting along. It's kind of

00:24:49.340 humming along at the lifestyle business. And we got very excited about our vision for, you know,

00:24:53.380 what we could turn this company into and kind of change the value proposition and all that kind of

00:24:57.580 stuff. So what could go wrong, right? Two Harvard guys are going to buy a construction company in

00:25:02.040 Orlando. Well, about three months in, you know, we realized that, uh, all that data we had,

00:25:06.880 you know, modeled was really just nonsense. It was sort of garbage in, garbage out. In actuality, 0.95

00:25:12.280 nobody really had any idea what was going on with the business. Uh, really, frankly,

00:25:16.420 you didn't even necessarily know what was going on on a job by job basis, you know, whether you're

00:25:19.900 making or losing money on a project. And that turns out to not be a very good way to run your

00:25:23.880 business. So we found out pretty early on that we were in dire straits and the company was basically

00:25:28.720 hemorrhaging money. And it looked like we were going to lose everything. My wife and I, uh,

00:25:35.760 talked about, I'd probably have to go through bankruptcy. And we worried whether, uh,

00:25:40.960 law firm would be willing to hire me after a bankruptcy. It's a tricky thing to have a

00:25:44.580 big law firm, hire a bank, uh, for a bankrupt lawyer or whatever. But, uh, we even talked

00:25:48.720 with her father and her mom about not moving in with them if it came to it with our now,

00:25:54.240 you know, year old triplets. So those, that was, those were some really dark times and very

00:26:00.240 challenging. And in the midst of all this, my mom kind of reveals that she's been squirreling away,

00:26:06.280 you know, cash over 40 years. I do. I literally mean physical cash. She herself is a Cuban immigrant

00:26:11.920 and her father had to start over from scratch, you know, several times in life. So, you know,

00:26:15.060 he taught her to just save for that rainy day. And for him, you know, banks come and go

00:26:18.780 governments come and go, you save cash. So anyway, in the middle of all this,

00:26:22.300 my mom kind of reveals she's got 350 grand in cash. You know, she's just absolutely convinced that I

00:26:27.660 should take it and use it to save my dying business. So that led to, uh, a few days of real

00:26:37.660 soul searching and, and, and analyzing the situation and deciding, you know, whether I

00:26:41.880 could possibly take this money, but I eventually I did so. And with her sort of, you know, very,

00:26:49.400 very, very urgently needed infusion of capital, we were able to turn the business around and it took

00:26:54.120 years and it took a phenomenal team of very dedicated people. But, you know, today the

00:26:58.560 business has grown to more than 10 times the size it was when we bought it and it's profitable and

00:27:03.120 it's just an excellent company. I'm extremely proud of it.

00:27:05.560 That's fantastic. Again, it's that whole idea you talked about earlier about, you know,

00:27:09.060 vision being virtual, right? You saw these numbers from this business and you thought they were good.

00:27:14.380 You had this image in your head like, oh yeah, this is a slam dunk, but, uh, that wasn't the reality.

00:27:19.760 No. And I had, I mean, that's a very insightful point. And, you know, I looking back, I had

00:27:27.060 absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea, but you know, I was sure

00:27:33.440 eager to, to learn and I did, and that's life, right? Life is constant growth. It's constant

00:27:39.000 improvement. It's constant momentum. That's really the joining.

00:27:42.400 I think this is a nice segue. You have this chapter in the book, you devote to one of my favorite

00:27:46.860 speeches, Theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena speech. Yeah. Yeah. We're big fans of TR over

00:27:52.420 here, the art of manliness for obvious reasons. Okay. Me too. I love it. Fantastic. But you kind

00:27:57.500 of go through his speech and, and draw some insights about it from your own experience.

00:28:01.840 And I thought it was interesting that you, you talk about how ideals can be the tools of that

00:28:07.580 metaphorical critic. How so? That's again, that's counterintuitive. You think ideals are great,

00:28:12.080 but the critic can actually turn those against you. Yeah. So the critic, the critic in our

00:28:16.720 mind, it's a nasty voice, man. And it's quick to pass judgment, tell us what we can't do. Tell us

00:28:22.700 what other people are thinking about us. Yeah. Like you said, so the critic idealizes, the critic

00:28:27.660 sort of presents this lofty view of the world or of our endeavors kind of soaring high above it all,

00:28:34.160 you know, where the paths of progress down below are too small to see the rate of progress is,

00:28:39.200 you know, appears to be glacially slow. You know, I'm just the sort of the towering magnitude of,

00:28:44.680 of our aspirations is just, it's just overwhelming. And the critic, you know, often will,

00:28:49.660 will keep us off the stage, will keep us from even, you know, from even trying by virtue of this,

00:28:55.220 of this sort of pernicious perspective, you know, for the, for the critic, perfection is,

00:29:00.880 is the only standard. As we all know, perfection is impossible. So the, you know, the critic in our

00:29:07.600 mind conveniently, you know, guarantees our failure, right? For, for ordains our failure.

00:29:14.200 Oh, we talked earlier about definitions of success. Well, I mean, one of the things the

00:29:18.080 critic does is it's almost like a, you know, a sleight of hand wizard, right? Like, you know,

00:29:22.120 a three card Monty game where the other, that critic in our head will swap out someone else's

00:29:27.140 definition of success for our own and we won't even notice it. And yeah, it's a, it's a pernicious

00:29:32.500 thing. Yeah. I love how you talked about too, in the book that quote unquote, tough love

00:29:35.460 is another tool of the critic, you know, just telling you, Oh, you know, look, here's, here's

00:29:39.380 the, here's the scoop here. I'm going to lay it to you straight. You should just give up. You know,

00:29:42.060 this is not going to happen for you. Yep. Do the, do the sensible thing, do the practical thing,

00:29:46.120 do the responsible thing, just kind of surrender gracefully. And that could have happened all

00:29:50.220 throughout your life with the blindness or with the business. Uh, it could have been, you know what,

00:29:55.320 just, just give up, you know, move on to something else. No doubt. We all confront those moments

00:30:00.460 all the time in our lives, but big and small too. You know, sometimes those small things don't

00:30:03.620 turn out to be that small. And so instead of ideals, what should the strong man, what should

00:30:09.120 the strong man in that speech embrace? Is it just day-to-day action? Yeah. The strong man's focus

00:30:14.860 is the moment is now strong man's focus is the next step, right? And who glanced up at the peak

00:30:23.180 of the mountain from time to time casually. Right. But it's just focuses the next grip, right? The next

00:30:28.940 pull. The strong man has absolutely no, no use for perfection, right? The strong man values effort

00:30:37.040 and growth. So for the strong man, success comes in actually striving toward a worthy pursuit.

00:30:45.020 Now, the remarkable thing is that we are all born strong men. That's in our nature. It's in our DNA.

00:30:52.680 It's at our core. You know, for me, that's the profound truth in Nietzsche's line, right? What doesn't

00:30:57.740 kill you? It makes you stronger. It's true. You know, every single moment of our lives can yield

00:31:02.220 insight, knowledge, and wisdom. It's a beautiful thing when you can keep your focus in the moment

00:31:06.680 and then harness your strength within and quiet that internal critic and ignore the sort of circus

00:31:12.680 of noise that that critic choreographs. That's where we kind of get into that. Some psychologists

00:31:17.240 call it flow, I guess, that sort of heightened state of really being in the moment. And that's just

00:31:22.440 pure oxygen. I love it. So another theme throughout your book is trying to figure out

00:31:29.340 one of the challenges of life is trying to suss out what is determined by luck and what is determined

00:31:33.980 by skill. I think oftentimes we think our skill or the breaks we've gotten have been attributed to our

00:31:40.920 skill, but it's actually luck. Or sometimes we think they're attributed to luck, but it's actually

00:31:46.420 skill, right? You dove over this whole chapter talking about poker. You're a poker player.

00:31:50.580 What can poker teach us about trying to figure out what the difference between skill and luck is

00:31:55.660 and why is that important? Oh, that's a great question. So, you know, poker can teach us

00:32:01.960 everything about luck in life, I think. I mean, poker, so I love No Limit Hold'em. It's a game I

00:32:07.080 like to play. It's a very pure form of poker. And if you look at that game and you look at a single

00:32:12.020 hand and you said, is this a game of luck or a game of skill? If a perspective is a single hand,

00:32:17.000 it's pretty easy to conclude it's a game of luck. If, however, you looked at folks who play poker

00:32:22.620 professionally or folks who are passionate about it and played a lot and play, you know, tens of

00:32:28.000 thousands of hands over, you know, years of their lives, there's just no question that poker is a

00:32:33.880 game of skill. It absolutely is a game of skill and you can be better at it. You can be worse at it.

00:32:38.080 The same, you know, people who are great at it tend to, you know, over time achieve better results

00:32:42.800 and yada, yada. But, you know, it's, again, it's about that perspective of how you look at the

00:32:48.320 game. You know, I think the same is true in life. You know, Thomas Jefferson, the same as for, well,

00:32:52.980 the courts attributed to him, who knows if he actually said it, but something to the effect of

00:32:55.820 I'm a big fan of luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. And it's just so true.

00:33:01.480 I mean, life is about the strategy, the play of game, the sort of the tactics that will sort of

00:33:07.440 optimize your performance over time. And it's not about any one hand. And it's very hard to see that

00:33:12.640 when you have, for example, a bad beat, right? In poker, a bad beat as well. You know, you're the

00:33:17.880 10 to one favorite to win the hand. Well, you know, one out of 10 times you're going to lose

00:33:23.020 that card. That's not supposed to, you know, get flipped over at the end. It's going to be that

00:33:26.640 card. You're going to lose. Does it mean you played the hand wrong? No, you played it perfectly.

00:33:29.440 It's just the one in 10 shot that you lost. And that can be very hard to see. We beat ourselves up

00:33:34.040 all the time or decisions that we made that were great decisions for us in the moment at the time we made

00:33:40.540 them, but they didn't pan out. And that's just life. Similarly, it can be just as dangerous to

00:33:45.860 get hot, to get on a roll, right? Playing, playing, uh, hold of you. You win a couple of big hands,

00:33:50.060 maybe, uh, you loosen up your play and, you know, you pick up a pot and you shouldn't have,

00:33:53.760 and you kind of feel like luck's on your side, quote unquote, you know, a big pile of chips can

00:33:57.700 get you into a big pile of trouble. So, you know, for me, I love poker as a sort of metaphor

00:34:02.840 for, for life and, uh, how we tend to oversimplify this distinction between good luck and bad luck.

00:34:11.280 And, and, and, you know, frankly, even think that that distinction, you know, has meaning.

00:34:14.940 It's kind of a meaningless thing to me, you know, and then also really grossly tend to

00:34:20.400 underestimate the extent to which we do control events or circumstances of our lives. Again,

00:34:24.520 we think there's a sort of bright line things within our control, things that aren't in our

00:34:27.300 control. And it's really, it's a gray line. It's nebulous. There's a lot of, uh, subtlety

00:34:32.080 there. And for the most part, a lot more is in our control than we, than we realize.

00:34:36.840 Well, Isaac, this has been a great conversation. There's a lot more we could probably get into.

00:34:40.220 We'll let folks go get the book to get those insights. Where can people learn more about

00:34:44.560 your work? Sure. Thanks a lot. So the easiest place to go is probably just my website, which

00:34:49.200 is my last name, Lidsky, L as in Larry, I, D as in David, S as in Sam, K-Y.com. If you go there,

00:34:56.580 there's information on the book. I have a blog, there's a link to my Ted talk and all sorts of stuff.

00:35:01.780 Now, the one thing I'm going to ask though, is if, if you are interested in this, you know,

00:35:06.920 does make a connection and you read about this stuff, please let me know what you think. You

00:35:11.260 can do it on my website. And I am, this is a passion project for me and I genuinely read every,

00:35:16.660 every submission I get and I think about it and I want to know what you think. So please do let me

00:35:20.300 know. Isaac Lidsky, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:35:23.380 Me too. Thank you.

00:35:25.020 My guest there was Isaac Lidsky. He's the author of the book Eyes Wide Open. It's available on

00:35:28.700 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more information about his work

00:35:32.080 at lidsky.com. Be sure to check out his Ted talk. It's called What Reality Are You Creating

00:35:36.600 For Yourself? It's really good. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash lidsky where you can

00:35:41.200 find links to resources where you can delve deeper in this topic.

00:35:50.620 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:35:54.600 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy this

00:35:58.080 show, have gotten something out of it, I'd really appreciate it. Take a minute to give us a review

00:36:01.440 on iTunes or Stitcher and helps that a lot. As always, thank you for your community support.

00:36:04.620 And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - June 01, 2017

#309： Going Blind to See More Clearly

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript