The Art of Manliness - #413： Make Today Matter

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast and we all want

00:00:18.320 to feel like our lives matter to find this kind of significance we often think in macro terms

00:00:22.200 about our overarching purpose and values such reflection is certainly useful but what are the

00:00:26.300 smaller building blocks that will get us to those goals what are the things we can do to live more

00:00:30.200 purposefully on a day-to-day basis my guest lays out 10 such habits in his latest book make today

00:00:35.480 matter his name is chris lowney he started his vocational life studying to become a priest

00:00:39.240 before discovering it wasn't for him and shifting his ambitions to the corporate world working first

00:00:43.300 as a managing director at jp morgan and now as a consultant and keynote speaker today on the show

00:00:47.540 chris and i discussed tactics gleaned from both his experience as a jesuit seminarium and as a

00:00:51.640 business leader that can help you live each day with more meaning chris explains how to keep your

00:00:55.480 most important values at the forefront of your mind how to approach each day with bravery and heart

00:00:59.520 and how looking for little ways to do good deeds expressing gratitude and lead others in positive

00:01:04.000 way will all add up to a life that matters after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:08.660 make today matter

00:01:25.480 chris lowney welcome to the show thanks so much pleasure to do it so you have an interesting

00:01:31.840 background a few weeks ago we had father james martin on the podcast who was his background

00:01:37.560 interesting because he went from the corporate world to becoming a jesuit priest you did the

00:01:43.080 opposite for him you started off as you know going to seminary to become a jesuit then you found your

00:01:48.020 way in investment banking so tell us about that how'd that happen yeah that's right he i i flunked out of

00:01:53.360 the jesuits you might you might put it that way so so the the the short version of my life is i grew

00:01:58.460 up in queens you know lower middle class new york streets went to a high school of the jesuits and

00:02:04.920 then right after high school i joined the jesuits went into the seminary and i'm sure some of the

00:02:10.460 listeners would know jesuits would be a i don't know you might say a brand a tradition of priests

00:02:16.460 within the catholic church so i was studying to be a priest for a few years and you know that was a

00:02:22.020 a great transformative life experience but as folks also probably know part of being a catholic priest

00:02:28.960 is to be celibate not to marry and you know over time it became clear to me that that was not my

00:02:35.880 gift or calling in life you might say and um you know if i if i tried to stick that out i was going

00:02:42.760 to be unhappy and we don't need unhappy priests and we don't need unhappy lawyers and and so on so the

00:02:48.700 last thing i was doing as a jesuit was was teaching economics in one of their high schools and i was

00:02:55.160 living in new york city i didn't really have a plan b so i just kind of sent out my resume and was lucky

00:03:00.920 enough to catch on in the training program at jp morgan the the big investment bank and i ended up

00:03:07.220 staying there for 17 years i was lucky enough to spend time in japan in singapore in london and when i

00:03:15.420 left there a decade or so ago i think you know you might summarize that decision this way that you

00:03:21.480 know i felt like you know look i mean this is good work i'm happy i'm doing this but if i'm 70 years

00:03:27.500 old and the only thing i can say about my life is that i've worked at jp morgan for 40 years i'm not

00:03:32.440 quite sure how fulfilling a life i'm gonna feel that is and also which is something i that comes up i know

00:03:38.880 in your work from time to time and you know another factor was you work in one of these big

00:03:43.920 massive companies and your own control your own agency your own feel for you know what am i producing

00:03:51.840 what am i creating what am i accountable for is a little a little hard to grasp sometimes and so i

00:03:58.720 wanted to move on and write and do conferences and and uh do things where i i felt like i'm creating

00:04:06.700 the product that i'm sharing with the world so i'm curious how did you think your experience

00:04:11.420 in the jesuit seminary influenced your career in investment banking i mean did you notice like did

00:04:17.600 you approach things differently compared to your colleagues who didn't have that same background

00:04:21.120 uh so you know i'll say i'll say two things that i think were different as a result maybe of

00:04:28.140 being a jesuit so one thing would be that you know in banking life everything tends to have a

00:04:36.120 trading mentality in in this respect that all the decisions have to get made within four seconds

00:04:43.220 you know just like happens on a trading floor where you're going to buy a stock or sell a stock

00:04:47.620 so you could bring somebody the most complicated decision in the world and the macho investment

00:04:54.740 banking thing would be able to say yes or no on the spot you know and really that that way of

00:05:01.440 living has kind of infected culture more broadly now you know because of social media and so on

00:05:06.360 everything is like instantaneous but frankly a lot of decisions in life can't get made like that you

00:05:11.620 know and they're not best made like that you know sometimes it's good to take time and and have our

00:05:16.980 you know have what's going on inside us settle a bit and come to some clarity about what's best for us

00:05:23.620 and so on and that's a very jesuit way of you know that's the way we would have been formed

00:05:28.340 as jesuits and i think i always carried that way of approaching things in other words it's okay to

00:05:34.440 take time to make a decision when you have time to make a decision sometimes even better

00:05:39.900 so that's one thing i would say another thing i would say briefly is that um you know i think a lot

00:05:46.980 of times in corporate life we everything revolves around learning techniques and so on like in other

00:05:53.660 words i had to learn how to do present value calculations or how to do this or that and one

00:05:59.420 thing that corporate life never focuses on is what's ultimately the most important thing you know who are

00:06:04.380 you and what do you stand for and what are your values and strengths and weaknesses and i think that

00:06:09.820 was another bias that i brought from jesuit life you know namely it's good and it's important

00:06:15.640 to think not just about acquiring technical skills but also the skills of learning about who you are as

00:06:23.320 a person and so on so let's get to this book you just came out with make today matter 10 habits for

00:06:28.960 a better life and world i'm curious how did you come up with these habits is it just based on your

00:06:34.080 experience going all the way back from your your career as a potential jesuit and then your career

00:06:39.640 in investment banking yeah so you know maybe maybe i put it this way so i you know i do a lot of

00:06:44.560 leadership seminars you know either corporations or or universities and so on and what you know one

00:06:52.480 of the things i i often say to folks is you know we already know you already know it we already know

00:06:59.020 what good leadership looks like and what crappy leadership looks like and and so on because we've

00:07:03.880 all had experience of of people who've mentored or taught or coached or managed us and we've seen it

00:07:11.840 in action and so you know the way i assembled the book in some ways was just to think back

00:07:19.960 about moments and people who had very much impressed me in my own life with their ability

00:07:28.340 to kind of live each day well you know and a lot of the a lot of the stories a lot of the habits

00:07:34.180 came almost right away you know it didn't take me much time to think about them i mean i there

00:07:38.620 there are people who've been quite impactful for me so i just cataloged mentally some some folks who'd

00:07:45.300 made a deep impression on me and then tried to extract you know what what is it that sort of

00:07:51.220 crystallizes the way they go about doing things that i that i think could help me and could help the rest

00:07:57.560 of us and one guardrail i gave myself in putting it together was that i was interested in bite-sized

00:08:08.160 how do you do it every day kind of stuff you know because i feel that part of the challenge of the

00:08:15.080 of the 21st century here is that you know daily life is this utter maelstrom and there's way too much

00:08:21.140 going on and we all have to process too many stimuli every day whether social media or television or

00:08:28.620 whatever the heck it is and it tends to kind of distract us and draw us off course and and i tend

00:08:35.120 to feel with a lot of people the problem in life is not just is not really that they are pointed in the

00:08:42.660 wrong direction you know most of us kind of know where we'd like to go and who we'd like to be

00:08:47.240 rather the problem is that daily life's craziness and distractions and nonsense kind of distract us

00:08:55.720 and pull us off course so i was interested in habits that really boiled down to how do i do it

00:09:01.620 today you know how can i make my daily life better not uh not so much let me think of these visionary

00:09:09.000 long-term aspirational kind of things so before we get into the habits you start the book arguing that

00:09:16.000 you know people need to first figure out what matters in life and you said just earlier that

00:09:19.360 you know people have a general idea of the direction they want to go in life but i mean i think it's

00:09:23.600 even harder now to figure that out i mean you have all these books and courses on how to find your

00:09:28.520 life's purpose and that's kind of you know that's a challenge we have in the modern age when people

00:09:32.820 aren't embedded in communities or institutions like if you you know for your case if you're a catholic

00:09:37.940 priest like well i just do this thing because that's what catholic priests do or if you are you know in a

00:09:44.000 family that is a trade fan has a history of trade well i just do this trade because that's what my

00:09:48.020 family does nowadays like you can choose whatever you want to be and whatever purpose you have so

00:09:53.360 what do you think is the approach on figuring out what matters and what direction you're going in

00:09:58.340 your life when you have all these choices to choose from yeah yeah you know first of all i think the uh

00:10:04.340 you know the way you tee up the question is is exactly right you know when you talk about the fact

00:10:08.760 that you know once upon a time we you know cultures and and societies were much more homogenous you know

00:10:15.060 and there was kind of a way this is the way we do things in this neighborhood or in our ethnic group

00:10:21.120 or in our religious group and so on and you know now we live in a much more diverse world and that's

00:10:26.820 wonderful you know it brings a lot of joys and blessings but it also makes everything in life way more

00:10:33.160 complicated in terms of coming to judgments about what's the right thing to do what's appropriate

00:10:38.360 how should i live these kind of things and one of the things that always haunts me in that regard is

00:10:43.460 i remember once some years ago reading an interview with a guy who had pioneered a chief executive had

00:10:49.820 pioneered a world-changing merger and he had recently retired and he he made a comment basically like

00:10:57.020 you know i had gotten to the age of 60 and realized i didn't know anything about the essential questions

00:11:04.660 in life and i went on and i felt like i have to go on a journey i have to find myself and you know

00:11:11.380 good for him for coming to that conclusion and going on that personal journey but i guess the point i want

00:11:18.720 to make is if if you start making it 60 good but man way better if you start at 20 25 30 35 and in a way

00:11:29.460 that was the you know the early part of the book and the question you're getting at is how do we start

00:11:33.740 to engage in that challenge of figuring out what sense of purpose and what matters and so on and you

00:11:41.740 know what i like to say to people what i say in the book is you know i feel like we know we

00:11:48.700 you got it better than you think you do you know we kind of know and what i say to folks is forget

00:11:56.580 any big fancy year-long horrible difficult process take out a piece of paper now sit for 15 minutes

00:12:06.100 one hour is no good and just for a few minutes answer whatever question resonates you along these

00:12:14.760 lines resonates with you along these lines like what matters or how will i measure my life

00:12:22.020 or how do i want to be remembered or what's what are the most important things i should stand for in

00:12:28.420 life and maybe even write down a few quotes that are are meaningful to you as a human being you know

00:12:35.580 a couple of the ones that that come to my mind are you know never do to another person what you

00:12:40.120 yourself hate or you know to give away as much love as i've received you know whatever it is

00:12:46.300 and just take some minutes to do that and i feel like for the for the great majority of us those big

00:12:52.600 guiding principles actually come pretty quickly and clearly you know we've kind of had them in the

00:12:59.200 back of our mind and it's just a matter of bringing them to the forefront of our consciousness

00:13:04.440 and then you know the ongoing life trick and we'll probably talk about this later in in our

00:13:09.700 conversation the ongoing life trick is to keep reminding yourself of it you know even every day

00:13:15.640 because you know we're going to get constantly pulled in different directions and constantly

00:13:20.960 pulled off course and the last thing i'll say about it is you know you teed up the question in terms of

00:13:25.900 sense of purpose and a lot of times people think of purpose in terms of a job you know like my purpose

00:13:33.700 is to be a nurse or a teacher or a parent and you know for a lot of us we're going to be doing lots

00:13:40.740 of different things now in the course of a lifetime and so when i think about purpose those kinds of

00:13:47.260 questions i would prefer to steer people toward i don't know what a set of principles or values

00:13:54.520 that are going to stay with them throughout the range of occupations they might have in a normal

00:14:01.200 lifetime i mean look at my life i've done already done a number of different things i'm going to do

00:14:05.080 more things so my purpose was not to be an investment banker or a writer you know my purpose

00:14:11.100 i would say is to you know be a person who in the course of a life gives away as much love as has been

00:14:17.780 given to him for example well let's talk about that remembering because i think that's the hardest

00:14:21.860 part based on my experience i've done those exercises we sit down and like yes i know what matters

00:14:26.740 but then when you get in the work a day of life you just you forget it i think was it plato you know

00:14:33.240 going back to your philosophy major and you'd probably study these guys as a seminarian too

00:14:37.040 their ethics you know plato was really big on like whole like we're just trying to remember things

00:14:42.000 right like we're the whole point of life is to remember the stuff that we already know

00:14:45.820 and if we forget that's what leads to i don't know a disordered life so what's your solution like

00:14:52.680 how do you remember those things once you realize what they are you know i'm going to jump out of the

00:14:57.520 order of the book because i think the conversation is really pointing us that direction and talk now

00:15:04.100 about one of the very last things i talk about in the book uh and i say to folks because this is one of

00:15:09.200 the disciplines i was taught that every day every day we ought to take a couple little mental breaks

00:15:15.680 so let's imagine once at the end of lunch once before i'm going to bed or on my way home from work

00:15:21.480 and you know take five minutes if you can't manage five minutes take three minutes

00:15:25.460 two i don't care but just a couple of minutes where no social media no phone no music no nothing

00:15:33.620 just you and yourself and i say to folks just do three things you know remind yourself why you're

00:15:40.340 grateful as a person and remind yourself of you know we've been talking about sense of purpose you

00:15:47.540 know or what matters to you or what's important or what values you want to stand for

00:15:51.160 why you're here on earth so anything like that just bring that to mind and then go back through

00:15:57.300 your last few hours the people you're with the meetings you're in try to take away some little

00:16:01.840 lesson that might help in the next few hours and you know break a lifetime into that bite-sized

00:16:09.040 six ten hour nugget you know and i think the genius of this really simple practice becomes obvious

00:16:15.780 when we think about the way we're trying to live now you know we're kind of floating along

00:16:19.180 on this whitewater river of email text meeting distraction phone call you know and i get to

00:16:24.500 the end of the day i think this is what you're pointing out right now brett you know i get to

00:16:28.220 the end of the day and i've been 100 present to every distraction that's crossed my radar

00:16:36.420 but the only thing i haven't been present to is what ultimately i think is most important in life

00:16:42.740 you know and so i feel like we have to create some little habit for doing that every day because

00:16:50.540 no one's going to do it for us you know i mean i get all kinds of text emails whatever every day

00:16:56.820 and i can promise you that none of those texts or emails is hey chris have you reminded yourself

00:17:02.880 what's really important in your life you know that just doesn't happen and so we have to create

00:17:07.600 that that habit that routine for ourselves you know to help uh keep pulling us back every day to

00:17:14.180 our anchor or our north star however we think of those uh things that are most important to us

00:17:20.300 so this is an adaptation of the jesuit examine correct yeah exactly so that you know like the

00:17:26.000 jesuits call it examine which you know is the latin word for examining like you examine your

00:17:31.340 yourself or your conscience in this case but you know i feel like jesuits love these arcane

00:17:37.040 latin terminology that doesn't mean anything to the rest of us anymore you know so i i mean i

00:17:42.680 feel like part of what you know these one of the things we need to do with these wonderful

00:17:47.900 human and religious and spiritual traditions some of them that are thousands of years old is maybe

00:17:53.860 try to find ways to translate some of those insights into language that makes sense to us

00:17:59.960 nowadays who don't have these kind of backgrounds you know so for example you use the word examine

00:18:05.220 that's right that's what jesuits would call this practice when i talk to people i usually say a

00:18:09.460 mental pit stop you know because everybody knows what a pit stop is like and and i think that's a

00:18:14.920 more um intuitively accessible uh way of referring to it for a lot of people and also and also by the

00:18:23.800 way it takes it out of the religious you know i learned it in a religious context but what we what you

00:18:29.020 and i have just been talking about has nothing to do with my religious tradition or anybody's

00:18:33.440 religious tradition you know somebody who has no religious tradition could absolutely do what we

00:18:38.500 just spoke about all right so just rehab it's remind yourself what you're grateful for remind

00:18:42.560 yourself of your purpose and then look back in like the first like the past few hours and see how

00:18:50.200 you're doing there and what you can do better basically is perfect and i think this is an important

00:18:55.120 point to make and you talk about this in the book this the benefits of the exam you're not gonna

00:18:59.000 you might feel something the first time you do it but really the effects are cumulative right i think

00:19:04.540 i think one of the issue problems that people have with sort of self-improvement so they think

00:19:08.520 there's gonna be this one thing if they just start doing it and right away they're gonna see a change

00:19:12.980 and their life's gonna be just 100 better you might do this for five minutes and you might not feel

00:19:18.660 anything but if you do this for weeks months years i'm sure that you you start you'll notice a change

00:19:25.560 then yeah a absolutely amen amen to that i mean i totally i totally believe that you know and

00:19:31.880 and sometimes when i talk about this i mean an example i use is alcoholics anonymous you know like

00:19:37.540 the genius the alcoholics anonymous the the basic idea is if you have a a trouble if you have trouble

00:19:43.180 with alcohol that you can't control yourself that you would never drink for the rest of your life

00:19:48.520 and who the heck is going to pull that off you know like if somebody tells that to me tomorrow i just

00:19:54.300 want to drink right now you know but the genius of alcoholics anonymous is they say is the motto is

00:20:00.360 of course one day at a time you know one day at a time and i think the genius of this practice is

00:20:05.280 it's it's just more bite-sized and you know one day is not the rest of your life and the effects the

00:20:13.680 impact the insights whatever word you want to use of course don't come in a day or a week maybe even a

00:20:20.580 month but it's like a cumulative discipline you know and also the other thing i would say is it's

00:20:25.840 a little bit like riding the bike you know the first couple of cranks of the pedal are harder but

00:20:32.000 then you know you stay on the bike and if we're on level ground uh it starts to come a little bit

00:20:38.140 easier and there's more cumulative power in it yeah so i think that's an important observation you make

00:20:43.540 that uh you know there you know to me there is no there are no miracle cures in life and you know

00:20:51.160 we try to acquire good habits good disciplines and over time they have effect so let's get more into

00:20:56.440 these habits we we kind of jumped the gun and got to the the the mental pit stop habit but the first

00:21:01.460 one that was really interesting was it's called point out the way what do you mean by that habit

00:21:06.080 you know point point out the way to me is my shorthand shorthand way of saying be a leader

00:21:12.600 you know be a leader and you know a lot of times i if i do a seminar or a conference or something i

00:21:20.440 ask people to think of the names of of leaders and intuitively people think like oh you know i don't

00:21:26.120 know barack obama oprah winfrey pope francis you know they think of uber famous people and nobody

00:21:34.120 thinks of their own name you know we would consider it immodest to think that way but you know one of the

00:21:40.940 dictionary definitions of leadership is to point out a way or a direction and to influence others

00:21:48.800 toward it and look everybody's doing that all the time you know by virtue of for example if i'm in a

00:21:57.180 a corporate environment or sitting in a in with fellow students or wherever i am you know by virtue

00:22:04.200 of how hard i work whether i'm really trying to use my gifts whether i support other people or would

00:22:10.340 stab them in the back whether i would cheat if i get away with it in other words all of these all of 0.64

00:22:15.800 these behaviors and values are kind of pointing out a way and having some influence you know either on 0.96

00:22:24.760 one or two people who see us in action or sometimes if we have a big platform on a lot of people

00:22:30.520 so you know so that first habit of pointing out the way is is really inviting people to think about

00:22:38.340 the fact that hey pal my friend you know you have a leadership opportunity and responsibility now

00:22:44.600 you know like not if you become president of the united states or chairman of your company but just now

00:22:51.400 you know your actions are pointing out a way and having some influence and so please keep that in

00:22:57.160 your mind and think about what way you would be proud to to point out by by your behaviors and

00:23:04.240 actions yeah i think that's a great point once you think of yourself that i'm having an influence on

00:23:08.220 people that idea can immediately change how you behave because you realize wow it's actually going to

00:23:15.540 influence people so i better bring my a game to them uh whatever that might be absolutely so another

00:23:21.840 habit is bring big heart every day and i so first off like what do you mean by that and then i've got

00:23:27.660 some follow-up questions i want to ask about because this was the one that i thought was i had a lot of

00:23:30.780 questions about yeah so let me let me tell a story i i didn't tell in the book so once i uh not so long

00:23:38.500 ago actually i was at a um i there's a manhattan school of music is not so far from where i work

00:23:44.380 and it's this wonderful place where you know these folks in their late teenage years or college age

00:23:50.320 years a very high level of musicianship are learning to be great musicians and i i and you could wander

00:23:57.720 into the street and hear them you know do their little recitals and so on and one day there was a

00:24:02.560 master class taking place for piano students and this guy and so these these students would come in

00:24:09.640 and you know their technical skills were fabulous but sometimes they're playing at least in the mind

00:24:18.640 of this master who was coaching them was a little robotic and and an observation he made was you know do

00:24:26.320 you know what the word virtuoso means and we think of virtuoso as being as meaning excellent of course

00:24:33.980 you know he's a real virtuoso but part of this master teacher's point was that part of the root

00:24:41.140 of the word virtuoso is just being brave and his point was you know you just need to go for it in

00:24:49.360 playing you have the technical skills but what you don't what you're not bringing enough is your heart

00:24:56.220 you know your spirit you're going for it you're taking a little risk so in a way that's the the core of

00:25:02.660 the idea i was trying to get at in that chapter namely that people who are really effective every

00:25:07.720 day are somehow really trying to live every day and not just drifting through it not just going

00:25:14.140 through the motions but whatever they're doing they're they're trying to bring their best selves

00:25:19.740 to their best gifts to and you know i i know that is not i i don't mean to over romanticize what

00:25:27.860 that looks like or feels like you know i so i've written a few books and some and people sometimes

00:25:32.640 ask about what is good preparation for for being able to write a book and without joking i say to

00:25:39.780 them you know something having worked in a big company having worked for the man for a lot of years

00:25:45.320 is good preparation because one of the things that taught me is every day you got to show up you know

00:25:51.220 some days you're bored some days it's just not coming some days you don't want to be there some days

00:25:55.940 you feel a little bit sick or off but you have to learn the discipline of being willing to sit down

00:26:01.960 and try to put in your effort to whatever you're doing that's the core of the idea i try to get out

00:26:07.680 there but how do you do it on those days right where you just you wake up and you're just like i just

00:26:13.160 i'm not feeling it right um and you know and it could be like not just about work but it's like

00:26:19.900 like your family you're just like i uh i don't want to i just want to sit and do nothing

00:26:24.360 so how do you overcome that tendency to just be passive and not be you know live boldly live

00:26:31.700 bravely and again like you said we're not we're not trying to you don't need to like change the

00:26:35.060 world but just like live life right yeah how do you how do you overcome that well so look you know

00:26:42.620 so i have a two i have a couple of ideas about that but let me say this first as a preliminary

00:26:46.820 before i say those ideas first thing is you know if i thought i was the exemplar

00:26:51.940 of how to live every habit i write about in the book i would have written about a book about myself

00:26:57.260 not about these other people you know so i think you know the first thing i want to say is

00:27:01.840 it i wrote the book for myself too it's not like i have all this stuff figured out i'm also trying to

00:27:08.320 learn the very habits i'm championing to other people you know but having said that here's here's a

00:27:13.880 couple of things that cross my mind you know i did you know the title of the book uses the word

00:27:20.040 habits and i use that for a reason you know because i i think habits and discipline are

00:27:28.600 important you know i mean it's not sexy but i think it's important and i sometimes i think we

00:27:34.440 have this and you almost alluded to to it a little bit earlier in one of your questions this kind of

00:27:40.020 romantic idea that i'm going to have some inspirational moment or insight or moment of truth

00:27:47.420 and then from then on all the motivation will come and i'll always be running for the prize and so on

00:27:54.640 and in my experience the world you know just does not work that way and so i feel for a lot of us

00:28:01.020 part of getting to that result part of getting to a really invested pursuit of whatever is important

00:28:09.480 is that we kind of teach ourselves good habits you know and part of and and one habit is i'm going to

00:28:16.120 try to show up every day you know and do what it is i'm here to do whether it's take care of my kid or

00:28:21.100 be good to my wife or be somebody who really tries to help customers or be somebody who's honest i'm

00:28:27.100 going to try to bring you know work hard to do that every day and get myself into the habit so that's what

00:28:34.120 the first thing i would say but the second thing i would say is you know you're right i mean some days

00:28:40.340 it is just absolutely not there and i have always found the motto of uh the medical profession

00:28:48.600 to be strangely relevant to every every other life you know some people may know that uh

00:28:55.720 you know it it's not actually in the hippocratic oath but but it's sometimes said that the first

00:29:01.320 motto of a doctor is first do no harm and you know sometimes that's the best you could settle for

00:29:08.860 today like in other words i know this is not going to be a winning day but let me at least see

00:29:14.460 if i could do no harm today you know do no harm to the people i love i don't mean physical harm but

00:29:20.400 you understand my point you know not say the thing that's going to be hurtful to my spouse or not treat 0.90

00:29:27.240 my kid in such a way that's going to be uh punishing or harsh or not make life a pain in the ass for my 0.80

00:29:33.740 colleagues you know that's the best i'm going to be able to accomplish today is doing no harm and if

00:29:38.780 that's the best that's okay too right i think it's also important you know you're gonna you're gonna

00:29:43.060 have seasons in your life where it's like super productive and there's other seasons where there

00:29:47.040 might be a lull and that requires patience and you just keep plugging away and eventually you'll get

00:29:53.600 that mojo that comes back for whatever reason yeah and let me actually if you don't if you don't mind

00:29:58.360 let me say something about that too you know one of the one of the uh quote that's always been very

00:30:02.560 helpful to me in my own life is from kierkegaard the danish philosopher and he had this line life

00:30:10.040 must be lived forward but can only be understood backward and in other words what he was getting

00:30:16.920 at is and i and absolutely i felt this way you know there were times like i'm a jesuit and now i'm

00:30:22.720 kind of discovering this is not where my calling is in life and where is this going and am i going

00:30:28.260 anywhere am i getting am i making progress and going forward we got to live like that in other

00:30:34.860 words it's not always clear where the next year will bring me or that things are going well or that

00:30:40.980 i'm making progress so we have to live like that but i would say in my own experience and especially

00:30:48.840 now that i have a few years under my belt when i look backwards when i look back over my life

00:30:54.480 i get a more reassuring feeling of you know something actually it has made sense and you

00:31:01.720 know even those periods where i wasn't sure i was getting traction i can now see i was learning

00:31:07.520 something you know and and it was helpful to me in the long run so that you know that idea has always

00:31:13.820 been helpful to me at least in helping to keep me moving forward in these times where as you say

00:31:21.540 it doesn't feel like where i'm getting anywhere or i'm learning anything or i'm accomplishing what

00:31:26.420 i want to accomplish so you devote another chapter to like competition and how it can sometimes sap the

00:31:34.080 satisfaction life but it's sort of a paradox because competition can actually be really engaging

00:31:40.380 right it's motivating it feels good to win but when can that feeling that positive feeling turn into

00:31:48.880 something that that's you know that's negative yeah so you know to illustrate what you're getting

00:31:56.020 at when when uh something is positive could feel negative is so as we've discussed i worked in

00:32:01.360 investment bank for many years and for a while i was a managing director so i would have to you know

00:32:06.100 give people their bonus checks at the end of the year and let me tell you something to do that in an

00:32:11.740 investment bank is an experience everybody should go through in life and it is not a pretty experience

00:32:16.760 you know because you'd be given checks to people for these huge amount amounts of money sometimes

00:32:22.840 and you'd feel like oh man i mean we have such undeserved good luck we should be thrilled we should

00:32:30.840 be so grateful and in fact you know the kind of way it would play out would be it would be kind of

00:32:36.880 grim you know i mean nobody many people would not want to show if they were happy because they were

00:32:43.180 already sort of positioning themselves for a year from now and other people you know they would

00:32:48.960 they would kind of be okay but then an hour later once they started to hear what other people

00:32:53.540 seem to have made then they'd become all unhappy and you know i use it to illustrate this reality

00:33:01.300 of once we fall into that trap of living our whole life in comparison with other people

00:33:09.040 that is a total sinkhole for negative energy and unhappiness and everything else you know whether

00:33:15.380 it's comparing the size of a bonus or how many likes you get on facebook or whether my house is 0.97

00:33:21.420 bigger than yours or whether i have less wrinkles than you do any of that crap you know once we kind 0.78

00:33:26.380 of live by comparison it's deadly you know because there's always going to be somebody you could find

00:33:31.940 who has more or who is doing more and you know sometimes i there's a frame one way of thinking

00:33:39.460 about it is instead of living approaching my life in a competitive way or a comparative way

00:33:46.900 i might think of my life in a contributive way you know in other words i'm not here on earth

00:33:52.580 to compare myself to you and to outdo you i'm here on earth to contribute to something you know whether

00:34:00.000 first to my family of course you know to making people feel loved and grow and and reach their

00:34:06.220 own potential then to my community and my colleagues and so on you know and when we when we

00:34:11.900 can kind of steer our heads more to this contributive way of thinking i think it's a formula that could

00:34:19.820 bring a little more satisfaction you know when then when we're stuck with a very comparative way

00:34:24.720 of thinking you know you mentioned competition let me say a word about that i mean you're you're

00:34:28.460 right that and it is kind of paradoxical that you know to to compete does lift our game you know and

00:34:36.440 and make us better i once heard this i wish i wish i invented this myself i don't know if it's true

00:34:41.680 but somebody once made a comparison to me for me of the words competition and rivalry i have no idea if

00:34:50.420 this is true but i'll say it anyway and their idea they etymologically what they were explaining to me

00:34:57.420 was that competition has more the sense of what we do together and we lift each other's game you know

00:35:05.560 by competing in the race with you it forces me to be the very best i can rivalry has more the

00:35:14.500 etymological sense of drinking out of each other's river or sharing the same river or something so it's

00:35:20.940 more like a fight you know the point is not that competition makes me better the point is rather

00:35:28.240 that i need to beat you and that's where the troubles start and so i imagine the way you shift

00:35:34.960 from this comparison to contributive mindset is through that daily practice that you do yeah good

00:35:42.080 for you absolutely because you know how often do i forget what i just told you about every three

00:35:49.260 hours you know because this is what life is huh i mean i see that somebody i know has been very

00:35:54.960 successful you know even a friend of mine and i know that the good part of me you know all i want

00:36:01.180 is to celebrate their success but there's a little there's a little part of me that gets a little bit

00:36:07.140 resentful you know also and i'm ashamed to admit it but i mean i think that's part of what being human

00:36:13.460 is like you know that we screw up and we're not our best selves all the time so yeah i mean to to kind

00:36:19.160 of commit to this practice of okay look i'm gonna try to take a couple minutes every few hours and pull

00:36:25.220 myself back on track so that i can hopefully reel myself in before my craziness of resentments or

00:36:33.400 competitive spirit or greed or status concern or lust or whatever the hell is the nonsense you know

00:36:39.940 takes uh you know it takes too firm a grip on me so another habit you have is a give away your sneakers

00:36:45.500 what do you mean by that so that's a story that that's a story that really uh touched me i'm uh on

00:36:54.040 the on the board of a hospital system and we try to curate gather and and collect stories every year of

00:36:59.640 folks who are really showing the spirit of our hospitals at their best and one of those stories

00:37:06.120 i read was written by a nurse in one of our emergency rooms and she said that she remembers

00:37:12.680 this uh homeless guy coming into their er not with a horrible life-threatening thing but uh just with

00:37:20.780 some uh chronic set of problems and you know they kind of patch the guy up and they're about to send

00:37:26.440 him back onto the street and the doctor who was taking care of him happens to notice that the

00:37:32.960 the homeless guy doesn't have any shoes so the er doc takes off his sneakers and gives them to the guy

00:37:40.480 and then sends him back out onto the street and the er nurse talks writes writes the story of that

00:37:47.480 same evening being by the window of the hospital and seeing the doctor walk through the parking lot

00:37:54.120 to his car in his socks you know and for me that really has been a touching story that i always

00:38:02.760 keep in mind and the point of the story the habit the idea of giving away your sneakers is to try to

00:38:09.680 can can i get my head today into the space where i recognize that i have some opportunity that i might

00:38:20.180 miss to make some little contribution to making someone's life better or the world better and i

00:38:27.140 give let me give you a couple of very simple examples i live in a big apartment building and

00:38:33.920 there's a there's a guy who hangs out in the lobby sometimes a resident and you know i think in part

00:38:42.500 because he's a little lonely and most of the time i kind of cruise by but because i feel like oh man i

00:38:50.940 have things to take care of or i have other things to do and so on it would cost me so little you know

00:38:55.560 just to spend those two minutes there or i walk in my neighborhood every almost every day i like to

00:39:02.400 go for a walk talk about this little mental pit stop that's how i do it sometimes and you know i live in

00:39:08.580 new york city so they're like candy wrappers and garbage on the side of the road and it'd be so

00:39:14.260 easy for me to pick up some of this stuff and you know and and just throw it in a garbage can but

00:39:18.840 most of the time i don't do that either so to kind of get ourselves into the mindset of i'm gonna take

00:39:25.260 some opportunity today to give away my sneaker in other words to do something that just happens to

00:39:32.300 float into my path that is an opportunity for me to do good and does any of that stuff change

00:39:38.320 the world absolutely not absolutely not but that i think is part of the part of our problem in life

00:39:44.920 you know that we're kind of sitting around waiting for this golden world changing opportunity and for

00:39:51.220 most of us life doesn't work that way you know and uh what what it is for us is a lifetime of these

00:39:59.720 daily small moments that in the course of decades add up to a life that you can really be proud of and

00:40:07.020 feel happy about yeah yeah one of the interesting things i've noticed in my own life is you know

00:40:11.040 thinking like how can i recognize those opportunities but what i found is like once you do it once

00:40:15.260 like your brain starts looking for those like it starts noticing those things more and uh i don't

00:40:21.660 know once you start doing it like we talked about earlier once you start doing something it creates

00:40:24.840 momentum that you keep doing it so if you're if someone's out there listening like well how can i be

00:40:29.440 more aware of what's needed just do it once and i think you'll start noticing things even more after you do

00:40:34.880 that yeah good for you and i feel like i i totally agree what you just said and i feel like i once read

00:40:39.440 even that there's some some dopamine impact sometimes in in giving away or doing good or something like

00:40:46.900 that and you know i've meant to track down that research so yeah like in other words even in a

00:40:51.900 chemical psychological level the the sort of reward we get for doing that can be its own reinforcing

00:40:59.920 mechanism that helps us to you know get beyond the first few cranks of the pedal and get us to the

00:41:07.580 point where it's now rolling more smoothly so last time but i want to talk about we haven't hit on all

00:41:12.900 of them but the one that really stuck out to me was gratitude and you started off the chapter with

00:41:17.700 the sentence gratitude is like cholera so explain that one how is gratitude like this terrible disease

00:41:25.400 that people suffer in tropical areas so you know cholera is a spread person to person and cholera is

00:41:34.900 very impactful and same with gratitude you know it's it's if if i am a grateful person i show gratitude

00:41:42.060 to you that makes you happy happier and in turn makes you a more grateful person and you know i have

00:41:51.540 absolutely seen that to be true in in my own life you know i tell the story of a of a teacher who um

00:41:58.580 after i made this little pitch for gratitude in a seminar she happened to have an interaction with

00:42:04.900 somebody back at her school and just in the business-like way that we tend to interact you

00:42:09.840 know just okay please do this or so on and then afterwards she kind of remembered the concept of being

00:42:17.120 grateful and uh so she sent a follow-up note to this guy who had done something back in the school

00:42:21.900 and said look thank you very much i really appreciate your dedication to the school and the

00:42:28.400 guy sends back a note to her saying oh thank you you made my day and then she comes up to me with her

00:42:34.280 cell phone she shows me this note and like she has tears in her eyes she's so happy you know and then

00:42:39.180 i feel happy and i you know i must say i have found that to be true and i feel like what part of the

00:42:46.880 craziness and the disease of of modern life is that we're very problem aware you know do this solve

00:42:56.380 this this is going wrong this is a pain all this kind of stuff and uh instead i think sometimes we have

00:43:04.040 to kind of rejigger our mechanism to to be a little more mindful of being grateful you know i also tell

00:43:11.000 the story in the book about my uh mother and uh who's passed away now after a wonderful life you know

00:43:18.880 she had a a serious car accident at one point and it took weeks and weeks for her even to stand up again

00:43:25.880 much less walk and i remember distinctly one day going down these few flights of stairs in a in a

00:43:34.860 on the way to a train station and just being able to savor the miracle that i could walk down a flight

00:43:44.000 of stairs you know and i mean i don't i don't mean to be overly romantic but i mean it's true i mean

00:43:50.360 there's there's uh so much that we have that we take for granted and you know it it the the research

00:43:59.220 the positive psychology research teaches us that people who are grateful you know they end up being

00:44:04.100 happier they end up just naturally wanting to exercise more they end up being more productive

00:44:08.820 and so what can we do to kind of flip the switch into being more grateful persons and getting all the

00:44:16.320 payoffs that come with that and that's why you do the daily practice absolutely step one be grateful

00:44:21.920 be grateful well chris this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:44:26.120 about your work uh so i've written a few things and you know you can easily find things i've written

00:44:33.000 on amazon or wherever you go for books and i there's a personal website which is chrislowney.com

00:44:39.780 just all my words chris l-o-w-n-e-y one word uh dot com and i'm always delighted to hear from folks i'm

00:44:49.360 not so famous that i uh that i can't return emails so you know i i always appreciate hearing people's

00:44:56.400 insights and ideas and having a chance to respond to them well fantastic chris lowney thank you so

00:45:01.480 much your time it's been a pleasure it's been my pleasure thank you my guest it was chris lowney he's

00:45:05.420 the author of the book make today matter it's available on amazon.com you can also find more

00:45:09.660 information about his work at chrislowney.com also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:45:14.320 slash make today matter where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:45:18.300 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:45:34.580 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy the show if you

00:45:38.700 got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take a minute to give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:45:42.280 it helps that a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is brett mckay

00:45:46.540 i'll be telling you to stay manly

00:45:47.920 you

The Art of Manliness - June 12, 2018

#413： Make Today Matter

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