The Art of Manliness - How Doing a Life Review Can Help Your Understand Your Past, Present, and Future

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast who and where do

00:00:11.980 you want to be in the future it's a question we typically answer by looking ahead my guests would

00:00:16.020 say you can actually best find the answer by looking back his name is William Damon he's a

00:00:20.020 Stanford psychologist who studies adult development and purpose and is the author of the book a round

00:00:24.020 of golf with my father the new psychology of exploring your past to make peace with your

00:00:27.760 present on the show today bill explains why you should consider doing something called a life

00:00:31.280 review it's a process you can initiate at any age in order to get greater clarity on what is now

00:00:35.480 probably a blur of memories around how you ended up who and where you are today bill explains the

00:00:40.080 steps of doing a life review and how doing one can do two things for you one help you think more

00:00:44.200 positively and gratefully about your life story even its regrets and understand why you made certain

00:00:48.680 choices and developed as you did and then two help you refine your life's purpose recognize that you

00:00:53.140 can change and grow no matter where you are in the life cycle and chart a course for further development

00:00:57.080 in the future bill does this through the lens of the fascinating story around how he came to do

00:01:00.920 his own life review in order to better get to know himself by getting to know his father who he was

00:01:05.200 told growing up was killed in world war ii but bill would discover in fact survived the war and led a

00:01:10.440 more complex life than bill could have imagined after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:14.560 awim.is slash life review bill damon welcome back to the show thank you always delighted to be here

00:01:30.620 so we had you on way back in 2017 to talk about your book the path to purpose and this is about your

00:01:36.840 research on where you look at how young people adolescents young adults develop their sense of

00:01:42.600 purpose you got a new book out called rounded golf with my father and this is both a exploration of

00:01:49.480 a psychological concept that we'll talk about life story but it's also a memoir where you use this

00:01:55.160 concept of telling or recreating life stories to explore the relationship or non-relationship

00:02:01.360 relationship that you had with your father so let's talk about this idea of a life review

00:02:06.240 what is a life review who developed it and what are the benefits of of a life review

00:02:12.540 a life review is a way to continue your development of purpose throughout the lifespan

00:02:20.060 as you mentioned earlier when we talked a few years ago i had focused most of my work on young

00:02:26.980 people developing purpose adolescents young adults and i've since then become more and more interested

00:02:34.740 in purpose throughout the lifespan and one way to continue purpose learning and it's always

00:02:41.540 important to keep your purpose alive or to look for new purposes as you grow through adulthood and later

00:02:48.280 in adulthood and one way to do that is to look back on your life whatever you've done and think about

00:02:56.840 what the high points were what the choices you made were what the failures and regrets you have

00:03:04.300 were how you can learn from them and how you can bring it forward to first of all understand who you are

00:03:11.500 in the present and how you got there but also to make choices about your future because you always

00:03:17.760 have a future as long as you're alive and the future means figuring out how you're going to change how

00:03:25.620 are you going to adapt to new conditions and the point of the book really is that thinking positively

00:03:32.700 about the future means that you really have to come to terms with your past including including some of

00:03:38.240 the regrets you have and my book is full of uh full of missed opportunities and regrets a lot of them have

00:03:45.700 to do with my relationship with my father or my non-relationship and that's the story that i tell in the book

00:03:51.680 using myself as a case in point for this idea of purpose development throughout life

00:03:58.040 well this idea of life review this has been around for since like world war ii you saw the beginnings of

00:04:04.980 it with victor frankel and his logo therapy and then there's a guy named butler who took the idea of

00:04:12.320 finding meaning in your life by basically doing a life review what was butler's idea like why did he

00:04:19.540 think okay we're gonna you create this story about yourself and what was he hoping it would you be

00:04:25.660 able to do with that yeah butler was an amazing person he died in 2007 he was a psychiatrist and a

00:04:34.120 legendary psychiatrist he founded the national institute of aging he wrote a pulitzer prize winning

00:04:40.060 book he coined the term ageism in fact so he was a great figure a great public figure early in his

00:04:47.540 career before he started before he moved to the stage of being a public leader he developed the

00:04:54.980 method of the life review and he developed that to deal as a psychiatrist with his patients that were

00:05:01.900 battling depression late in life and he figured the reason they were getting so depressed is that

00:05:08.140 they were thinking about their pasts in the wrong way and in a very haphazard way remembering the

00:05:15.480 things that really stung them in the past and not getting over them and thinking oh gee i made bad

00:05:22.380 choices if only my life had turned out this way rather than that way or if only i'd made this choice

00:05:28.260 rather than that choice my life would be great all of these kind of defeatist attitudes and so he worked

00:05:35.380 on a life review that was a systematic way of thinking back on your life thinking about what was

00:05:40.920 meaningful and purposeful and everybody has those things and also thinking about the idea that you

00:05:47.580 wouldn't be the person you are now if you hadn't made those choices even if the choices felt like

00:05:53.900 mistakes at the time and so it's a very compelling method i am not a clinical psychologist or a

00:06:02.820 psychiatrist and my book has nothing to do with depression but it does have to do with attempting to

00:06:08.920 cast a positive light on your life and making the best use out of your past memories that can prepare

00:06:18.380 you for a hopeful positive and purposeful future and i'll just say one more thing about this whole

00:06:25.600 idea of looking back into the past a lot of people say well gee you know i gotta get over the past it's

00:06:31.500 kind of dead or it's you know why think backwards why not just look forwards you know the kind of don't

00:06:37.640 look back attitude but i quote faulkner and i think faulkner was right on this and the quote is the past

00:06:45.940 is not dead it's not even past it's part of who we are and either we come to terms with it or we don't

00:06:53.260 but if we don't we're going to be living for a long time with regrets and a kind of a disorganized

00:07:00.440 and not even authentic view of who we are how we got to this point and where we should go moving

00:07:07.080 forward well i think a point that butler made and you make too is that we're always telling stories

00:07:12.960 to ourselves like butler noticed that his patients with depression they were telling a story to

00:07:17.520 themselves it was just they weren't even thinking about it and as a consequence it was a story that

00:07:23.460 you know tended to go negative because they had that negativity bias what he said okay if you're

00:07:28.560 going to tell a story about yourself we have to do that to develop ego integrity to have a sense of

00:07:33.220 self let's at least be a little bit more systematic about it yep that's exactly right telling stories

00:07:39.420 is a human it's a feature of human life and in fact we tell little stories every time we take a trip to

00:07:46.220 a store and come back and say hey i got a great bargain or some anything even trivial little stories

00:07:51.620 all the time and that's natural and it's good but in addition to doing it spontaneously if you do it

00:07:58.020 thoughtfully and intentionally and really go back over your life to take a look at try to understand

00:08:04.860 what was important to you in your past life and why does that matter and what meaning can that bring

00:08:12.080 to your present and future life that can really give you a uplifting sense of who you are and a lot

00:08:19.220 of confidence moving forward when did you pick up on the idea of life review would be useful to help

00:08:25.680 people develop a sense of purpose and meaning because this is your area of work purpose and

00:08:29.420 meaning when did you make that connection between the two ideas yeah well intellectually i made it

00:08:35.140 through my work because i do read of course in the field of lifespan developmental psychology

00:08:39.760 and so i knew about butler's work and about people like dan mcadams who's done

00:08:44.580 landmark work on narrative identity so i knew about all this but i never really brought it home

00:08:51.180 what brought it home to me was the amazing discovery that my daughter led me to having to do with my

00:08:59.680 father and i use this as the case in point i use myself as a case study in the book about how somebody

00:09:07.000 in my early 60s which is pretty late in life can transform a view of who you are and how you got to that

00:09:17.600 place by doing the life review and i was shocked into doing it by the revelation that my daughter

00:09:24.760 came up with that my father who had abandoned me at birth was actually not a no account scoundrel he

00:09:33.720 had a life and an interesting life he was dead at the point that my daughter discovered this but

00:09:38.060 she came up with information that fascinated me and gave me a sense of who he was and i did at that

00:09:45.220 point the life review including research on who he was and got to know him in absentia and that

00:09:52.000 meant a lot to me and it really did fill in my life story all right so you're exploring your

00:09:57.460 relationship with your father that was a way for you to put theory into practice well let's talk about

00:10:02.160 that a little bit about your relationship with your father so as a boy you never knew your father

00:10:06.920 growing up what were you told you know what happened to your dad that he died that what was the story

00:10:12.680 that you were told as a young man and that you believed until you know your 60s right well my mom

00:10:18.620 told me during my whole childhood and adolescence that quote my father was missing in world war ii

00:10:26.880 that phrase was like a mantra it was the only thing i ever heard and whenever anybody asked me

00:10:34.900 where's your father who is your father when i was in school my friends my teachers i would repeat

00:10:41.520 that mantra he's missing in world war ii i assumed that meant he was killed in action

00:10:46.680 and that's actually on my school records i found when i was in college my mother showed up in my

00:10:53.580 college dorm one day and revealed to me that he was still alive and in fact she said he's been sending

00:11:01.400 me a hundred dollars a month child support and she felt maybe she should share that with me because

00:11:06.620 i was i had a scholarship to college and she wasn't contributing to my college expenses i was

00:11:13.960 kind of shocked i thanked her for her generosity i refused the uh share of the child support

00:11:22.380 and the conversation lasted about a minute she lived another 42 years and we never discussed the matter

00:11:30.760 again i felt embarrassed i she was basically revealing that she'd hidden his existence from me

00:11:37.920 from my whole childhood but my other my attitude really was well okay this guy abandoned me he must

00:11:44.280 really be a irresponsible cad i don't want to know about him i don't want to have anything to do with

00:11:49.140 him and so i refused in my mind to even think about him for the next 40 years or 50 years or 40 years

00:11:57.120 of my life and it was only when my own daughter got interested and started poking around in online

00:12:05.580 archives and so on and came up with information that i kind of realized you know i can't just live

00:12:12.340 my whole life in denial and he's a guy that he's dead now but i'd like to know more about him at that

00:12:18.860 point so i began finding out what he was like at the point where my daughter made a phone call

00:12:27.100 to me a very consequential call saying dad i don't know if i should be telling you this

00:12:31.960 this might upset you but i found out who my grandfather is and who your father is and that

00:12:38.320 got me hooked and you noticed you you highlight too in your research you've noticed this with a lot

00:12:44.100 of individuals when they get to about your age like their 60s um they they take an interest in

00:12:50.520 genealogy to figure out who they are like what do you think is going what is it about that age and

00:12:55.140 adult development that i don't know people feel nudged to to research about their their roots

00:13:01.680 yeah exactly it's exactly as we talked about earlier that people have a need to think about

00:13:12.960 what's been important in their lives and that need always comes up during any transitions any important

00:13:19.520 life transitions of course it comes up when you graduate college and so on earlier but later in

00:13:26.660 life when you especially when you get to your 50s 60s and so on a lot of things that you were committed

00:13:32.600 to begin not necessarily going away but begin to take less of your time in my case my children

00:13:39.880 had left home and gone on to their own lives and i'm not a micromanaging parent i keep in touch

00:13:46.420 with them but it's not the same as when they're in your home you begin thinking about retirement

00:13:51.280 and so a lot of the purposes that you have in life begin to become withdrawn and you think about

00:13:58.420 who am i and what am i going to do moving forward i still have a lot of life to live and i think that

00:14:04.600 that's why people the baby boomer generation for example of of which i am sort of part of is so

00:14:11.080 fascinated by their ancestry and by their own earlier life because that's a way to construct

00:14:19.360 how you got to this point and what is important for you for your parents and who you are and not

00:14:26.180 only who you are this is really the main point but who you want to be going forward because we are

00:14:32.280 always in a position to learn to build new things in life to reconstruct our lives to develop

00:14:40.720 our identity further in a positive way and that's what keeps us alive and we still have a lot of

00:14:47.160 life to live even when we hit our our 60s so that's i think that's why people are drawn to this naturally

00:14:53.880 yeah it sounds like it's preparing you for that generative phase of life yeah yeah exactly okay so

00:15:02.300 the phone call from your daughter saying hey i dad i found out some stuff about your dad he he didn't

00:15:07.100 disappear he wasn't a scoundrel he actually had an entirely different life on his own and we'll talk

00:15:11.760 about what that life looked at and it would sound like his life was enriched and he contributed to

00:15:16.780 a higher cause than himself had his own family so you find this out and you're like wow i gotta i gotta

00:15:22.200 explore this some more so let's use this as a starting off point to talk about this life review process

00:15:27.740 and the first part is basically just collecting information to construct that story how did you

00:15:34.860 start that collection process well number one i got in touch with my father's still living relatives

00:15:42.720 he had a younger sister who was fortunately 12 years younger than him so she was actually pretty vital

00:15:49.020 in her maybe age 80 or something like that and she welcomed me i went to visit her and she revealed a lot

00:15:57.640 of stuff that opened new doors for example she revealed to me that he had gone to the same

00:16:05.060 high school that i went to a private independent school that i had no idea how i'd even gotten there

00:16:12.360 because i grew up in a not very advantaged situation my mother was a single mother we were not well off

00:16:19.840 and i i never understood how how did i ever get to this was phillips academy andover a wonderful boarding

00:16:27.280 school how in the world did i ever get there well it turned out that my father went there and that's how

00:16:31.980 my mother knew about it and she arranged the necessary financial scholarship and so on

00:16:37.300 and that was a great educational experience for me but it didn't just happen

00:16:43.040 so that's an example of how information can really change your view of of who you are and how you got

00:16:51.620 there and of course once i learned that i could go back to the school i dug up my father's old school

00:16:58.320 records i dug up my old school records in the archives i could compare them look for similar character

00:17:05.480 traits look for differences in how we approached our schooling he was much less ambitious than i was and

00:17:12.080 kind of irresponsible at that age and his irresponsibility of course continued to when he abandoned

00:17:18.400 my mother and me and and as much as i wanted to learn about him and um and found a pathway to respecting

00:17:28.220 him because he had done some very positive things in his life i still had to deal with how to forgive him

00:17:34.500 for that act of irresponsibility of abandoning my mother and me and that was a crushing blow to my mother

00:17:41.180 and for me i had to figure out how it how that made a difference in my life and that was not simple

00:17:49.700 because there were upsides and downsides to growing up without him there well so you mentioned your

00:17:56.180 mother had passed away before you to start start on this you know exploration this life review so how

00:18:02.000 did you find out how she felt about or what she knew about your father abandon you guys you know it's just

00:18:08.760 in little bits and pieces and kind of a salvage operation but i uncovered one amazing document

00:18:16.720 she had of course no pictures of him or any information and never talked about him but when

00:18:23.480 she died i went through her belongings and she had one little memorabilia of him it was a little note that

00:18:31.500 he sent from the army from germany he was serving on the lines front lines in germany in world war ii

00:18:38.580 and there's a little note that he started the note dear pie face a little note of endearment i think

00:18:45.560 and how to get in touch with him he was already married to her and that she had saved that that she

00:18:51.620 had saved that among all her other things and that and that alone all of those decades it gave me a

00:18:58.340 little sense of that she still had some feelings for him and of course she chose to send her one and

00:19:03.880 only child me to his same school which again means that she found him admirable in some sense

00:19:11.360 so i guess the first step if you're trying to collect this information talk to people

00:19:15.360 talk to i mean if your parents are still around talk to them about their own lives and what they were

00:19:20.780 like growing up or talk to their siblings i mean that would be like the step number one resource

00:19:25.500 correct right and and let me just say that one of my regrets that i had to deal with is that i never

00:19:30.260 did confront my mother or talk to her openly about this and it was too late by the time i found out

00:19:37.580 about my father to do that and that was a missed opportunity and i do write in the book one of the

00:19:43.440 lessons i learned is to have the conversations with your loved ones before it's too late and another

00:19:50.420 source of of facts so you construct the story is i mean you actually you go to places to get

00:19:55.940 primary source documents about your father and yourself like you went to your old school and i was

00:20:00.980 surprised i didn't i mean i didn't i guess this must be unique to andover but they had records

00:20:06.140 for your father and for yourself like notes from your teachers yeah and and full uh especially for my

00:20:13.460 father full documents about the teacher's opinions about his character and all of that some of that

00:20:19.060 teachers don't even do these days and i can't say which schools would have this but it was pretty

00:20:24.920 amazing to discover this it was it was a little bit like a dickensian search walking down dusty

00:20:31.460 corridors and finding old file cabinets and there was a wonderful archivist at andover that helped me do

00:20:37.600 that but what i did find in not just school records i also looked from his military records i went to

00:20:44.440 the british war museum i went all over the place and there's a lot of stuff around you you can dig

00:20:49.380 up old records some of it online actually others you have to actually visit places and it's a lot of

00:20:56.780 fun to be that i was a totally amateurish historian i'm not trained as a historian at all but it's it's

00:21:04.500 amazingly moving to open a file and discover a letter written for example by your grandparents to a

00:21:11.440 school when they're upset because their son isn't doing a good job it's one of the things i found

00:21:17.120 i'd never seen letters from my grandparents before and to actually discover original documents in these

00:21:23.500 old dusty files is really thrilling especially when it's part of your family and the useful thing about

00:21:29.960 those documents it's a third-party source because oftentimes you can ask your parents or an aunt or an

00:21:36.220 uncle you know what was grandpa like what was dad like and they've got their story but it's nice to

00:21:42.020 have like a third party saying well no here's how we saw it and so it gives you a fuller picture of of

00:21:47.640 that story yeah and in the book i write a lot about memory and memory is misunderstood i think and that's

00:21:54.180 why i spend time writing about it as a psychologist because a lot of people think memory is like a camera

00:22:00.080 you know it takes a snapshot and it kind of resides there under the surface and all you got to do is

00:22:05.240 poke and see the picture but that's not right memory is partly at least a construction you you have

00:22:13.460 certain traces of things that happened and you fill them in with your own opinions and and experiences

00:22:21.080 since then so a lot of times if you do speak with your grandparents say or your great parents

00:22:26.900 they'll do their best to tell you stories and that's great you should do that and get their versions

00:22:31.600 of things but you should understand also that they're they're constructing a lot of the details

00:22:36.600 themselves out of their feelings about what happened and so it is very helpful to find other third

00:22:44.180 sources objective documents and historical records and so on to get the whole story and and to get the

00:22:50.980 more accurate story because memory is never going to be 100 accurate we're going to take a quick break

00:22:56.440 for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show besides checking it with third-party sources

00:23:05.800 like how do you do this internally so you know we've had a psychologist on to talk about the idea of

00:23:11.520 cognitive dissonance so it's the idea you there's like a tension where you did something but that's

00:23:17.700 that something you did doesn't match up with how you think of yourself and so you'll do things to

00:23:22.360 release that tension where you well it wasn't that bad what i did or so how do you how do you avoid

00:23:28.560 doing that as you're constructing this the story that you're like you're not creating a story that

00:23:33.520 that's uh i want to soothing your ego um but it's it's actually you're you're getting the full story

00:23:40.260 warts and all yeah that's a great question red you know and that's the most challenging thing of all

00:23:45.120 that's the psychological challenge and you're absolutely right there are tendencies are to do all kinds

00:23:49.780 of rationalization denial bad away recollections that we don't like that shed bad light on ourselves

00:23:58.480 and so on and you're absolutely right this is a challenge and you do have to kind of train yourself

00:24:04.020 and steel yourself to try to take a really frank and honest look at what you did and how you made the

00:24:10.960 decisions and mistakes that you made we all make mistakes every human being makes mistakes and so you

00:24:17.380 have to first of all be forgiving to yourself and say hey i know i made mistakes of course i did

00:24:24.200 everyone does but i'm going to be honest and and try to really confront them encounter them admit to

00:24:31.480 them and then you look for what you can learn from them you you look for the lessons and how you can

00:24:39.760 then deal with the regrets that you have because you made the mistakes and i go that that's a long

00:24:46.460 story that i go into i have a whole chapter in the book about dealing with regrets i begin by quoting

00:24:52.520 frank sinatra one of my favorite singers who sang in his in one of his famous songs regrets i've had a

00:25:00.420 few but then again too few to mention and i say you know that's a very plucky attitude and i always kind

00:25:07.160 of thought that sounded sensible but there's there is a but there which is that if you actually avoid

00:25:14.320 really admitting that you that you have a number of regrets and and you just turn away from them

00:25:20.600 you never really you never really learn to deal with them in a in a healthy way they're always going

00:25:27.840 to be there and they're always they're always going to bug you in some in some sense and so it's

00:25:32.220 really better to bring them out and to say okay i do have regrets and here's what they mean to me

00:25:38.060 because we all make mistakes and not only that part of it is understanding that sometimes the mistake

00:25:46.120 you made put you on a path that now you've ended up a different person but that's okay that's okay

00:25:53.980 the it's fine that you are that you're not the person you would have been if you had not made that

00:25:59.800 mistake yeah you did this with your father so you you got this information you got a picture of what

00:26:06.580 your dad was like and then you also got a picture of what you were doing this to yourself as well you

00:26:10.660 were talking to professors or getting records from your your university going back look reconstructing

00:26:16.900 the story of how you got to where you're doing today so you got a better idea of what your

00:26:21.000 personality was like and one thing you did is you sat and you're like okay well it's terrible i didn't

00:26:25.980 get to have a dad but then you kind of sat down and looked at well knowing my personality knowing

00:26:31.880 my mom's personality and knowing my dad's personality i don't maybe things wouldn't have

00:26:36.520 turned out the way they did if my dad hadn't left i mean it was terrible that he left but maybe it was

00:26:41.800 good that he left yeah i mean realistically i i as you said i i took an honest look at my own

00:26:48.060 characteristics his characteristics my mother's characteristics all of which i were revealed by

00:26:53.460 this life review and looking through documents and my father was a very easygoing guy that was one of

00:27:00.980 his strengths but also one of his character weaknesses because he was they didn't have this

00:27:08.420 phrase back then but he was laid back to a fault he was i describe him as an expert in not trying too

00:27:14.240 hard and my mother was the opposite she was very focused and that's part of why she was able to get

00:27:21.500 through this abandonment in a successful way eventually and have she was had a career which

00:27:28.500 was hard for a woman in those days and i was more like my mother and also very stubborn that's another

00:27:35.440 thing i learned about myself in early years there would have been domestic turmoil beyond belief in in

00:27:42.600 this family if he had come back he would have resented coming back he was over in europe he was having a

00:27:47.700 great time he met a french ballerina who he fell in love with and divorced my mother and remarried

00:27:55.080 none of this excuses his irresponsibility in not coming back but when i really took an honest look

00:28:01.980 at it i said you know my life turned out okay i had a pretty good run and it was not easy i had to learn a lot

00:28:09.600 of stuff that young men have to learn without a father and that was a challenge but nevertheless

00:28:16.760 all things considered i can't say i would have been better off if he had been around and in any case

00:28:22.860 there it is it happened the way it happened and i affirm my life it's okay and i think that's one

00:28:30.880 example of how a life review can help you settle your resentments deal with your regrets in a positive

00:28:39.600 way and end up feeling that the life i was given i'm grateful for that gratitude really is one of the

00:28:47.740 great end products of this and it's very important to feel gratitude for the things you've been given in

00:28:53.440 life it's that it helps you do that live up with that nietzsche talked about amor fati love of fate

00:28:58.260 say yes to life right yes so besides helping you sort of deal with or manage regrets things that

00:29:06.480 mistakes that happen in your life the life review can also help you see how you've developed as a

00:29:11.380 person and you saw this in your father so you had an idea okay first when you were a kid it was like

00:29:17.780 well he he died in the war well no then it was well he abandoned me and he's just a deletante and he

00:29:24.720 doesn't care about anything but as you researched your father's life you saw that this is a man he

00:29:30.140 had his faults but he also had he had some character development what did you see there and what's the

00:29:35.720 benefit of seeing how you or another person can develop as a person this character development

00:29:42.480 really came about when he went into the military he enlisted early in world war ii he was a sophomore

00:29:50.180 in college he dropped out of college and joined the army and that's when he developed his moral

00:29:56.800 maturity he was highly irresponsible in school and in college and as i said laid back to a fault but

00:30:06.860 once he got into the service he developed some commitments and one of the stories i tell that i dug up

00:30:13.200 in my research is that he was a very courageous witness at a war crimes trial that a lot of the

00:30:20.920 witnesses were being threatened and dropped out because they were afraid but my father stuck with

00:30:28.420 it and there's evidence of his testimony he wrote letters home there were newspaper stories about his

00:30:34.720 testimony and he was really courageous on the side of the angels in that trial he was ordered by general

00:30:40.780 eisenhower to be a witness at the trial and eisenhower comes across in the book i did some historical

00:30:46.260 research as really a great great leader who really cared about the troops and so on and my father rose

00:30:52.720 to the occasion and was courageous and committed and then he went on to a career in the foreign service

00:30:59.800 when he stayed in europe he stayed in germany he joined the war department and then the foreign

00:31:05.560 service the state department and then the usia he spent years in germany working to help reconstruct

00:31:14.060 the country in a in a pro-american way and then he was stationed in thailand where he became a very

00:31:21.340 significant diplomat all of this showed commitment and patriotism and love of the country and and that's

00:31:30.840 when he developed his strong character none of it again excuses his irresponsibility and the way he

00:31:38.780 hurt my mother especially and and abandoned me and that was also part of his early character but he

00:31:45.120 developed well beyond that and i i learned about that of course this is my field it's my profession to

00:31:52.180 study these things and i learned about that in a professional way that was fascinating to me

00:31:57.820 but it was also personally important to me because as i said it gave me a path to respecting him and to

00:32:05.320 thinking you know he had a life of consequence he also mentioned this one other thing that was

00:32:10.960 important to me he raised a couple of wonderful daughters who i have now gotten to know and they're

00:32:17.220 my wonderful half sisters and they're part of my family i i was an only child i now have a couple of

00:32:23.160 half sisters who my father raised and they're great people so he contributed to the world and i was very

00:32:31.100 gratified to find out about that when you've looked at your own life and develop i mean did you see any

00:32:36.240 have you seen any development in your own character as you've looked at your own life yeah i mean i've

00:32:41.880 i've learned first of all to become less stubborn and more open-minded and maybe even a little more

00:32:49.660 courageous in thinking about my past because i do think that there's a tendency maybe all people

00:32:57.580 have it to some extent but i was certainly a uh an example of this a tendency to shy away from things

00:33:04.160 that are painful and difficult and that you just don't want to think about and i've learned that

00:33:10.120 that's not such a good approach you really should confront your problems and and open them up and

00:33:16.140 that's how you get over them and so i think even fairly late in my life i've had some character

00:33:21.600 development towards open-mindedness and and the courage to look honestly at uh at my own at my own

00:33:28.640 mistakes also because as i said i should have i should have had that conversation with them with my

00:33:33.480 mother i should not have avoided it and other other and looked into other clues that came up along the

00:33:40.180 way yeah i think you had a college professor like even notes from your high school teachers they're like

00:33:44.600 i think they talked about your stubbornness like you had that was a problem even the even way back

00:33:48.740 then well that's what that's how i it was revealed to me i was kind of surprised but when i thought

00:33:53.420 about it i said hey this is right but that is an example of how a life review can give you insights

00:33:58.720 into who you were because i had forgotten all that and or maybe not even been aware of it but

00:34:03.480 it clicked as soon as i as soon as i read that on my records that bill damon you know bill damon

00:34:08.680 prides himself on being liberal and open-minded but he's really very stubborn and bears right in when he

00:34:14.600 gets an opinion or something like there's a quote something like that and i i laughed and i said oh

00:34:19.540 my god i was like that even at age 18 holy cow but i think this is this doing the life review and

00:34:25.600 seeing the ways you have developed can really help people shift to that growth mindset because i think

00:34:31.240 a lot of people when they get older they think well it was it william james said like we're kind of

00:34:35.140 like plaster and then once it's it sets in your 20s and you can never change after that but your

00:34:41.440 research says no that's not true i mean there's some things that are stable over the lifetime but

00:34:45.280 you can make nudges and and get better and doing a life review can can show you that yeah well you

00:34:52.140 know i i love william james and i thought he was a great psychologist but that's the old psychology

00:34:56.880 and you know that was over a century ago and he was wrong we've learned that people can learn as long

00:35:03.640 as the brain is still alive and character develops all through life and that is part of what my research

00:35:09.840 shows and that is exactly the hope that i had in writing this book is encouraging people to say you

00:35:16.440 know it's it's not over till it's over and people learn and grow all the way through life and the way

00:35:23.860 to do it is to be open-minded and curious and think anew about all the things don't forget your past by any

00:35:34.100 means don't have amnesia but think about your past and think anew about what it what it all means and

00:35:40.640 and who you are and who you want to be because you still have agency over that you have agency you can

00:35:48.300 you can make choices that will give you a positive future going back to how a life review can help you

00:35:56.160 figure out your purpose he defined how you define purpose and then how did doing a life review help you

00:36:02.240 i don't know you didn't discover your purpose but i guess it magnified it really brought to light

00:36:07.460 that yeah i did what i was supposed to do in this life yeah that's exactly right that's exactly right

00:36:12.360 well purpose and i think our lab really has been a leader in this developing purpose and in a scientific

00:36:19.240 sense and we have a definition that we that we care about a lot because in science you really want to

00:36:26.300 define your terms and the definition is that purpose is a long-term intention to accomplish

00:36:35.660 something that's of consequence to the world beyond the self and meaningful to the self and just in a

00:36:43.120 sentence take you through the high points of the definition it means first of all purpose is a

00:36:47.340 commitment it's not a one-shot deal you can do one-time things that are great like jump in the river to

00:36:53.220 save a drowning child but you wouldn't say that's your purpose in life that's just something you did

00:36:57.180 but purpose is a commitment to really accomplish something that you stick with and it has to be

00:37:03.780 meaningful to you if somebody orders you to do it that's really again not a purpose maybe you should

00:37:10.460 do it if somebody if a teacher tells you to do homework you ought to do it but you wouldn't say

00:37:14.460 that's my purpose so it's something that's meaningful to you that you own but it's also beyond the self it's

00:37:21.040 consequence to the world it's something it's not simply meaning it's not just reading a poem or going

00:37:27.060 to a movie or listening to some music all of which is great i'm not i'm not diminishing any of those

00:37:33.520 meaningful experiences but they're not really purpose in the definition of the term because purpose is an

00:37:40.480 attempt to accomplish something whether it doesn't have to be something heroic or noble it can be raising a

00:37:46.380 child it can be contributing to your community in any in any small way but it is attempt to make some

00:37:54.920 kind of a mark or difference in the world humble small whatever but it's something you stick with

00:38:01.280 you're committed to you care about it it's meaningful and you're trying to make a difference

00:38:06.920 in a positive sense and so when you looked at back on your life did you start seeing your

00:38:12.300 burgeoning purpose as a young man yeah well i tell a story in the book that i wasn't i wasn't much of a

00:38:18.800 student by the time i got to andover at my mother's lead but when i got there i started writing for my

00:38:26.520 school newspaper because i wanted to cover sports i did love sports i didn't have any other intellectual

00:38:33.220 interests but they sent me i was not a good writer and so they sent me to the sports events that

00:38:38.460 nobody cared about and one of them was a pickup game between our junior varsity low status soccer

00:38:46.480 team and soccer was a low status sport in those days and a group of hungarian immigrants who had

00:38:52.240 just come over from hungary because of the cold war and the revolution there and these kids these

00:38:57.620 hungarian kids were so good because they played soccer and american kids didn't and they wiped us out 1.00

00:39:05.100 our team out and i hung around afterwards to talk to them and they talked about how happy they were to

00:39:11.820 be in america and to enjoy freedom their parents didn't have to worry about being thrown in jail

00:39:19.400 anymore for political opinions and they had aspirations american aspirations they were all going to get rich and

00:39:26.060 you know they just loved this country and i thought about that and i had grown up i think i was 14 years

00:39:33.260 old at the time i'd never appreciated being in this country or any of the freedoms i didn't even think

00:39:39.140 about it but i wrote that article up for the school newspaper and my classmates read it and they all had

00:39:45.540 the same revelation i did wow and they talked to me about it and at that point i got hooked on writing

00:39:51.440 and in a sense doing research because that was what i did i discovered this thing about these kids

00:39:58.400 being happy and even though they had nothing they had no material their moms had packed them

00:40:03.500 bacon fat and green pepper sandwiches that's how little they had but they were so happy and full of

00:40:10.100 joy about being in this country so that was where i kind of discovered the purpose of what i ended up

00:40:17.300 doing for the rest of my life which was doing research writing about it teaching and finding out new

00:40:23.340 stuff that could maybe contribute to people's lives it goes back to that ninth grade experience i had

00:40:30.800 writing for my school newspaper writing for sports okay so to recap here life review first part is the

00:40:37.660 information collection phase so talk to people is the number one thing get primary source documents

00:40:43.220 about yourself or maybe your parents or ancestors so call your mom she probably has a tub with all of your

00:40:48.940 elementary school report cards somewhere in the attic ask for those review that and then basically

00:40:55.600 you just look at it and you try to figure out like find consistencies about your character how things

00:41:00.460 have changed and think about your regrets without you're not trying to manipulate the story so you

00:41:06.920 can soothe your ego but you know try to come to terms with it and it sounds like it's not a one

00:41:11.980 and done thing is this like an ongoing process exactly brett and you said it very well including the last

00:41:17.980 part which is rigorously forcing yourself to confront stuff that maybe you you wanted to forget all

00:41:23.560 those years and figure out what the meaning of that is and the other thing i'd say about it is that

00:41:29.900 everyone needs to do it in their own way i use the term ideographic study in the book because it's very

00:41:38.560 different than a typical psychological study where you look at groups of people and you have standard

00:41:44.280 methods this is the kind of thing that everyone has their own individual unique life everyone is a

00:41:50.440 snowflake everyone and so everyone is going to have their own materials to look at their own

00:41:56.900 ways of talking to their relatives and friends and their own memories that they're going to have to

00:42:04.360 confront and so it's a highly individualistic process i do not in the book give a cookbook method for

00:42:10.340 this i just described the process and and what's important about it but as i said if people are going

00:42:16.760 to do it they need to adapt it just as i did to my own conditions in life and of course i adapted

00:42:24.800 the method i did not invent the method by any means robert butler did and i adapted his writings to my

00:42:31.660 own situation so the book's called a round of golf with my dad did you ever get that round of golf with

00:42:36.580 your dad i did it was an imaginary one one of my new cousins sent me an old golf bag that my father

00:42:44.860 had used when he was a kid it was still hanging in the family garage which amazed me right there

00:42:50.320 and in the pocket of this little canvas bag was a scorecard from the pittsfield country club in

00:42:57.440 pittsfield massachusetts i managed to get a tea time with a very wonderful person that brought me on with

00:43:03.280 him and i played with my dad's scorecard in mind and kind of pretended that he was with me he was

00:43:09.540 a great golfer that was one of the things i discovered and that was one of my resentments

00:43:14.100 because he never taught me how to play golf and i love the sport but i'm very modest ability and i

00:43:21.860 played against his scorecard and that was also a kind of a bonding experience in absentia between my

00:43:29.420 father and me well bill this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:43:34.000 about the book and your work well they can go to the book the book is of course available on amazon

00:43:39.280 and every other place that books are sold so i hope people enjoy reading it it's called a round

00:43:45.680 of golf with my father the new psychology of exploring your past to make peace with your present

00:43:52.480 well bill damon thanks for his time it's been a pleasure thank you brad i really enjoyed the interview

00:43:57.080 my guest today was bill damon he's the author of the book a round of golf with my father it's

00:44:02.100 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is

00:44:06.100 slash life review where you can find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:44:09.860 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manless.com

00:44:21.560 where you can find our podcast archives well as thousands of articles written over the years about

00:44:24.780 pretty much anything you think of and you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the aom podcast you

00:44:28.660 can do so on stitcher premium head over to stitcher premium.com sign up use code manless at checkout

00:44:33.340 for a free month trial once you're signed up download the stitcher app on android.ios and you can start

00:44:37.220 enjoying ad free episodes of the aom podcast and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you

00:44:41.300 take one minute to give us a review on apple podcast or stitcher it helps out a lot if you've done

00:44:44.960 that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think

00:44:48.940 we get something out of it as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay

00:44:52.840 reminding you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:44:56.520 you

The Art of Manliness - July 28, 2021

How Doing a Life Review Can Help Your Understand Your Past, Present, and Future

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript