The Peter Attia Drive - #288 ‒ The impact of gratitude, serving others, embracing mortality, and living intentionally

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

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00:01:04.480 My guest this week is Walter Green. Walter is a philanthropist, mentor to many, and teacher.

00:01:10.640 He's the founder of the Say It Now movement and the author of This Is The Moment, How One Man's

00:01:16.300 Year-Long Journey Captured the Power of Extraordinary Gratitude. Walter is the former chairman and CEO

00:01:21.640 of Harrison Conference Services, where he created the country's leading network of executive

00:01:25.940 conference centers. But that's not really what we're here to talk about today. I met Walter about

00:01:30.920 two years ago at an event that was curated by a very close friend of mine, Rick Elias, who's been

00:01:37.200 a previous guest on the podcast. And the things that Walter spoke about that evening really stood

00:01:42.860 out to me. And I said to him a little while after that, that I really wanted to sit down with

00:01:46.920 him and share his story with all of you. So in the conversation today, we talk about his

00:01:51.960 background and his upbringing and how it shaped him. We discuss coming to grips with death, having

00:01:56.560 peace at the end of life, and the mindset of finishing strong. We cover the value of time,

00:02:02.000 the importance of saying no, focusing on relationships over success, and why it's so important to focus

00:02:07.220 on others instead of ourselves. Walter also speaks about his Say It Now movement and why he believes

00:02:12.960 it's so important that we say things to people that matter to us long before the end of life.

00:02:19.680 In particular, this is something that really struck me. This is obviously not a podcast that

00:02:25.020 deals with a scientific topic, but nevertheless, it is a very important part of the emotional health

00:02:30.720 and mental health journey that is equally important to many of the typical things that

00:02:36.420 we discuss on this podcast. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Walter Green.

00:02:42.960 Hey, Walter, thank you so much for making the trip out to Austin from San Diego. It's been

00:02:51.700 two years, about a year and a half since we met. For folks listening, we met at the home slash party of

00:02:59.480 a very close mutual friend to both of us, Rick Elias, who's also been a guest on this podcast.

00:03:04.340 And Rick did something very special for that two-day event, which was really not a celebration of

00:03:09.920 anything. It wasn't a birthday or anything like that. It was simply Rick deciding he wanted to bring

00:03:15.560 a handful of his closest friends together for no reason other than to let us meet each other,

00:03:22.240 which I thought was a very beautiful expression of friendship. And I suppose exactly as he planned,

00:03:30.800 I am still in very close touch with a number of the people I met there, which I think means it was

00:03:37.380 mission accomplished. Did you have a similar experience?

00:03:40.740 First, I thought that's perhaps one's greatest gift. If you can give the gift of a special

00:03:46.920 relationship to people you care about, there is no more beautiful gift. And he structured that

00:03:52.460 in an incredible way, providing entertainment, but mostly the opportunity where there was no

00:03:58.500 introduction needed. Everybody knew each other because we all knew Rick.

00:04:03.080 I have heard about impact of some of the words that I shared. Rick has also shared what's going

00:04:09.260 on with others. So I've been in touch with a few. It's very special when you can, at this stage of

00:04:15.940 my life, to connect with people that have been qualified, discriminated, selected with very high

00:04:24.220 standards. So it was a real treat.

00:04:25.640 It wasn't that we got to sit with everybody in an intimate setting because we were only there for

00:04:31.280 basically 30 hours. So I don't know how many meals that turned into, but clearly the most interesting

00:04:37.700 discussions, or at least the closest discussions took place over meals. By fortune, you and I happened

00:04:43.200 to be seated next to each other and maybe it wasn't an accident. My recollection is they were assigned

00:04:47.520 seating for every meal. So for one of the meals, you and I sat next to each other, which led to the

00:04:52.400 inevitable, Hey, what's your relationship to Rick? Cause that was, I think the way we all started

00:04:57.100 our discussion and your son and Rick's son went to business school together. I'm sorry. Your son

00:05:02.420 and Rick, I'm sorry. Went to business school together. Yeah. Let's not make Rick older than he

00:05:08.200 is, but somehow we pivoted quickly from that into your story and what you're passionate about, which is

00:05:13.820 really what we're here to talk about today. But again, my recollection, Walter, is that it wasn't

00:05:19.500 you talking about your current project as much as it was an evolution of your life story.

00:05:25.340 I probably in my usual way just started pestering you with questions. Where'd you grow up? Tell me

00:05:32.200 about your childhood and what brought you to where you are. I was really riveted by the discussion. So

00:05:38.040 I think maybe for the sake of the listener, I'd like to reproduce as much of that as possible.

00:05:43.080 So tell me, tell us, where did you grow up? Yeah. So first of all, I consider that the ultimate

00:05:48.900 compliment when someone shows the interest in someone else. It's never pestering to me. It's

00:05:54.400 always very satisfying. So, you know, I was thinking about my life basically, you know,

00:06:00.200 I'm in a very reflective mood at this age. It's basically been three stages. I probably would

00:06:07.060 call the first stage and they've been running around 28 years in their 28, 29 seems to be my staging.

00:06:15.020 I haven't quite completed my, well, pretty much completed the third stage.

00:06:20.680 How old are you, Walter?

00:06:21.580 I'll be 85 next month. So the first 29, 28, 29 years were pretty much finding myself.

00:06:29.220 Just big picture. The next 29 were making myself and the last 29 have been becoming myself.

00:06:38.720 What would you like to know more of? Well, I feel like so much of what defined

00:06:44.640 the second and third, we're talking probably a lot about the insights that have come in the third

00:06:50.400 phase, but I suspect the seeds of those were sown in the first phase. So if you're 85, it means that

00:06:56.840 you were born the tail end of the depression. You're born in the late 1930s.

00:07:01.720 38. Yeah. And so you're born before the war. You come of age when the baby boomers are coming alive.

00:07:10.100 What was your childhood like? And where was it? I know you were on the East coast, but I can't

00:07:13.460 remember where.

00:07:14.540 When I think about it, I think what doesn't break you makes you. Childhood was for me challenging.

00:07:22.080 My father was a dreamer when I was one year old and my brother was two. He found a place that he

00:07:32.720 thought in the Adirondacks would make a great dude ranch. And he had been relatively successful.

00:07:38.700 He had saved, I think, $40,000 back then, which was a lot of money. And so he actually, it was a

00:07:45.660 chicken farm. It didn't work out as a chicken farm, converted it to a dude ranch. And the third year

00:07:51.240 after it opened, there was a big flood, wiped out the bridge, and we went essentially bankrupt.

00:07:58.600 So my father at the time was in his 40s. And so we had to move back into Bronx in New York and a

00:08:08.160 two-bedroom with his parents who didn't speak English. Really that first stage, I think I lived

00:08:14.560 in 16 different cities. So I won't go into all the details except to say that it really did set

00:08:21.220 the stage for my life. But it wasn't just the movement from the Adirondacks to the Bronx to

00:08:27.960 Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Albany, New York, to Connecticut, New York, Coral Gables, Florida,

00:08:32.240 Jacksonville, Florida. It wasn't the cities. It was that my mother got cancer when I was nine.

00:08:40.280 We went on our first vacation as a family. She recovered. Back then they were doing

00:08:44.740 major mastectomies for breast cancer. And our first vacation to Florida when we were living

00:08:52.820 in Albany, New York, my father was coming a couple days later. It was our first family vacation,

00:08:59.040 the four of us. And my mother got a call that he had a heart attack. So she had to fly home,

00:09:04.900 which was never easy from Florida to New York as it is today. And so began a very different way

00:09:11.740 of life. I was 11 years old, and we were reminded that we needed to make sure our dad was okay.

00:09:20.660 He was 47 at the time. So that was a game changer. The two things I remember specifically were all this

00:09:30.560 movement preempted any chance to have a relationship. I didn't have any friends. It made no sense to have

00:09:37.820 a friend I was going to be moving in a year or two. So this absence of a relationship, and I've always

00:09:44.500 found in life that I think people who are really motivated are people who haven't had it. When you

00:09:51.100 have had it, I think it's a little bit more difficult to be motivated. So not ever having a friend,

00:09:57.920 really, and not a few in high school, but prior to that, none. So the combination of no relationships

00:10:06.400 and a fear that back then with breast cancer, five years was a long time. I got very lucky with my

00:10:14.220 mother. She lived a long life, had cancer again, but survived that as well. I went off to school at

00:10:22.360 University of Michigan. Two months later, I got that phone call that my father had died from a fatal

00:10:29.300 heart attack. He was 53, and his brother died at 53. So my dad was a little older than I was as a

00:10:37.940 father, and so we didn't have much in common. And most of my concern was his welfare, and his

00:10:44.960 concern was his welfare and trying to provide for the family. The gift that I got was this incredible

00:10:53.860 branding that life is short. It's unpredictable. You never know. And from then on, I've been walking

00:11:02.560 up escalators. That's the way I live. I'm very intentional. I don't take anything for granted.

00:11:09.460 And so that was my major gift for my father. That was a tough period. I graduated from University of

00:11:18.400 Michigan, which was a struggle, because academically, that was really tough for me. But I managed to get

00:11:25.140 through. Then after a short stint in the Army, took a job with a fraternity brother. I had no place to go.

00:11:32.600 Wasn't going to go back to Jacksonville, Florida. His father was in the industrial textile business,

00:11:37.280 and I got assigned to Pittsburgh. Now, industrial textiles is another word for shop towels or rags.

00:11:43.820 Depends on how glamorous you want to make it. That was probably my 11th or 12th job. I was selling

00:11:51.180 women's shoes when I was a teenager. I had been working ever since I could get qualified to get a

00:11:57.460 job. I was always afraid that I'd be on my own. In any case, I didn't have many options, so I went to

00:12:04.040 sell rags in Pittsburgh. Two months after I started, I came back to Ohio at the corporate offices, and I was

00:12:12.120 told I was doing a really good job. And the man who had been training me, who was an older man,

00:12:18.980 I thought was a really nice guy. And at that sales meeting, I got this message,

00:12:24.340 Walter, you're doing so well. Just as soon as you could learn that job, we're going to let that man go.

00:12:30.900 And I went back to Pittsburgh, and I couldn't get out of my bed. There was no mental illness in our

00:12:37.900 family. Nobody really understood, because they couldn't see it.

00:12:42.600 So I ended up being hospitalized. Didn't talk about that for 40 years,

00:12:48.480 because back then it was a real stigma. I thought it would influence

00:12:52.180 getting into a profession, relationships. Being in a mental hospital was not something that you told

00:12:59.720 people about.

00:13:00.980 Tell me a little bit more about how that happened. So

00:13:03.100 you're obviously in your mid-20s at this point.

00:13:05.920 You hear this news. It obviously upsets you. You go back home. When you say you couldn't get

00:13:12.220 out of bed, I assume you mean the feeling of dysthymia and helplessness was so great that you

00:13:19.600 had no desire to do anything?

00:13:21.720 Yeah. So when I said go back home, I want to clarify. Home for me at that time

00:13:25.140 was an apartment with three guys. I had moved into a YMCA for a couple nights,

00:13:30.400 try and figure out where I was going to live. And so I was in a room with three strangers. That's

00:13:35.200 who I had been living with for two months. So I came back from the corporate meeting from Ohio

00:13:39.900 to where I was living. I didn't call it home. It was a rental apartment with three other guys.

00:13:45.940 I never had it before. I never had it since. But what happened was that I essentially,

00:13:52.460 I don't know, I would say I became catatonic. I just froze. I could not move. Somehow they got

00:13:59.840 me on a plane to Florida and got me to Miami. And then they said, you'd be best off in a hospital

00:14:05.640 in Massachusetts. So I flew up.

00:14:09.000 What was the length of time from when you returned to Pittsburgh to when you wound up in that

00:14:13.580 institute in Massachusetts?

00:14:15.800 Less than two weeks.

00:14:17.040 Your mom was obviously still alive. What was her reaction and what did you say to her?

00:14:21.340 They had no idea. They just knew that this young boy who was president of his high school fraternity

00:14:27.480 and president of his college fraternity, and this very mature young man was incapable of moving.

00:14:34.840 And to show you how things were at that time, I had an uncle who was very close to our family.

00:14:40.980 And he saw me in bed and he said, Walter, just get up. Just get up. You're fine.

00:14:45.800 No comprehension of what being mentally sick was.

00:14:51.940 What happened when you got to the hospital?

00:14:53.940 So it was a series of treatments, mostly dialogue and medication. And when I arrived there, it was

00:15:01.860 very difficult because when I saw others, I thought, wow, it really looks sick. But

00:15:07.040 I really couldn't do anything on my own. So I went from there to moving to Cambridge,

00:15:13.860 which I always have to laugh about because when I tell people I graduated from University of Michigan

00:15:20.180 and then spent some time in Cambridge, they always thought, oh, this guy is really smart and he's

00:15:24.480 really modest, man.

00:15:26.940 Went to that little school back east just outside of Boston.

00:15:29.680 Really, that wasn't what brought me to Cambridge, but it was a terrific experience for me. I learned

00:15:36.900 so much about myself. I was so afraid of failing and I failed and I survived. So it was a great

00:15:45.820 experience. I spent two years in therapy, learned a lot about myself.

00:15:50.260 How long were you hospitalized?

00:15:51.980 Two, three months.

00:15:53.340 Again, you mentioned that there was medications involved. Do you remember what types of medications

00:15:57.700 of the era? I don't have a deep enough knowledge of the psychiatric, presumably some sort of

00:16:02.780 era-appropriate antidepressants?

00:16:04.900 Apparently.

00:16:05.680 Did they use shock therapy?

00:16:07.300 I didn't have any shock therapy. It was a great learning opportunity for me. It was fantastic.

00:16:14.380 How did you know you were ready to leave?

00:16:16.300 Well, that's a funny story. Actually, I was seeing a therapist and it was inconvenient. I was

00:16:21.120 seeing him a couple of times a week and I'm thinking, at the time, I was in public accounting.

00:16:26.320 I was selling mutual funds on the weekends. I was really busy and having to go to this

00:16:31.640 therapist that wasn't convenient. I finally said to him, after two years, I said,

00:16:36.020 when do I finish? He said, I think you're done. That was it.

00:16:41.660 But I mean, when did you leave the actual hospital? After two to three months, what prompted that?

00:16:46.240 Oh, what prompted leaving the hospital, not what prompted the leaving of the therapy?

00:16:50.620 My guess they felt I was okay to return to society.

00:16:54.020 And how frightening was that?

00:16:56.880 You know, Peter, I can't actually say that it was frightening. I felt like I was in a pretty

00:17:02.120 good place. I had always been in a good place. It was like just this two or three months, I just

00:17:09.600 completely lost it. And it might've been an accumulation of losing my dad in the freshman

00:17:14.660 year, never really dealing with that, feeling the pressure of, oh my God, what am I going to do?

00:17:19.540 Then finally getting a job. And now my job is to, if I'm successful, I'll let this guy go.

00:17:25.400 And I think it was just more than I could handle.

00:17:28.880 Yeah. It's interesting. It seems that one of the real challenges of getting over

00:17:33.540 an episode so traumatic would be the fear of not knowing if it could happen again.

00:17:39.660 Did you feel that through the experience of speaking with the therapist while you were an

00:17:46.060 inpatient, you had sufficient resolution of that such that you weren't worried that

00:17:50.680 you were kind of an accident waiting to happen, an emotional train wreck that you couldn't anticipate?

00:17:55.940 I'm sure that was present. I was sufficiently back to who I was. This is a guy who had been in pretty

00:18:03.080 good place for all but three months of his life. And he had dealt with a lot of challenges along the

00:18:09.760 way, a lot of moving, a lot of unknowns and parents' health and challenges at school that were really

00:18:16.680 tough for me. So you can't say it'll never happen again because that's just being a little naive,

00:18:23.660 but I never feared that it would happen again.

00:18:27.140 So you mentioned insurance. So I assume when you got out of the hospital, you did not go back to

00:18:32.020 the textile company?

00:18:33.520 Oh, for sure. I mentioned public accounting. So I was in public accounting for three years. So I got

00:18:39.480 certified as a public accountant. And in the evenings, I was selling mutual funds because I

00:18:44.960 wasn't paid enough in public accounting at that time to survive on my own. I had two jobs.

00:18:50.940 All right. So continue with the story. I love it.

00:18:53.660 Yeah. So my brother called, actually. My brother Ray called from Florida and he said he had

00:18:59.180 just made $1,000 in his part-time. And I said, that's more money than I'm making for my other

00:19:05.120 two jobs. What did you do? He described he was involved in a multi-level marketing for a fellow

00:19:10.620 by the name of Bob Cummings. You'd be impressed because it had to do with health. There were nutrition

00:19:15.540 through biochemistry. It was a sale of vitamins and minerals. And Bob Cummings, I think he had like

00:19:22.280 seven kids and he looked half his age. I was anxious to make a thousand dollars. So I became

00:19:28.160 a distributor. That was my third job. I put a little card up in the laundromat near where I was

00:19:35.220 living. And the first person had said, if you want to earn money in your part-time, please give me a

00:19:40.640 call. You wouldn't get away with that today. But back then that was okay. So I answered the phone. The

00:19:46.300 person on the phone said, I'll come over. And I had my little audiovisual kid and the slides and

00:19:51.380 everything. And she seemed really interested in selling the vitamins. And as it turned out, Bob

00:19:57.800 Cummings said it solved arthritis and they shut him down three weeks later. So I lost my $500,

00:20:04.300 which is all I had. But my first salesperson became my wife. So it was the best thing that ever

00:20:11.240 happened to me. And that was at 22. We were married at 24. So what did you continue to do

00:20:18.200 professionally? Okay. Sorry for this long list of activities, but I then went into the hotel field.

00:20:25.480 Actually, we moved to New Orleans, another move. Really decided hotels weren't for me.

00:20:31.820 The search firm called and said, there's a large food service company in New York.

00:20:36.880 I like to be the vice president of administration. Lola, my wife and I were, I call ourselves single.

00:20:43.380 We didn't have any children at the time. But right prior to the move, she became pregnant and delivered

00:20:48.840 twins when we moved to New York for my other job. And I decided really the restaurant field wasn't for

00:20:54.820 me either. So now I'm with twin boys in a field that still didn't work for me. I had really developed

00:21:03.060 a lot of competencies. And when I mentor people and mentor young people, as I do today, those

00:21:09.300 competencies I knew were transferable. I was contacted by someone who had a startup company

00:21:15.000 in a new industry, a new niche of an existing industry, which is the development of high-end

00:21:22.240 executive conference centers for corporations, mainly Fortune 500 companies, as an alternative to

00:21:29.120 meeting in hotels. So there were specially designed facilities with guest rooms and fitness and

00:21:34.500 dining and recreation instead of the folding walls and the bad acoustics. And so that was a startup

00:21:41.540 company. I put my $10,000 that I had into a very, very, very small percentage of the company.

00:21:49.440 It was funny. It wasn't until I did that that I began to think with more compassion about my dad,

00:21:55.360 who had taken his $40,000 and put his life savings when he had a one and two-year-old.

00:22:02.600 And I had twin one-year-olds. And I was doing the same thing as he did in a very unestablished,

00:22:09.460 brand-new niche of the hospitality business. As it turned out, the company almost went bankrupt in

00:22:14.900 three years. Same pattern. The founders were asked to leave, and I was given the opportunity to become

00:22:22.600 president. I was 32 years old, had 400 employees. And over the next 25 years, became the major

00:22:29.160 shareholder. We had 10 centers, ran about 6,000 conferences a year with 150,000 executives. And

00:22:36.740 that was my main event, became a company that was owned by myself and some key executives.

00:22:42.140 Where in this journey does the thesis emerge for what became your 50th birthday, if I recall?

00:22:53.140 You did something special at your 50th birthday, which in many ways became the central theme of

00:22:58.100 what we're talking about. So now I'm into act two, the second 29 years. And so what I never really had,

00:23:06.980 as I described in act one, were good friends. And so now I was in my same home, and I was going to

00:23:13.360 live there for an extended period of time. And so I began to make friends. I'm not talking acquaintances.

00:23:21.500 I'm talking about people who I had authentic conversations with. And I was so joyful that

00:23:29.580 when I had my 50th birthday that I wanted to celebrate those friends. And so I invited the five of them

00:23:36.580 with their spouses and my family. There were 17 of us. I remember it like it was yesterday.

00:23:42.960 It was just the opening weekend of Phantom of the Opera. I really spoiled these people for a whole

00:23:49.420 weekend. And I really, at that time, was still limited in my cash. But I knew I was coming close

00:23:56.120 to 53. So it was important for me to celebrate those friends. And so at the reception, I paid tribute

00:24:06.400 to each one of them in front of everybody about how they enriched my life, what they had meant to me.

00:24:13.740 And like Rick's affair, some of these people didn't even know each other, but they became

00:24:21.000 connected through me. And so that was really my first iteration of this paying profound tribute

00:24:29.780 to people while I was alive.

00:24:32.280 I want to talk a little bit more about that. I mean, a lot of people would say, sure, I could

00:24:37.260 invite some friends over for my birthday and I'll make a toast to my friends. But this isn't exactly

00:24:42.780 what we're talking about here. This is a bit more profound than that. How deliberate were you in this

00:24:49.080 first rendition or manifestation of Say It Now? And how much preparation did you put into what you

00:24:56.440 would do with your five closest friends for that celebration?

00:25:00.580 It began with the invitation. And I mailed out a carton of apples. And in each apple, I planted a flag.

00:25:10.740 And each flag was a representation of another activity during that weekend. And everybody

00:25:17.920 appreciated the invitation except my son who was going to school at Dartmouth. And he said it was

00:25:23.880 quite something carrying that crate of apples in the snow. But everybody else seemed to like the idea.

00:25:30.920 In any case, our twin sons played the role of the phantom. They came in off of the platform outside

00:25:37.540 the room before with the smoke. And prior to the reception, we had some wonderful dinners, wonderful show,

00:25:44.540 rides on the carriage. It was a life event that everybody really thought was extra special.

00:25:51.320 I also created for each of them a memento of a picture and then a summary, which I still have to

00:25:59.800 this day, of two lines, two sentences, what each one present had meant to me. And I distributed that

00:26:07.780 memento at the end.

00:26:09.820 How surprised do you think they were by what you said and how much you made this day, which,

00:26:18.360 look, for most people, when they're celebrating their 50th birthday, it's all about them.

00:26:22.340 You seem to make this more about your friends. Do you think that caught them off guard? And

00:26:28.120 can you tell how moved they were by that?

00:26:30.520 Well, it was my first experience seeing how much people appreciate being appreciated and made more so

00:26:40.880 when you do it publicly. I received within a couple months, I think, a leather-bound book.

00:26:48.560 Well, I still read to this day.

00:26:52.400 Oof. Of what that weekend meant to them.

00:26:55.860 Meaning they collectively put this together as a gift back to you.

00:27:01.080 Right.

00:27:02.360 So, did you think at that point that this was a movement that could be

00:27:06.900 larger than just something you did at your birthday?

00:27:09.300 No, this was at the time, you know, I was thinking about my life. I've never won any

00:27:15.760 academic awards, ever. And yet, when I look back on it, I seem to lead most groups.

00:27:23.400 And I began to wonder, why is that? I'm never the smartest in the room.

00:27:29.140 I think I began to realize that I am kind of like an experiential learner. I kind of watch what's

00:27:35.580 going on. And I learned from that experience. So, for me, though, that left an indelible impression.

00:27:42.460 But for me, that was still locked into this fear that 53 may be done for me. So, it had no longer-term

00:27:53.860 view than that. I'd never had a longer-term view of my life. I remember attending a seminar when I was

00:28:01.240 in a young president's organization. The woman had an experience where she said, I'd like you to close

00:28:06.340 your eyes. I was, I don't know, must have been less than 50, maybe late 40s. And they said, just close

00:28:11.580 your eyes. Picture what an ideal future would look like. I closed my eyes, and it was black.

00:28:17.860 Tears ran down my face. I went up to her, because she was a psychologist. I said, I don't understand.

00:28:26.680 I assumed this was a positive experience for everybody. This was painful. She said,

00:28:34.500 does that have anything to do with how long you think you might live? Man, of course, that was what

00:28:40.280 it was related to. So, to your question, Peter, this was never the beginning of what happened later on.

00:28:47.620 There were two more. It seems like things happen in threes. That was the first act. There was a

00:28:53.300 second act when I was 70. That was a different story. Before we talk about that, you alluded to

00:28:59.940 the idea that a part of the magic of this experience was that you didn't just tell these five people how

00:29:06.680 much they meant to you. You did it publicly. Why did you decide to do that, even at the time? Was that

00:29:13.220 just intuition? Or did you have a stronger belief set that it was more meaningful to do it that way,

00:29:18.460 as opposed to tell each of them privately the exact same things that you would have said?

00:29:23.800 Oh, I love that question. I had spent, by that time, 20 years in the conference business.

00:29:28.960 And one of the focus that I had that was transferable was that I always saw the power

00:29:36.400 of expressing something in a group. So that if 10 people told you individually something,

00:29:42.720 it was not as powerful as 10 people gathering to tell that person.

00:29:47.900 In the positive and the negative?

00:29:49.700 Both, for sure. For me, it's always generally been the positive. So, once again, the life experience

00:29:57.400 is, Walter, there's power in a group. There's power there. And so it seemed quite natural to me.

00:30:04.020 Is there anything between 50 and 70 that, I mean, aside from the obvious, which is at some point,

00:30:11.000 you're 54 and you realize you did it. At what point does the fear of, well, you know, it's funny.

00:30:18.540 Mortality is 100% guaranteed. So this idea that we're afraid of dying is a bit misguided. In some

00:30:26.120 ways, it's, we're afraid we don't know when we're going to die. There's probably some fear of not

00:30:31.460 existing as well and understanding that life is finite. But how did you come to grips with that

00:30:37.480 as with each passing year, you found yourself alive?

00:30:42.380 Well, it was a gift that kept on giving because I always had my foot down on the pedal, not to the

00:30:50.620 metal, but down on the pedal. I acquired an innate intentionality. People to this day say,

00:30:59.580 how do you do what you do? And they said, one of the big reasons is I'm really good at deciding what

00:31:05.540 I don't do. It's guided my life. So I knew however long I would have, I was just going to make the most

00:31:15.600 of it. I was very grateful for every year. That's a really important point, Walter. At what stage in

00:31:23.020 your career did you go from always incoming, receiving, taking every opportunity that comes

00:31:29.960 your way to this more deliberate focus on saying no? Because I'm sure that the day you graduated from

00:31:36.880 college, you would have done anything, or I mean, you did anything. But at some point, as a person

00:31:43.080 matures and becomes more successful, and they have more and more obligations, the no button becomes a

00:31:49.600 very important button. How did you discover that? And what were your guiding principles?

00:31:55.200 I would say that the fine tuning of that, I always was concerned how much time, but that doesn't give

00:32:01.460 you focus. That gives you just a concern for time. But I attended a program at the Center for

00:32:07.480 Constructive Change when I was in my 30s. It was taught by Fred Jervis, may he rest in peace. And it was

00:32:18.080 a process of thinking that has changed every day of my life. I do not think in traditional ways that I

00:32:29.340 thought before that. I always think in reverse. So, when I'm thinking I'm going to have the pleasure of

00:32:37.120 spending time with you, I don't think, I never would ask you, what will we do? I would specifically

00:32:45.140 say it. If this conversation is really successful, what would have happened by the end of it for us to

00:32:52.260 know that our time was well spent? I ask that question for everything important that I do. Every

00:33:01.180 day. Including personal interactions? Including personal interactions. Hmm. I want to talk about

00:33:10.560 that a little bit because that makes a lot of sense in some contexts. It makes a lot of sense

00:33:17.680 at a meeting. If you have your senior leadership in for a meeting, it's really important to say,

00:33:24.580 what is the desired outcome of this meeting? How do I want behavior to change? How do I want people

00:33:28.440 to feel? Whatever. On the other hand, I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. I'm not pushing

00:33:33.360 back on the idea. I'm just sort of thinking through it, which is, I'm going away with one of my kids for

00:33:37.860 the weekend. And you're saying, instead of thinking through the activities you're going to do,

00:33:43.480 walk me through what you're thinking. I'll give you a real life example.

00:33:47.680 I was actually doing mentoring with one of Jason's friends. He came to see me and he said,

00:33:52.820 you know, I- Jason's one of your sons.

00:33:54.660 Yes. Sorry. So one of his friends, he was, I think, in his 30s at the time.

00:33:59.700 He just came down to see if he could get some coaching. And so I said, well,

00:34:05.040 give me some situations you're dealing with. He said, Walter, I work so hard during the day.

00:34:10.460 And then I go home and I spend all my energy with my kids. From morning to night, at the end of it,

00:34:17.000 they don't seem very fulfilled and I'm exhausted. And then I start all over again.

00:34:23.640 Wow. That's a tough life. I have a question you might want to ask them. They're now, I think,

00:34:30.080 nine and 11 years old. I said, when you get home Friday night, why don't you ask them the question

00:34:35.340 to each of them? If this were a really a fantastic weekend, what would you like to have happen over

00:34:40.860 the weekend? They obviously gave them specifics. He was able to do it in like a third of the time.

00:34:47.720 The kids had a fantastic time and he had two thirds of his time to relax.

00:34:52.640 Now, do you always need the input of someone else when you're thinking through that?

00:34:57.920 No.

00:34:58.680 Sometimes, sometimes not?

00:34:59.840 No. I would ask myself. So, if I were even meeting a friend or meeting a mentee, I'd say,

00:35:07.580 well, Walter, if this were a really successful experience, what would have happened by the end

00:35:12.620 of it? To me, it's like saying good morning. It's just so intuitive. There's not a formality. It's a

00:35:18.600 freeing. Peter, it's a freeing. It is not a limitation. It may sound like too much structure.

00:35:24.620 It's the ultimate of being free. Because I don't ask myself, what will I do? I ask,

00:35:31.500 what is it that I'd like to have happen? If I'm meeting with a friend who's going through a

00:35:36.020 difficult time, when I'm done, I would like to figure out sometime during that time that I will

00:35:42.540 help him lighten that load. I'm not sure when, but when I leave, I want to be able to do that.

00:35:48.500 To me, it's very natural, very powerful, very intentional, very focused, and very gratifying.

00:35:57.380 Say a little bit more about what you learned or how you develop your palette around saying no to

00:36:04.780 things.

00:36:05.900 Oh, well, that's the larger question. So, this process of asking about what success would be

00:36:11.600 for an individual one for probably over 40 years. I asked myself the question, if my life is successful

00:36:20.840 over the next three years, used to be five, now it's down to one, but it's far enough out that I'm

00:36:28.900 not thinking about what I did last year. If I had an ideal life in the next three years, how would I know

00:36:35.500 it? What would be happening? And I would go from my personal relationships, my family relationships,

00:36:42.500 my financial relationships, my health, every key area of my life would have an indicator,

00:36:49.140 and that would be like my ideal outcomes. And then I would kind of, what I think, think backwards.

00:36:55.720 Well, if I want to be my cholesterol at under 100 and I'm at 110, what would it be each six-month period?

00:37:04.020 Right? So, each one of them have benchmarks. I may be getting into too much detail here for you,

00:37:09.400 Peter, but each benchmark is, to me, powerful because it says to me at six-month intervals,

00:37:16.360 if I make it, I'm on track. If I don't, I haven't failed. I just tell myself, well, whatever you're

00:37:23.480 doing isn't sufficient, so what are you going to do differently? Wow, is that powerful. That's how

00:37:29.880 I've been leading my life. So, to your question, it is so easy for me to say no when it isn't consistent

00:37:39.200 with the outcomes and the indicators that I've been committed to.

00:37:45.140 Yeah, that takes a bit of discipline, doesn't it?

00:37:47.620 The first time, it'll seem awkward. After 44 years, it's awkward not to do it.

00:37:51.480 Yeah, but I mean, the discipline is in the ability to contemplate something that in the moment seems

00:38:03.200 enticing. People talk and are familiar with this idea of fear of missing out. Someone comes to you

00:38:08.080 and says, Walter, I've got this great opportunity for you and da-da-da-da-da. And on the surface,

00:38:12.480 it sounds pretty interesting, but then you have to say, wait, how is that aligned with the goals that

00:38:17.500 I have? One of the tools that I've learned for that, and it's been very helpful for me,

00:38:22.560 I've been in a very concerted effort for the past five years approximately of trying to be more

00:38:28.080 disciplined about that, is forcing myself to never say yes to anything when asked. So, even if I'm

00:38:35.480 really leaning towards doing it, just asking for a couple of days to think about it. And if I just

00:38:40.400 commit to that one rule, that's literally the only rule that is absolutely black and white, which is,

00:38:46.720 this sounds very interesting, Walter, let me think about it for a couple of days and get back to

00:38:51.860 you. And then it just buys me the time to try to do my own version of that. I still think I probably

00:38:57.380 say yes to more than I should, but that one step has probably saved me 80%.

00:39:04.600 That's great. We all have our own techniques. For me, I have to say, when you say it's a lot of

00:39:10.660 structure, my structure provides freedom. It provides a built-in discipline and it allows

00:39:16.840 for a lot of creativity because I never, never talk about how I'm going to do it. So, I am completely

00:39:23.140 free to figure out how. You mentioned something at 70, the second phase of insight. Say a little more

00:39:33.120 about that. Now, I had this experience when I was 15. And so, still being sensitized to the 50s,

00:39:40.840 thinking, well, my father never worked out and I've been working out since I've been 30. So,

00:39:45.740 I've got a few more years over him. So, my adjusted age is 58, 59, 60. So, it's still present.

00:39:53.740 Well, they have these moments. It was Tim Russert's funeral that I saw.

00:39:57.720 He died in about, what, 2007?

00:39:59.500 50s, yeah. 2007, 2008, 2007. He was in his early 50s. I thought he was brilliant with

00:40:06.760 Meet the Press. Never been a moderator, in my view, that's been better. And at his funeral

00:40:12.320 with former presidents and astronauts and celebrities, the tributes were unbelievable.

00:40:19.760 And it occurred to me.

00:40:21.760 He never got to hear it.

00:40:23.080 He's never going to hear a word of it. That registered, I thought, that doesn't make sense.

00:40:31.180 And I briefly mentioned I'm reading challenged. So, reading books are very difficult unless

00:40:36.180 they can be done in small chapters with no recall of the previous chapter. I was able to

00:40:42.800 read Tuesdays with Maury that had been written, where in his final years, he got very authentic

00:40:49.920 and very deliberate. And I remember reading part of the last lecture, which a professor

00:40:56.100 at Carnegie Mellon, I think. And he wanted to do one last lecture because he was dying

00:41:01.540 from cancer. And he wanted to leave a message for his kids. And I'm thinking, wow. And then

00:41:07.160 the KPMG chairman in his 50s got brain cancer. I believe it was brain cancer, had four months

00:41:13.660 to live. And he wrote a book called Chasing Daylight about what he wanted to do in the last

00:41:18.800 four months. Experiences, experiences, experiences. It's either too late or it's almost too late.

00:41:29.200 I don't want that to be my life. That may be customary, but sometimes customary is not good.

00:41:38.280 It's just usual and common, but not smart. And I made a commitment and it was in my late 50s when

00:41:49.640 I had those four or more impact that I was going to do it differently. And I was coming on 70 and I

00:41:55.960 thought, oh, I did my 50 and now my 70. And I asked Lola, I said, you know, I have an idea for a gift

00:42:02.920 for my 70th. She said, what is it? I said, I want to spend as much time as I need in the coming year

00:42:09.840 to sit down with everybody that had been important in my life. I wanted to go visit with them. I want

00:42:15.740 to sit with them. I want to have an experience with them after I talk with them. And I want each

00:42:20.700 one of them to know how important they've been in my life. Lola has been either the creator or the

00:42:27.680 supporter of everything important in my life, said, if that's the gift you want, you should take

00:42:32.840 it. And that's what I did for the following 11 months. After I was 70, I visited with 44 people,

00:42:41.180 brought me to Kenya, to Mexico, to Canada, many places in the United States. It was a remarkable

00:42:48.800 moment of my life. Give me an example of what such a meeting was like. Obviously, if you're seeing 44

00:42:57.200 people across the globe in 11 months, we're talking about only days that you're spending with each

00:43:03.460 person, right? Oh, literally a day. So you would fly into Mexico City? Yeah. So most of them were

00:43:10.820 domestic. In fact, some of them I was able to do two in one trip or three in one trip. I had a few

00:43:18.060 in Florida, so I would combine them. So it wasn't like I had 44 trips. Some were from Southern

00:43:23.680 California, which is where I live. It didn't require traveling. I don't want to make this seem

00:43:28.460 like this was an extensive travel, whatever, but I want to highlight the simplicity of it.

00:43:35.560 First of all, I hesitate to typically tell this story about 44 people because people and your

00:43:41.180 listeners will probably say, oh, I don't have 44 people. You have one at least, and that's all I'm

00:43:49.140 trying to inspire. So for me, the journey was my personal journey. It had nothing to do with

00:43:55.720 inspiring anybody for anything. It was my personal journey. And I said, well, what process will I use?

00:44:02.740 Took out a legal pad, and I wrote the question, what difference did this person make in my life?

00:44:11.900 And I would put bullet points down underneath it. Sometimes it could be two pages, but typically one.

00:44:18.060 I've got to go see him or her by the product of that process. I took that legal pad with me,

00:44:26.880 and it was, I had four bases that I covered in every conversation. So yeah, there's some

00:44:32.960 systemization to this, but each one was so different, but they followed a similar pattern.

00:44:39.620 And what was that pattern?

00:44:41.440 Well, the first base was just, how did I have the good fortune of meeting you?

00:44:45.860 How did that happen? Then we talked about next base was all these shared experiences we had.

00:44:54.920 Wow, amazing. Third base was the major one. I had my pad, and I said, this is for me

00:45:04.260 to express to you how important you've been in my life, and I want to tell you why.

00:45:09.240 Because to me, the specificity, never do say that word too easily, was where the richness of the

00:45:18.000 conversation. It wasn't, I love you. It wasn't, although I did tell them I love them, it wasn't

00:45:24.380 a general remark. It was a specific remark. So third base was the big one. The fourth one was kind

00:45:31.520 of for me, which is that I had known these people over a thousand years. And I said, this is my only

00:45:39.560 opportunity. Incidentally, I recorded every conversation. And because it's so hard to take

00:45:44.860 in acknowledgement and appreciation, at the end of this year, I mailed to each one of them a picture,

00:45:51.120 120-word letter summarizing it, and the CD which summarized our conversation, and framed them,

00:45:58.240 and mailed it to 44 people. But the last piece of it was that I wanted to learn something about

00:46:05.520 myself. And so I said, listen, I would appreciate it if you could give me one piece. I'd like to

00:46:12.500 create a mosaic about who I am. Would you be good enough to share with me what would that piece have

00:46:19.580 been from your perspective? And that was my fourth base. That's the whole experience. That's the whole

00:46:25.900 process. What was the most interesting thing you learned in that year about life? Not necessarily

00:46:31.700 about yourself, but just about life and the richness of it. First thing was how blessed I was.

00:46:40.600 Relationships are interesting in the sense that I equate it like I put a flashlight in a dark room.

00:46:48.780 Those qualities of the friends were always there, but I just brought them to light. And when you bring

00:46:55.760 them to light, it's an extraordinary feeling. I mean, if you had one or two or three, it matters not.

00:47:04.000 I mean, here's a guy who never had a friend until he went to high school. Come on. So I felt such a

00:47:11.080 richness from the experience. Actually, towards the end, I was in Kenya on actually another mission,

00:47:18.660 actually building a school over there. And the founder of this nonprofit heard what I was doing.

00:47:24.740 And in fact, was on the journey. And he said, well, would you tell the story at dinner about what

00:47:30.020 you're doing? And they all broke into applause at the end. I said, you know, maybe this story has to

00:47:36.880 be told more. Maybe it shouldn't just be a personal story. And so once again, Lola's, I guess it was

00:47:45.180 about right during this time, had lunch with an acquaintance, told the acquaintance about what I was

00:47:50.960 doing. The acquaintance said, I'd like to hear the story. Turns out she was the editorial director

00:47:57.220 of Hay House. And three days later, I had a contract to write the book. And that became another platform.

00:48:05.440 It's called This Is The Moment, how one man's year-long journey captured the extraordinary

00:48:11.120 power of gratitude. It's interesting. You talked about how some people might hear that 44 people

00:48:19.280 made this list. And that's a pretty selective list. You were very deliberate in saying,

00:48:24.940 these are not acquaintances. These are very close friends. These are people who, I mean,

00:48:29.960 these are big questions. Not how did we meet, not what are the shared experiences, but telling them

00:48:35.340 with great specificity, the impact they've had on your life, that's not a big group of people.

00:48:40.900 The fact that it's 44 for you is probably not surprising to anyone who's listening to this

00:48:46.400 conversation or to anybody who knows you. And it probably speaks to how deliberate you are at

00:48:52.500 cultivating relationships. I think it's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason that richness in life

00:49:01.340 is much more about relationships than other successes, whether it be success in victory,

00:49:08.900 success in material or monetary means. Do you find that one can realize that without some suffering?

00:49:19.760 In other words, how much of a role did the pain that you experienced in the first 29 years of your life

00:49:26.980 paradoxically become the greatest asset to allow the second and third 29-year periods to have this degree of richness?

00:49:37.120 That's a wonderful question. Clearly, I was at an advantage because of my deprivation.

00:49:44.920 But I think there's a level of consciousness in that I have, there have been thousands of people

00:49:51.820 who have since acted on this message. And there have been, I remember, I knew it was going to be good

00:49:58.640 because he was an acquaintance and he's a motorcycle, cigar smoking, really tough dude. He said,

00:50:05.260 that's a hell of a message. He said, there are some people I need to speak to. And so the wide range of

00:50:12.100 people that realize we are not self-made, everybody really knows that. The question is,

00:50:20.620 are we going to acknowledge those people that helped make us while they're here? It's not

00:50:25.380 complicated. It's not complicated. What I find incredible and why I'm really excited about this

00:50:33.260 latest movement, and we can maybe get into more of that in the discussion, but I think my contemporaries

00:50:40.900 and even people in their 40s and 50s, they've been so focused on the traditional measures of success

00:50:50.300 that relationships don't have the focus. And at the end of the day, another couple chapters I read

00:50:58.740 of a book called, How Do You Measure Life? or something like that, written by a professor at

00:51:04.040 Harvard. Now, these are all these bright guys who graduate from the business school, go out and

00:51:08.440 become financial hoo-was. In five or 10 years, they've made a fortune. They come back for a reunion and

00:51:14.780 they're miserable. He said, there's something wrong with this picture. And he changed his focus to have

00:51:21.800 them look at what successful life looks like, not how much success you may have in business.

00:51:27.660 And I think there is an enormous opportunity, missed opportunity, in really placing education

00:51:37.780 around what's really important. And I don't know about you, but to me, there's nothing more important

00:51:45.500 than my marriage. I have 60 years, over 20,000 days. My children, they're grown, twins, my good friends.

00:51:57.660 What did they ever teach me about that? Where did I ever learn about what it is to be a

00:52:03.940 compassionate, loving, caring husband? Or a father? Or a friend? What do you do when your friends

00:52:12.680 are struggling? How are you helpful? How do you show compassion? Show me a school, and that's where I'll go.

00:52:21.440 One of the things that I want to understand a bit better, Walter, is I know a lot of people

00:52:27.800 who are surrounded by people that are supposedly friends, and they have world-class experiences

00:52:38.260 constantly. But deep down, they don't seem particularly enriched by them. And I don't want

00:52:46.040 to sound judgmental because one can never know from the outside, but my appearance is that both these

00:52:51.540 so-called friendships seem superficial, and the experiences maybe seem too hedonic, and not

00:52:59.980 relationally rich. It's also clear that when you talk about these 44 people, that that's not what it

00:53:06.400 was about. I suspect that when you talked about the experiences you shared with them, it wasn't,

00:53:11.900 when we went to Vegas that weekend and gambled all this money away and partied really hard or

00:53:18.440 something like that. I suspect that some of the experiences you talked about sharing were very

00:53:22.480 subtle. How do you think that you naturally gravitated towards that? And why do you think

00:53:29.980 that is not necessarily a natural thing for people to do?

00:53:34.420 Yeah, wonderful. I think a lot has to do with our life experiences.

00:53:38.520 I don't have much time to waste.

00:53:43.220 This urgency from literally the fear of death.

00:53:46.640 I don't know if it's a fear of death. It's a realization. Somebody wasted an hour of my time

00:53:52.180 this week. It was a pure waste. I really resented it. They didn't do it intentionally. It just turned

00:53:59.180 out to be a wasted hour. I would have rather written out a check. I can't get that hour back.

00:54:05.240 So, I tend to not have a lot of time. I have to laugh because one of the fellows, I've been in

00:54:13.540 these, what we call forums. There are groups of 10 or 12 presidents. One I've been in for 37 years,

00:54:21.600 one for 20 years, another one for 22 years. I've been to like 800 of these sessions. Well,

00:54:28.600 they're all authentic. They're all about life. I've spent probably 4,000 hours talking about

00:54:34.860 presidents' issues as deep as you could be. So, that's where I spend a fair amount of time. All

00:54:40.620 my mentoring, my mentoring is about real-life issues. It's not about entertainment. And friends

00:54:47.240 that I hang with are typically ones where I can have meaningful conversations. So, I really think

00:54:56.320 it's how you normally relate in your life. I think it's getting to the point where people are more

00:55:02.180 comfortable being open. I also find when people get older, they're getting a little bit more

00:55:07.000 comfortable. I, myself, was very secretive in my 20s. I'm not secretive now. They're all lessons.

00:55:14.280 So, it's kind of interesting in these men's groups, I would not be the smartest for sure.

00:55:23.240 I would not be the first one I would call to go have a beer with. I don't drink it,

00:55:27.380 but they wouldn't ask me anyway. Not the bantering kind of person. But the moderator of the group said,

00:55:33.500 Walter, I don't know if you know it, but this is the person who was on the journey. He said,

00:55:37.640 of all the members of the group, you'd either be the first or second person that everyone would

00:55:41.900 come to if they had an issue. Why do you think that is? Is that innate? Is that deliberate?

00:55:47.320 Meaning, is that a skill you are cultivating? Is it simply part of your personality? I mean,

00:55:52.420 let's be clear. I think it's interesting to me that the straw that broke the camel's back

00:55:57.560 in your own mental breakdown was one born of empathy. I mean, it was that you couldn't stand

00:56:05.840 to take this older man's job. And while I'm sure many people would be disheartened by that proposition,

00:56:12.300 and even if someone just chose to say, well, I'm not going to go back to work,

00:56:17.100 it impacted you in a way that was so much deeper. If someone's listening to this thinking,

00:56:22.180 I would like to be a person that at a minimum, my friends could come to when there's a problem.

00:56:28.600 Not necessarily everyone would feel that way who knew me, but those who know me well.

00:56:32.780 But it's not happening. I can't tell you the last time someone came to me

00:56:37.000 because they have a problem. What do they need to do to cultivate that skill?

00:56:42.740 And let me ask you a follow-up question in a moment, which is, why should one want to have that?

00:56:50.320 Well, first, the question is, how do you develop that skill? I think it's based on authenticity

00:56:55.480 and empathy and compassion. And I think we all have it. I don't know that we all use it,

00:57:03.900 but I think deep relationships, you mentioned earlier that people who have

00:57:07.820 these wide range of friendships, and it's, I don't want to correct, these were not all good

00:57:13.540 friends of mine that were on the list. These are all people who had significantly impacted my life.

00:57:19.200 That doesn't necessarily mean that they were my good friends.

00:57:22.100 Many of them were good friends.

00:57:24.320 The primary selection criteria was, these people altered the course of your life.

00:57:29.040 Exactly.

00:57:29.140 And some of them might have been a professor in college.

00:57:31.140 Exactly. Well, the blind man in New Hampshire who taught me how to think,

00:57:35.220 I might have seen him 30 times in my life. He would not be someone who's a friend.

00:57:40.540 In terms of why would someone want to be more authentic, that's an individual choice.

00:57:46.320 I think there's a natural aptitude to show and tell. And for me, authenticity transcends show and

00:57:55.820 tell. I find it very rich. I find a lot of these apparent friendships were really just,

00:58:04.300 we were in the same organization together and they were very friendly. You leave the organization

00:58:09.840 and you don't see them again. That's not a friend. That's just an association. And I think sometimes

00:58:16.160 it gets confusing. And sometimes as you elevate yourself in the world, people will befriend you

00:58:21.900 in ways that you actually think they're a friend, but they're really, in some cases,

00:58:27.320 just because of an association.

00:58:29.000 So let's go back to Tim Russert's death, circa 2008. This has a profound effect on you, right? You see

00:58:37.240 all of these people coming to say the most amazing things to him that he never got to hear.

00:58:45.260 What else crystallizes for you there?

00:58:48.160 That was one of three or four that came right at me and it followed a real memory of my 50th and the

00:58:54.680 fact that, oh my God, I'm going to make 70. I think those compounded it. The 70th experience

00:59:00.420 in which I wrote the book, I spoke about the book. People wrote me about what the message had

00:59:05.640 meant to them because the book was structured in three ways. One is, how did I come up with this

00:59:09.960 idea? Where did it come from? It's absolutely unbelievable to me. And now I'm seeing more research

00:59:16.680 come out because mental health is becoming so much more of an issue. They're now coming out with

00:59:22.000 studies that are done five and 10 years ago about the power of gratitude. It makes you feel better.

00:59:27.040 It's less depressed. And none of mine was based on any study. It was all experiences. So the feedback

00:59:34.380 I got from speaking on the subject matter really elevated my appreciation of the power of the message.

00:59:42.740 It has been gaining. And then really a decade after the book was published, it still had legs.

00:59:50.000 I heard from a girl in the Philippines who had picked the book up in a library and she wrote

00:59:57.880 me an email and she said, I just wanted you to know I was thinking of killing myself. First of all,

01:00:03.340 I had no idea how the book was in a library in the Philippines, but she said, I had been abused in

01:00:09.280 my family and I was so angry I wanted to end it. She said, but I saw it and I read your book and I realized

01:00:15.340 there are a number of people who have actually helped me in my life. And how can I forget that

01:00:22.440 at this moment? We had one or two exchanges. Decade later, I heard from her, she's married,

01:00:28.900 living in I think Denmark or Sweden. There are many of these stories. It elevated to me the importance

01:00:36.580 of thinking about maybe there's a more powerful way to do it. Most of my life has been spent one-on-one

01:00:42.400 in small groups. All my mentoring is one-on-one. All my small groups is 12 people or less. My

01:00:47.880 conference business was 25 people or less, typically. The book was the first time that I've

01:00:53.580 influenced thousands of people. And during the pandemic, I thought, oh, this is going to make

01:01:00.120 this group get together end. And I actually was having a conversation with my son. He said,

01:01:05.620 you know, you could do it by Zoom. I said, really? And so three days later, we did the first of the

01:01:13.700 living tributes. He insisted on using me and brought my mentees together. And that evolved into what became

01:01:21.220 the Say It Now movement today. And this may be my biggest legacy.

01:01:26.100 How does a person go about doing this?

01:01:31.140 Well, first of all, this is not a business of mine. I invest in it. There's no royalties. There's no

01:01:37.440 rewards. There's nothing. I want to make it really simple. This is not complicated. Once again, I will

01:01:44.020 tell you of the thousands of stories that I've heard over the years. I've never heard one that the person

01:01:50.580 said, I'm sorry. I just got a card from someone this past week. He sent me. He said,

01:01:55.820 I just want you to know you inspired this. The card was printed 70 for 70. And he proceeds to say,

01:02:03.960 he has written to 70 people on his 70th birthday. He outdid me. So I dropped him a note,

01:02:11.220 asked him what the experience was like. Very similar experience. Oh my God. It was so easy to do. It felt so

01:02:19.000 good. It reconnected me with people at levels I haven't been at. It's not complicated. There were

01:02:25.280 short notes to each of those people. And I say, it doesn't matter how, but it does matter now.

01:02:32.760 I recently came across an interview by Hadley Vajos. She is a hospice nurse. She just wrote a book

01:02:45.600 called In Between. And in it, they asked her the question, if you had an ideal death, what would it

01:02:51.540 be like after you see these people who have had these for months before they die? And she said, well,

01:02:57.220 for me, I would want people to come to me and tell me that I mattered before I died, right? When I was

01:03:05.020 dying, I'd like to hear that. She said, I was with these people for six months before they died.

01:03:10.300 Their central word was, I don't matter to anybody. Then she would go to the funerals of these people

01:03:17.540 and hear the tributes that are paid to the person who's dying, who feels unloved,

01:03:24.220 unappreciated, unacknowledged. So what I decided was, in some ways, we have to unlearn

01:03:33.620 this idea that what is customary, you have to unlearn. Celebrations of life are great for some

01:03:40.900 things. Memorial services are great, but they're not for paying tribute to somebody who's been

01:03:45.640 important in your life. Those are not the moments for that. Why do you think we do that, Walter?

01:03:50.960 Custom. But is there some level of discomfort we have? I mean, when you say it this way,

01:03:59.100 it's so obvious. There's nothing you're saying right now that anybody listening to this would go,

01:04:05.000 no, that doesn't make any sense. We should absolutely let those people in hospice die

01:04:09.400 thinking that they didn't matter and wait till they die to tell a bunch of other people how important

01:04:14.720 they were. Again, when you state it that way, it sounds ridiculous. But there must be some reason

01:04:20.480 that this custom has stuck. And it's wonderful that you're going to shatter that. But as I even

01:04:28.060 examine my own life and I think of these people in high school, in college, at all stages of my life

01:04:37.880 who mattered, it's clear to me that most of them might not realize it now.

01:04:44.560 I was with a limousine driver and we started, he said, what do you do? And so I told him the story.

01:04:51.020 He said, oh my, God, my immediate thought goes to my basketball coach. Now he must've been in his 40s.

01:04:57.000 That guy taught me so much about life and about playing. It wasn't about the game.

01:05:00.940 And I said, well, is he still alive? Yeah. Maybe you should connect with him.

01:05:07.660 Next time he picked me up to go to the airport, he said, I got to tell you something. I met with

01:05:12.240 my basketball coach. I said, what was that like? I get psychic income out of all these stories,

01:05:17.340 right? He said, I called him, I said, coach, I haven't seen you in a long time. I'd like to come

01:05:21.340 see you. Sure, come on. So he comes and he said, I'll see you on the basketball court. So the young

01:05:28.060 fellow says, coach, I didn't come to play basketball. What'd you come for? I said, I need

01:05:34.000 to have you sit down on the bench. I want to tell you what you mean to me. Change their lives.

01:05:39.740 So the reason that I think it's a little hard is because not too many people are modeling

01:05:45.880 that this is the way to do it. So I thought strategically, what we should really do is teach

01:05:53.920 younger people about doing it. They don't have to unlearn anything. So my major thrust this past year

01:06:03.080 has been to educate young people. And they are teaching materials now. I think we're in 38,500

01:06:11.900 classrooms around the world. And so 75 different countries. So it is a global movement.

01:06:18.860 And they're primarily fifth through the 12th grades. And they all have materials on practicing

01:06:26.240 say it now. And so that's where it's starting because they're going to go home, tell their

01:06:32.240 parents. I got a note from Joanne in Ontario, Canada, a fellow Canadian and kindergarten teacher

01:06:40.020 who had been so committed to her profession. But during the pandemic, it was so tough.

01:06:47.660 And then when she went back to school with these kindergartens, where it was their first

01:06:52.700 experience, she introduced say it now to kindergartens. And she writes and she said,

01:06:58.920 one child chose to express what I meant to her by doing a drawing. And she told me what the drawing

01:07:04.820 meant and why she appreciated me in the drawing and how she helped me learn how to sing and why that

01:07:12.160 made a difference. This is a kindergarten. So my hope, I set a goal for a million expressions of

01:07:19.220 gratitude by my 85th birthday, which is next month. We crossed a million four. And we're just beginning.

01:07:29.560 What does finishing strong mean to you?

01:07:35.320 Well, you'll see the pattern. So I had a recent medical scare that I thought,

01:07:42.820 hmm, maybe this is 53 after all, except it's 83 or 84. And so I asked myself the question, Peter,

01:07:51.660 I think you could probably ask it right now. You've heard it for our conversation. I said to myself,

01:07:57.980 if you could ideally finish strong. Now, in this case, it was end of life. What would be happening?

01:08:07.640 How would you know? And I detailed key results. And for the last year, I achieved all of those results.

01:08:19.460 What were some of those things?

01:08:20.500 Well, one is we have two homes. When something happened to me, I think it'd be a lot for my wife.

01:08:29.700 And so I said, I need to find an environment for her that would provide a lifestyle. And so last week,

01:08:38.380 we moved into a place that would provide that lifestyle. We still have our primary home,

01:08:43.160 but this place would be a place where we're already starting to transition. So she would feel

01:08:49.220 comfortable. I am very current. I talk about currency. I'm very current with my relationships,

01:08:56.760 really current. I make sure I've circled the block with all my mentees that have been important.

01:09:02.500 They all came to my TEDx talk, or most of them came to my TEDx talk, which gave me a chance

01:09:07.760 once again to publicly acknowledge how they each had changed my life. Now, is that counterintuitive?

01:09:16.680 Not for me, because I had. So as much as I enjoyed my TEDx talk this year, the dinner following

01:09:25.160 was so significant for me. So in terms of additional things, there was one investment that would require

01:09:34.920 some work. It's not an operating company, but just a little involved investment. I don't want

01:09:40.600 my wife to have to think about that. So I'm just finishing liquidating that. So everything is very

01:09:48.600 easy. My wife has a list of here are 15 things to do from a financial point of view. If something

01:09:55.260 happens to me, this is exactly what you do. 15 steps up to date. Financial affairs are up to date.

01:10:01.980 My friendships are up to date. Still working out. Still hoping for the best. And I got some

01:10:07.800 good news. Cancer that I had a year ago is in remission. And somebody up there thinks I got

01:10:16.340 some more work to do. When do you think people should be thinking about this? I mean, in some

01:10:21.320 ways you could argue, given that we have no idea when we're going to die, obviously being 85 versus

01:10:28.580 being 45, the odds are much longer, but how should a person operationalize that? Because that's a very

01:10:35.700 tactical list of things. Some of those are at least the financial planning, the consolidation,

01:10:41.640 all of that stuff. Do you have a sense of how many people, I'm assuming it's men typically dying

01:10:47.220 before their female spouse, are kind of leaving their spouse, I don't know, ill-suited to deal with

01:10:54.160 the chaos of their demise? Yeah, I've been doing this for 35 years, Peter. This one was a little

01:11:01.940 grander before I always had my estate in order and provided life insurance and homes and the things

01:11:08.920 that are for their comfort. This one had a different tone to it. I also want to say that

01:11:16.540 I think we wait too long to give it now. Part of what I accelerated was, I've been spending the

01:11:25.320 last 30 years in philanthropy. I accelerated that program, not just for nonprofits, but for people

01:11:31.700 who have been important to me, but haven't been as successful. I accelerated it. Is it normal? No.

01:11:37.780 Are you worried about giving people money? A little, but I'm worried more about not.

01:11:42.020 Same thing. It's not customary. I understand. And one person said, it's difficult. Of all the people,

01:11:50.180 one person said, I just can't do it. And I said, well, meaning one person couldn't accept the money.

01:11:57.060 And I said to them, I really understand. And I appreciate you being so honest about it.

01:12:03.360 But let me tell you a little story. And that is, you're keeping me from the pleasure of giving a

01:12:11.720 gift. So give some thought to it. She said, I can't keep you from that pleasure. And I gave it to her.

01:12:21.260 How much of this do you think your twins have naturally been infused with through the osmosis of

01:12:28.520 your example? I have had evidence that the modeling is more important than the speaking.

01:12:36.320 I'm very proud of them. And I think they get the message and they'll do it in their own way,

01:12:41.200 with their own approach. How much of this is something that you think happens between parents

01:12:49.500 and children as well? In other words, do you find yourself also having the same discussion with your

01:12:55.460 kids and with your wife? And I can't imagine you don't feel that way about them. I know how much I

01:13:00.820 do. I sort of look at my wife and my kids and acknowledge that without them, I'd be in a pretty

01:13:07.820 rough situation. I wouldn't be the person I am, including whatever external successes I've had.

01:13:15.100 Do you have a different way in which you communicate that to family?

01:13:18.360 Well, one of the things I recall is, and perhaps this isn't an exact answer to your question,

01:13:28.020 but what I heard the question being is, how do they model some of what they may have learned from

01:13:36.360 you? And how do you learn that they in fact get it? That may not have been the precise question.

01:13:42.840 But I remember one of our sons writing, he used Father's Day for the occasion, and he said,

01:13:51.380 you know, when I think back over our life together, you always gave me footsteps to follow

01:13:57.560 when I needed someone to lead. You always walked behind me when I needed encouragement.

01:14:08.600 And you always have been by my side when I needed a friend. I've read that a thousand times. That was

01:14:18.880 from my son Jonathan. From my son Jason, he has written both on the occasion of my 80th birthday and most

01:14:29.940 recent Father's Day, all of the messages that he got from me over the years in his own way.

01:14:39.320 So, it means a lot to me. As a matter of fact, one thing I wanted to highlight was when I was going

01:14:47.740 through this, and this is really what I've learned in the last year that I never knew beforehand,

01:14:53.120 when I was kind of thinking that this could be the final year for sure. And there were some other

01:15:00.340 issues going on that I was also preoccupied with. At the end of the day, I have a portrait

01:15:09.000 of the 44 people on my journey in my office. I have next to that pictures of my mentees,

01:15:17.280 and I turn on Brooks Violin Concerto, which I love, and I go one to one. There are probably

01:15:27.980 almost 60 lives that I touch during it, reminding myself what they had given me. I feel so blessed.

01:15:38.920 I have so much oxygen. I have never been in a better place than in the toughest year of my life

01:15:47.600 this past year. That's just amazing, Walter. I certainly don't doubt the sincerity of how you say

01:15:54.220 that, but again, that's a very counterintuitive way to describe what could easily be the last days

01:16:02.200 of your life, the last year of your life. I want to understand a little bit more what you think

01:16:08.760 is driving that sense of peace because it can only be described as a sense of peace.

01:16:15.600 I have to say, I don't personally feel peace in that way. If I try to imagine this being the last

01:16:22.180 year of my life, I wouldn't take a positive thought from it. I'd be very sad. And you could say,

01:16:28.840 well, Peter, that's because you're 50 and Walter's 85. Maybe, but I would bet that there are a lot of

01:16:34.600 85-year-olds who also wouldn't have much peace knowing that they're at the end. How do you

01:16:40.680 reconcile the peace that you can have at the end of your life with the fact that you undoubtedly have

01:16:48.560 more to do? Because to me, that's the struggle. I love that question. First of all, I think there is

01:16:56.860 a difference between being 50 and being 85. I was on the island of Corsica and I literally was on a

01:17:04.740 cruise, taken off the cruise and had to be operated on immediately in a clinic. If they didn't, I would

01:17:11.140 have died. And I said in my 60s, just give me a little more time. I promise I'll be of service.

01:17:18.920 I had already been of service, had no intention of doing anything else, haven't done any business in

01:17:23.700 the last 30 years. All I've been is business. So that was not a big commitment. It was a natural

01:17:28.360 commitment. And I bought more time. I think if we don't turn on the flashlight to bring light on what

01:17:35.880 we've been blessed with, there is no opportunity to get much fulfillment at the end for the gratitude

01:17:43.600 that these blessings have provided. So in a sense, it's to your point. And it relates to whether you're

01:17:51.200 saving money for your kid's college, if you wait till they're junior in high school, it's tough.

01:17:57.160 Not much time. If you want to save for retirement, if you wait until your 60s, it's really tough.

01:18:03.840 If you want to start being grateful and you want to wait till your 80s, it's really tough.

01:18:09.860 But if you can build that, which I hope I'm building in millions of young people,

01:18:16.720 this awareness and expression of gratitude is not just awareness, it's expression of gratitude,

01:18:23.400 because they will be enriched by expressing it and the person receiving it will be.

01:18:29.840 So I actually think in my dream and my hope is when I say the word pay it forward,

01:18:36.680 most people know what I'm talking about. They know the concept of pay it forward means if somebody does

01:18:42.360 something nice for you, you in turn will do something nice for three people, not necessarily

01:18:47.020 have to do something for the person who is nice to you. I want say it now to become as ubiquitous,

01:18:54.160 as common as that. And someone says, you know, I need to do a say it now for Gene. I need to do a say

01:19:01.700 it now for Peter. I believe that will elevate our own sense of value. I want to make the other point.

01:19:12.660 It may be helpful to you and others. I always want to get done with this project before I go.

01:19:21.220 But I came to two conclusions during this last finishing strong exercise.

01:19:27.220 One was that I never wanted to leave my wife a widow. We've been married 60 years,

01:19:33.320 never wanted her. I work out every day, almost every day, most every day, because I wanted to

01:19:38.800 outlive my wife. I came to the realization that is not for me to decide. That's going to just be what

01:19:47.420 it is. You can do the best. But if she's a widow, just take care of her as you would want her taken

01:19:54.620 care of and relax. Have peace. Have peace. The other thing was, I got to finish the project.

01:20:05.560 And I said, Walter, you've been doing projects for the last 30 years, and you're not going to stop

01:20:12.420 doing projects. So you, by definition, will die with an unfinished symphony. That is the nature of

01:20:20.360 your life. And don't stop just so you could finish. I think back to one of the other friends that Rick

01:20:28.920 introduced us to at the event, which was the gentleman who was a little over 100 years old

01:20:36.960 and who's still working on deals. He's still talking to Rick about business ideas, and it's like he's 50

01:20:45.100 years old. And I really think it's impossible to prove these things scientifically because you can't

01:20:52.480 do randomized controlled experiments. So we'll never truly know the causative nature of having a purpose

01:21:02.620 in longevity. But it's very hard for me to believe that there isn't causality there, meaning

01:21:11.280 that the people who continue to have a purpose in life. And again, your purpose for the past 30 years

01:21:18.700 hasn't been to make a dime. It's been in this say it now movement. For some people, their purpose in

01:21:25.720 life is public service through politics. For some people, it is indeed working in the private sector.

01:21:31.400 The point is, I think the people who continue to have some sense of purpose that is far beyond

01:21:39.060 themselves and their own joy and pleasure, undoubtedly seem to live longer.

01:21:44.240 Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if people, you know, I was thinking today of the word past time.

01:21:50.940 Well, past time, you know, well, it helps past time. It takes my breath away when somebody says that.

01:21:57.720 Past time. Wow. For me, it's purpose time. You can be time, it's purpose time. I can't imagine

01:22:06.760 not living that way, but I don't suggest that everybody will live that way. I can only suggest

01:22:13.760 that for me, it's given me an extraordinary life. And it didn't start when I was 80. It didn't start

01:22:21.900 when I was 70. It started when I was in my 20s. And I don't want to suggest that the purpose of a

01:22:28.840 person's life needs to be as grand as your ambition or starting a new business. It can be simply taking

01:22:34.920 care of another person. And one of the things I do with all of our patients is take a detailed

01:22:38.880 family history before we start. I can't tell you the number of times I go through the family history

01:22:44.240 and we're talking about their grandparents and they'll say, one of them died from some disease

01:22:49.560 and the other one died very shortly thereafter, despite being completely healthy. They just lost

01:22:56.380 interest in life. They describe it to me as they died of a broken heart or they just stopped thriving.

01:23:02.980 I think that's an extension of this as well. Having that other person there is part of purpose.

01:23:09.420 Peter, you really, not only are you making these keen and important observations, I just want to

01:23:16.160 take a moment to say, you know, you work really hard at this and you need to know on behalf of those

01:23:23.180 people who have read your book. Unfortunately, I had to choose just one chapter because I'm only a

01:23:28.180 one chapter guy. Of course, I'd choose the one on emotional health. To me, it was the door to you.

01:23:34.540 It was the one that proved to me you're really authentic and the person that I wanted to connect

01:23:40.180 with. And I think your conversations that you're having carry that chapter 17 with you in all that

01:23:48.060 you do and that you are enriching lives of millions of people through your writings and through your

01:23:55.700 podcasts and through your good work. I personally just wanted to acknowledge you for that. And I

01:24:01.740 wanted to just piggyback the thing, you know, after 60 years of marriage, best decision I ever made.

01:24:08.700 And nobody ever helped us being a good husband. Nobody ever helped us. And for sure, we didn't have

01:24:15.040 great models. My father died, as I've described. So I didn't have a good model. So where do you learn

01:24:19.660 it from? The most important decision in our life, we have no training for, as I mentioned earlier,

01:24:25.000 nor with kids. But one of the things that is amazing to me, and I'm getting very respectful of why

01:24:31.460 so many marriages don't last. And that is, there are so many stages. I described three stages of my life.

01:24:39.620 But in marriage, you've got dating, you've got marriage with no kids, and you got the kids,

01:24:45.060 and then the kids leave the house, and then you retire. And then the last chapter is one of them

01:24:51.160 slows down a little bit. I'm married to an energizer bunny who's slowing down a little.

01:24:57.440 And during the pandemic, I got a chance to love her in a way that I never did before.

01:25:04.340 And that's another thing you never know. You always know you love the person you married.

01:25:14.140 The question is, can you always love the person equally or more when they're not quite the same

01:25:20.040 person you married? And I want to suggest that Lola's still super active, but she's not as active

01:25:26.120 as she used to be. So this is to your point, is I love caring for her when she needs it. I love it.

01:25:35.720 And I do think that story that you just mentioned is to the extent to which we are so self-focused.

01:25:42.260 I don't know if you can die from it, but you won't live from it. You won't live a long life

01:25:48.320 from it. And I think it's the focus on others that provides me with my energy. I said to myself during

01:25:55.500 this recent challenge, don't take anything away from me that'll prevent me from helping others.

01:26:02.320 I refuse that treatment. I'll take as long as I have, as long as I could be helpful to others.

01:26:08.800 So, Walter, first, I want to thank you, by the way, for what you said a moment earlier.

01:26:13.760 That means a lot to me. So thank you.

01:26:16.600 Well deserved.

01:26:17.700 If someone's listening to this conversation and hearing about this idea of saying it now

01:26:22.540 for the first time, and it resonates with them, where do you recommend they start?

01:26:28.640 Well, it's going to sound self-promotional, but I have nothing to promote. So there's no business

01:26:33.420 here. I would go to justsayitnow.org, and it'll give you the concept. You'll also have my TED Talk

01:26:41.860 on it. I have a theme song for Say It Now. So there's a song. In the coming months, there'll be

01:26:47.680 a book. But for a person who says, you know, that makes sense, but I don't know how to do that.

01:26:53.020 There are tools right on that website that could help. Whether it's a note, a phone call,

01:26:59.940 it is very uncomplicated. And I've never seen anybody. I come back to the story of the fellow

01:27:08.020 I had a few years ago, had dinner with. He said to me, what do you do? The same kind of quote,

01:27:13.380 what do you do? And I said, it doesn't really matter. You can call him, you can do all these

01:27:17.580 things. And so the website will help you with that. He called me about a month later and he said,

01:27:22.160 I want to come tell you what happened. I said, I love these stories. I always encourage people,

01:27:26.940 tell me about them because that is my psychic income in this transaction. And so he said,

01:27:32.500 Walter, I want you to know I wrote 17 letters. I said, that's great. And he said, one I wrote to

01:27:39.300 my sister that I haven't spoken to in 10 years. I realized she was a great sister. What she did

01:27:46.520 that ended the relationship always bothered me. But when I looked at our life, I realized she'd made

01:27:52.400 a real difference and it rekindled our relationship. It's easy to do. The outcomes

01:27:58.960 are sometimes very surprising and always rewarding. Walter, thank you very much for coming all the way

01:28:07.120 over here. I wanted to do this in person and I know it's been hard for us to get together and

01:28:12.080 we could have done this a year ago remotely, but I really believed and I believe now that this is a

01:28:17.720 discussion I wanted to have with you sitting a few feet away from me. So thanks for trusting me to

01:28:22.900 take time, which is precious. And I know it's taken you away from something else and someone else. But

01:28:28.900 I think sharing this story with a lot of people here through this podcast is a great way to continue

01:28:33.720 your legacy. So thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. You know, I, when I'm committed to

01:28:39.620 something, I do it when it's inconvenient. When I'm interested in something, I only do it when

01:28:45.020 it's convenient and I have no interest. I only have commitments and I was committed to having

01:28:50.540 this moment happen with you. So thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for listening to this

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The Peter Attia Drive - February 05, 2024

#288 ‒ The impact of gratitude, serving others, embracing mortality, and living intentionally ｜ Walter Green

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