#413： Make Today Matter
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Summary
Chris Lowney started his vocational life studying to become a priest, before discovering it wasn t for him and shifting his ambitions to the corporate world. Today, he s a consultant and keynote speaker, sharing tactics gleaned from both his experience as a priest and a business leader that can help you live each day with more meaning.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast and we all want
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to feel like our lives matter to find this kind of significance we often think in macro terms
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about our overarching purpose and values such reflection is certainly useful but what are the
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smaller building blocks that will get us to those goals what are the things we can do to live more
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purposefully on a day-to-day basis my guest lays out 10 such habits in his latest book make today
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matter his name is chris lowney he started his vocational life studying to become a priest
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before discovering it wasn't for him and shifting his ambitions to the corporate world working first
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as a managing director at jp morgan and now as a consultant and keynote speaker today on the show
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chris and i discussed tactics gleaned from both his experience as a jesuit seminarium and as a
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business leader that can help you live each day with more meaning chris explains how to keep your
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most important values at the forefront of your mind how to approach each day with bravery and heart
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and how looking for little ways to do good deeds expressing gratitude and lead others in positive
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way will all add up to a life that matters after the show is over check out our show notes at aom.is
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chris lowney welcome to the show thanks so much pleasure to do it so you have an interesting
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background a few weeks ago we had father james martin on the podcast who was his background
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interesting because he went from the corporate world to becoming a jesuit priest you did the
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opposite for him you started off as you know going to seminary to become a jesuit then you found your
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way in investment banking so tell us about that how'd that happen yeah that's right he i i flunked out of
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the jesuits you might you might put it that way so so the the the short version of my life is i grew
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up in queens you know lower middle class new york streets went to a high school of the jesuits and
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then right after high school i joined the jesuits went into the seminary and i'm sure some of the
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listeners would know jesuits would be a i don't know you might say a brand a tradition of priests
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within the catholic church so i was studying to be a priest for a few years and you know that was a
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a great transformative life experience but as folks also probably know part of being a catholic priest
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is to be celibate not to marry and you know over time it became clear to me that that was not my
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gift or calling in life you might say and um you know if i if i tried to stick that out i was going
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to be unhappy and we don't need unhappy priests and we don't need unhappy lawyers and and so on so the
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last thing i was doing as a jesuit was was teaching economics in one of their high schools and i was
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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
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enough to catch on in the training program at jp morgan the the big investment bank and i ended up
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staying there for 17 years i was lucky enough to spend time in japan in singapore in london and when i
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left there a decade or so ago i think you know you might summarize that decision this way that you
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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
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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
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quite sure how fulfilling a life i'm gonna feel that is and also which is something i that comes up i know
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in your work from time to time and you know another factor was you work in one of these big
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massive companies and your own control your own agency your own feel for you know what am i producing
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what am i creating what am i accountable for is a little a little hard to grasp sometimes and so i
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wanted to move on and write and do conferences and and uh do things where i i felt like i'm creating
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the product that i'm sharing with the world so i'm curious how did you think your experience
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in the jesuit seminary influenced your career in investment banking i mean did you notice like did
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you approach things differently compared to your colleagues who didn't have that same background
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uh so you know i'll say i'll say two things that i think were different as a result maybe of
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being a jesuit so one thing would be that you know in banking life everything tends to have a
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trading mentality in in this respect that all the decisions have to get made within four seconds
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you know just like happens on a trading floor where you're going to buy a stock or sell a stock
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so you could bring somebody the most complicated decision in the world and the macho investment
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banking thing would be able to say yes or no on the spot you know and really that that way of
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living has kind of infected culture more broadly now you know because of social media and so on
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everything is like instantaneous but frankly a lot of decisions in life can't get made like that you
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know and they're not best made like that you know sometimes it's good to take time and and have our
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you know have what's going on inside us settle a bit and come to some clarity about what's best for us
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and so on and that's a very jesuit way of you know that's the way we would have been formed
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as jesuits and i think i always carried that way of approaching things in other words it's okay to
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take time to make a decision when you have time to make a decision sometimes even better
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so that's one thing i would say another thing i would say briefly is that um you know i think a lot
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of times in corporate life we everything revolves around learning techniques and so on like in other
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words i had to learn how to do present value calculations or how to do this or that and one
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thing that corporate life never focuses on is what's ultimately the most important thing you know who are
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you and what do you stand for and what are your values and strengths and weaknesses and i think that
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was another bias that i brought from jesuit life you know namely it's good and it's important
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to think not just about acquiring technical skills but also the skills of learning about who you are as
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a person and so on so let's get to this book you just came out with make today matter 10 habits for
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a better life and world i'm curious how did you come up with these habits is it just based on your
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experience going all the way back from your your career as a potential jesuit and then your career
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in investment banking yeah so you know maybe maybe i put it this way so i you know i do a lot of
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leadership seminars you know either corporations or or universities and so on and what you know one
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of the things i i often say to folks is you know we already know you already know it we already know
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what good leadership looks like and what crappy leadership looks like and and so on because we've
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all had experience of of people who've mentored or taught or coached or managed us and we've seen it
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in action and so you know the way i assembled the book in some ways was just to think back
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about moments and people who had very much impressed me in my own life with their ability
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to kind of live each day well you know and a lot of the a lot of the stories a lot of the habits
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came almost right away you know it didn't take me much time to think about them i mean i there
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there are people who've been quite impactful for me so i just cataloged mentally some some folks who'd
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made a deep impression on me and then tried to extract you know what what is it that sort of
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crystallizes the way they go about doing things that i that i think could help me and could help the rest
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of us and one guardrail i gave myself in putting it together was that i was interested in bite-sized
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how do you do it every day kind of stuff you know because i feel that part of the challenge of the
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of the 21st century here is that you know daily life is this utter maelstrom and there's way too much
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going on and we all have to process too many stimuli every day whether social media or television or
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whatever the heck it is and it tends to kind of distract us and draw us off course and and i tend
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to feel with a lot of people the problem in life is not just is not really that they are pointed in the
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wrong direction you know most of us kind of know where we'd like to go and who we'd like to be
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rather the problem is that daily life's craziness and distractions and nonsense kind of distract us
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and pull us off course so i was interested in habits that really boiled down to how do i do it
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today you know how can i make my daily life better not uh not so much let me think of these visionary
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long-term aspirational kind of things so before we get into the habits you start the book arguing that
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you know people need to first figure out what matters in life and you said just earlier that
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you know people have a general idea of the direction they want to go in life but i mean i think it's
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even harder now to figure that out i mean you have all these books and courses on how to find your
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life's purpose and that's kind of you know that's a challenge we have in the modern age when people
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aren't embedded in communities or institutions like if you you know for your case if you're a catholic
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priest like well i just do this thing because that's what catholic priests do or if you are you know in a
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family that is a trade fan has a history of trade well i just do this trade because that's what my
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family does nowadays like you can choose whatever you want to be and whatever purpose you have so
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what do you think is the approach on figuring out what matters and what direction you're going in
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your life when you have all these choices to choose from yeah yeah you know first of all i think the uh
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you know the way you tee up the question is is exactly right you know when you talk about the fact
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that you know once upon a time we you know cultures and and societies were much more homogenous you know
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and there was kind of a way this is the way we do things in this neighborhood or in our ethnic group
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or in our religious group and so on and you know now we live in a much more diverse world and that's
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wonderful you know it brings a lot of joys and blessings but it also makes everything in life way more
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complicated in terms of coming to judgments about what's the right thing to do what's appropriate
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how should i live these kind of things and one of the things that always haunts me in that regard is
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i remember once some years ago reading an interview with a guy who had pioneered a chief executive had
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pioneered a world-changing merger and he had recently retired and he he made a comment basically like
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you know i had gotten to the age of 60 and realized i didn't know anything about the essential questions
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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
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good for him for coming to that conclusion and going on that personal journey but i guess the point i want
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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
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that was the you know the early part of the book and the question you're getting at is how do we start
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to engage in that challenge of figuring out what sense of purpose and what matters and so on and you
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know what i like to say to people what i say in the book is you know i feel like we know we
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you got it better than you think you do you know we kind of know and what i say to folks is forget
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any big fancy year-long horrible difficult process take out a piece of paper now sit for 15 minutes
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one hour is no good and just for a few minutes answer whatever question resonates you along these
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lines resonates with you along these lines like what matters or how will i measure my life
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or how do i want to be remembered or what's what are the most important things i should stand for in
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life and maybe even write down a few quotes that are are meaningful to you as a human being you know
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a couple of the ones that that come to my mind are you know never do to another person what you
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yourself hate or you know to give away as much love as i've received you know whatever it is
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and just take some minutes to do that and i feel like for the for the great majority of us those big
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guiding principles actually come pretty quickly and clearly you know we've kind of had them in the
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back of our mind and it's just a matter of bringing them to the forefront of our consciousness
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and then you know the ongoing life trick and we'll probably talk about this later in in our
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conversation the ongoing life trick is to keep reminding yourself of it you know even every day
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because you know we're going to get constantly pulled in different directions and constantly
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pulled off course and the last thing i'll say about it is you know you teed up the question in terms of
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sense of purpose and a lot of times people think of purpose in terms of a job you know like my purpose
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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
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of different things now in the course of a lifetime and so when i think about purpose those kinds of
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questions i would prefer to steer people toward i don't know what a set of principles or values
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that are going to stay with them throughout the range of occupations they might have in a normal
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lifetime i mean look at my life i've done already done a number of different things i'm going to do
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more things so my purpose was not to be an investment banker or a writer you know my purpose
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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
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given to him for example well let's talk about that remembering because i think that's the hardest
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part based on my experience i've done those exercises we sit down and like yes i know what matters
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but then when you get in the work a day of life you just you forget it i think was it plato you know
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going back to your philosophy major and you'd probably study these guys as a seminarian too
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their ethics you know plato was really big on like whole like we're just trying to remember things
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right like we're the whole point of life is to remember the stuff that we already know
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and if we forget that's what leads to i don't know a disordered life so what's your solution like
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how do you remember those things once you realize what they are you know i'm going to jump out of the
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order of the book because i think the conversation is really pointing us that direction and talk now
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about one of the very last things i talk about in the book uh and i say to folks because this is one of
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the disciplines i was taught that every day every day we ought to take a couple little mental breaks
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so let's imagine once at the end of lunch once before i'm going to bed or on my way home from work
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and you know take five minutes if you can't manage five minutes take three minutes
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two i don't care but just a couple of minutes where no social media no phone no music no nothing
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just you and yourself and i say to folks just do three things you know remind yourself why you're
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grateful as a person and remind yourself of you know we've been talking about sense of purpose you
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know or what matters to you or what's important or what values you want to stand for
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why you're here on earth so anything like that just bring that to mind and then go back through
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your last few hours the people you're with the meetings you're in try to take away some little
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lesson that might help in the next few hours and you know break a lifetime into that bite-sized
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six ten hour nugget you know and i think the genius of this really simple practice becomes obvious
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when we think about the way we're trying to live now you know we're kind of floating along
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on this whitewater river of email text meeting distraction phone call you know and i get to
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the end of the day i think this is what you're pointing out right now brett you know i get to
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the end of the day and i've been 100 present to every distraction that's crossed my radar
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but the only thing i haven't been present to is what ultimately i think is most important in life
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you know and so i feel like we have to create some little habit for doing that every day because
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no one's going to do it for us you know i mean i get all kinds of text emails whatever every day
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and i can promise you that none of those texts or emails is hey chris have you reminded yourself
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what's really important in your life you know that just doesn't happen and so we have to create
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that that habit that routine for ourselves you know to help uh keep pulling us back every day to
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our anchor or our north star however we think of those uh things that are most important to us
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so this is an adaptation of the jesuit examine correct yeah exactly so that you know like the
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jesuits call it examine which you know is the latin word for examining like you examine your
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yourself or your conscience in this case but you know i feel like jesuits love these arcane
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latin terminology that doesn't mean anything to the rest of us anymore you know so i i mean i
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feel like part of what you know these one of the things we need to do with these wonderful
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human and religious and spiritual traditions some of them that are thousands of years old is maybe
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try to find ways to translate some of those insights into language that makes sense to us
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nowadays who don't have these kind of backgrounds you know so for example you use the word examine
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that's right that's what jesuits would call this practice when i talk to people i usually say a
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mental pit stop you know because everybody knows what a pit stop is like and and i think that's a
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more um intuitively accessible uh way of referring to it for a lot of people and also and also by the
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way it takes it out of the religious you know i learned it in a religious context but what we what you
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and i have just been talking about has nothing to do with my religious tradition or anybody's
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religious tradition you know somebody who has no religious tradition could absolutely do what we
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just spoke about all right so just rehab it's remind yourself what you're grateful for remind
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yourself of your purpose and then look back in like the first like the past few hours and see how
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you're doing there and what you can do better basically is perfect and i think this is an important
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point to make and you talk about this in the book this the benefits of the exam you're not gonna
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you might feel something the first time you do it but really the effects are cumulative right i think
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i think one of the issue problems that people have with sort of self-improvement so they think
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there's gonna be this one thing if they just start doing it and right away they're gonna see a change
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and their life's gonna be just 100 better you might do this for five minutes and you might not feel
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anything but if you do this for weeks months years i'm sure that you you start you'll notice a change
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then yeah a absolutely amen amen to that i mean i totally i totally believe that you know and
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and sometimes when i talk about this i mean an example i use is alcoholics anonymous you know like
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the genius the alcoholics anonymous the the basic idea is if you have a a trouble if you have trouble
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with alcohol that you can't control yourself that you would never drink for the rest of your life
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and who the heck is going to pull that off you know like if somebody tells that to me tomorrow i just
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want to drink right now you know but the genius of alcoholics anonymous is they say is the motto is
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of course one day at a time you know one day at a time and i think the genius of this practice is
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it's it's just more bite-sized and you know one day is not the rest of your life and the effects the
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impact the insights whatever word you want to use of course don't come in a day or a week maybe even a
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month but it's like a cumulative discipline you know and also the other thing i would say is it's
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a little bit like riding the bike you know the first couple of cranks of the pedal are harder but
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then you know you stay on the bike and if we're on level ground uh it starts to come a little bit
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easier and there's more cumulative power in it yeah so i think that's an important observation you make
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that uh you know there you know to me there is no there are no miracle cures in life and you know
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we try to acquire good habits good disciplines and over time they have effect so let's get more into
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these habits we we kind of jumped the gun and got to the the the mental pit stop habit but the first
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one that was really interesting was it's called point out the way what do you mean by that habit
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you know point point out the way to me is my shorthand shorthand way of saying be a leader
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you know be a leader and you know a lot of times i if i do a seminar or a conference or something i
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ask people to think of the names of of leaders and intuitively people think like oh you know i don't
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know barack obama oprah winfrey pope francis you know they think of uber famous people and nobody
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thinks of their own name you know we would consider it immodest to think that way but you know one of the
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dictionary definitions of leadership is to point out a way or a direction and to influence others
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toward it and look everybody's doing that all the time you know by virtue of for example if i'm in a
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a corporate environment or sitting in a in with fellow students or wherever i am you know by virtue
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of how hard i work whether i'm really trying to use my gifts whether i support other people or would
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stab them in the back whether i would cheat if i get away with it in other words all of these all of
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these behaviors and values are kind of pointing out a way and having some influence you know either on
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one or two people who see us in action or sometimes if we have a big platform on a lot of people
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so you know so that first habit of pointing out the way is is really inviting people to think about
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the fact that hey pal my friend you know you have a leadership opportunity and responsibility now
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you know like not if you become president of the united states or chairman of your company but just now
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you know your actions are pointing out a way and having some influence and so please keep that in
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your mind and think about what way you would be proud to to point out by by your behaviors and
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actions yeah i think that's a great point once you think of yourself that i'm having an influence on
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people that idea can immediately change how you behave because you realize wow it's actually going to
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influence people so i better bring my a game to them uh whatever that might be absolutely so another
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habit is bring big heart every day and i so first off like what do you mean by that and then i've got
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some follow-up questions i want to ask about because this was the one that i thought was i had a lot of
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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
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ago actually i was at a um i there's a manhattan school of music is not so far from where i work
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and it's this wonderful place where you know these folks in their late teenage years or college age
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years a very high level of musicianship are learning to be great musicians and i i and you could wander
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into the street and hear them you know do their little recitals and so on and one day there was a
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master class taking place for piano students and this guy and so these these students would come in
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and you know their technical skills were fabulous but sometimes they're playing at least in the mind
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of this master who was coaching them was a little robotic and and an observation he made was you know do
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you know what the word virtuoso means and we think of virtuoso as being as meaning excellent of course
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you know he's a real virtuoso but part of this master teacher's point was that part of the root
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of the word virtuoso is just being brave and his point was you know you just need to go for it in
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playing you have the technical skills but what you don't what you're not bringing enough is your heart
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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
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the idea i was trying to get at in that chapter namely that people who are really effective every
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day are somehow really trying to live every day and not just drifting through it not just going
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through the motions but whatever they're doing they're they're trying to bring their best selves
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to their best gifts to and you know i i know that is not i i don't mean to over romanticize what
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that looks like or feels like you know i so i've written a few books and some and people sometimes
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ask about what is good preparation for for being able to write a book and without joking i say to
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them you know something having worked in a big company having worked for the man for a lot of years
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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
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
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
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
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