The Peter Attia Drive - 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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00:00:58.020 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to a special episode of

00:01:06.200 The Drive. For this week's episode, and in light of Thanksgiving approaching, I wanted to rebroadcast

00:01:11.580 my conversation with Walter Green on the impact of gratitude, serving others, and living intentionally.

00:01:17.760 Walter's a philanthropist, a mentor, and he's an author of This Is The Moment and founder of the

00:01:24.320 Say It Now movement. In this episode, we discuss the unlikely path that shaped Walter's worldview,

00:01:31.280 embracing mortality and the mindset of finishing strong as a compass for how to live life now,

00:01:37.380 the power of intentionality, thinking in reverse, setting outcomes first, and learning to say

00:01:42.660 no to protect what matters, prioritizing relationships over achievements and the

00:01:47.520 small habits that build deep, authentic friendships, the origin story of Say It Now and why expressing

00:01:54.200 gratitude publicly can change both giver and receiver, Walter's years-long journey at 70 visiting

00:02:02.460 the 44 people who shaped his life and what he learned about meaning, memory, and legacy, finding peace

00:02:09.300 at the end of life through service, gratitude, and purpose beyond oneself, and practicing ways to

00:02:15.400 start, simple prompts, living tributes, and resources for bringing the Say It Now movement into families,

00:02:22.480 classrooms, and communities. I'd like to also point out that the Gratitude Express, which is a series of

00:02:30.480 stories inspired by the Say It Now movement, is going to be coming out shortly, a book by Walter Green.

00:02:37.380 And finally, I'll add one very personal anecdote here, which is that I'm incredibly grateful to Walter

00:02:44.720 for the impact he had on my life personally. It was directly as a result of my friendship with Walter

00:02:51.140 that I was fortunate enough to pay tribute to my father before he passed away this year. I, as a direct

00:02:58.420 result of everything I learned from Walter, wrote what would have been a eulogy to him, but was able to

00:03:04.380 read it to him six months before he died. And I am incredibly grateful for that. It slightly eased

00:03:11.360 the pain of his loss and made me realize that at least in the final months of his life, there was

00:03:16.660 nothing I left unsaid about my gratitude towards him and all he had done for me. So without further

00:03:23.300 delay, I'd like you to enjoy my conversation with Walter Green, which again, has been an important part

00:03:28.540 of my own journey. Hey, Walter, thank you so much for making the trip out to Austin from San Diego.

00:03:39.440 It's been two years, about a year and a half since we met. For folks listening, we met at the home slash

00:03:46.760 party of a very close mutual friend to both of us, Rick Elias, who's also been a guest on this podcast.

00:03:52.380 And Rick did something very special for that two day event, which was really not a celebration of

00:03:58.320 anything. It wasn't a birthday or anything like that. It was simply Rick deciding he wanted to bring

00:04:03.980 a handful of his closest friends together for no reason other than to let us meet each other,

00:04:10.660 which I thought was a very beautiful expression of friendship. And I suppose exactly as he planned,

00:04:18.820 I am still in very close touch with a number of the people I met there, which I think means it was

00:04:25.780 mission accomplished. Did you have a similar experience? First, I thought that's perhaps

00:04:30.880 one's greatest gift. If you can give the gift of a special relationship to people you care about,

00:04:38.180 there is no more beautiful gift. And he structured that in an incredible way, providing entertainment,

00:04:43.760 but mostly the opportunity where there was no introduction needed. Everybody knew each other

00:04:50.260 because we all knew Rick. I've heard about the impact of some of the words that I shared. Rick has

00:04:56.620 also shared what's going on with others. So I've been in touch with a few. It's very special when you can,

00:05:03.600 at this stage of my life, to connect with people that have been qualified, discriminated,

00:05:10.220 and selected with very high standards. So it was a real treat.

00:05:14.820 It wasn't that we got to sit with everybody in an intimate setting because we were only there for

00:05:19.680 basically 30 hours. So I don't know how many meals that turned into, but clearly the most

00:05:25.660 interesting discussions, or at least the closest discussions took place over meals. By fortune,

00:05:31.000 you and I happened to be seated next to each other, and maybe it wasn't an accident. My recollection

00:05:34.960 is they were assigned seating for every meal. So for one of the meals you and I sat next to each

00:05:39.840 other, which led to the inevitable, Hey, what's your relationship to Rick? Cause that was, I think

00:05:44.280 the way we all started our discussion and your son and Rick's son went to business school together.

00:05:49.980 Actually, I'm sorry. Your son and Rick, I'm sorry. Went to business school together. Yeah.

00:05:55.200 Let's not make Rick older than he is, but somehow we pivoted quickly from that into your story and what

00:06:00.920 you're passionate about, which is really what we're here to talk about today. But again, my recollection,

00:06:05.840 Walter is that it wasn't you talking about your current project as much as it was an evolution

00:06:12.300 of your life story. I probably in my usual way just started pestering you with questions. Where'd you

00:06:19.320 grow up? Tell me about your childhood and what brought you to where you are. I was really riveted

00:06:25.180 by the discussion. So I think maybe for the sake of the listener, I'd like to reproduce as much of

00:06:30.020 that as possible. So tell me, tell us, where did you grow up? Yeah. So first of all, I consider that

00:06:36.740 the ultimate compliment when someone shows the interest in someone else, it's never pestering

00:06:42.120 to me. It's always very satisfying. So, you know, I was thinking about my life basically, you know,

00:06:48.600 I'm in a very reflective mood at this age. It's basically been three stages. I probably would

00:06:55.480 call the first stage and they've been running around 28 years in their 28, 29 seems to be my

00:07:02.900 staging. I haven't quite completed my, well, pretty much completed the third stage. How old are you,

00:07:09.620 Walter? I'll be 85 next month. So the first 29, 28, 29 years were pretty much finding myself.

00:07:16.960 Just big picture. The next 29 were making myself. And the last 29 have been becoming myself. What

00:07:28.320 would you like to know more of? Well, I feel like so much of what defined the second and third,

00:07:35.480 we're talking probably a lot about the insights that have come in the third phase, but I suspect the

00:07:40.640 seeds of those were sown in the first phase. So if you're 85, it means that you were born

00:07:45.920 the tail end of the depression. You're born in the late 1930s. 1938. Yeah. And so you're born

00:07:52.600 before the war. You come of age when the baby boomers are coming alive. What was your childhood

00:07:59.480 like? And where was it? I know you were on the East coast, but I can't remember where.

00:08:03.120 When I think about it, I think what doesn't break you makes you. Childhood was for me challenging.

00:08:10.500 My father was a dreamer when I was one year old and my brother was two. He found a place that he

00:08:21.120 thought in the Adirondacks would make a great dude ranch. And he had been relatively successful.

00:08:27.100 He had saved, I think, $40,000 back then, which was a lot of money. And so he actually, it was a

00:08:34.060 chicken farm. It didn't work out as a chicken farm, converted it to a dude ranch. And the third year

00:08:39.640 after it opened, there was a big flood, wiped out the bridge, and we went essentially bankrupt.

00:08:47.000 So my father at the time was in his 40s. And so we had to move back into Bronx in New York in a

00:08:56.580 two-bedroom with his parents who didn't speak English. Really that first stage, I think I lived in 16

00:09:03.540 different cities. So I won't go into all the details except to say that it really did set

00:09:09.680 the stage for my life. But it wasn't just the movement from the Adirondacks to the Bronx to

00:09:16.360 Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Albany, New York, to Connecticut, New York, Coral Gables, Florida,

00:09:20.640 Jacksonville, Florida. It wasn't the cities. It was that my mother got cancer when I was nine.

00:09:28.660 We went on our first vacation as a family. She recovered. Back then they were doing

00:09:33.140 major mastectomies for breast cancer. And our first vacation to Florida when we were living

00:09:41.220 in Albany, New York, my father was coming a couple days later. It was our first family vacation,

00:09:47.440 the four of us. And my mother got a call that he had a heart attack. So she had to fly home,

00:09:53.420 which was never easy from Florida to New York as it is today. And so began a very different way

00:10:00.140 of life. I was 11 years old, and we were reminded that we needed to make sure our dad was okay.

00:10:09.100 He was 47 at the time. So that was a game changer. The two things I remember specifically were all this

00:10:18.960 movement preempted any chance to have a relationship. I didn't have any friends. It made no sense to have

00:10:26.220 a friend I was going to be moving in a year or two. So this absence of a relationship, and I've always

00:10:32.900 found in life that I think people who are really motivated are people who haven't had it. When you

00:10:39.500 have had it, I think it's a little bit more difficult to be motivated. So not ever having a friend,

00:10:46.580 really, and not a few in high school, but prior to that, none. So the combination of no relationships

00:10:54.820 and a fear that back then with breast cancer, five years was a long time. I got very lucky with my

00:11:02.620 mother. She lived a long life, had cancer again, but survived that as well. I went off to school at

00:11:10.760 University of Michigan. Two months later, I got that phone call that my father had died from a fatal heart

00:11:17.960 attack. He was 53, and his brother died at 53. So my dad was a little older than I was as a father,

00:11:26.860 and so we didn't have much in common. And most of my concern was his welfare, and his concern was his

00:11:35.460 welfare and trying to provide for the family. The gift that I got was this incredible branding

00:11:42.900 that life is short. It's unpredictable. You never know. And from then on, I've been walking up

00:11:51.260 escalators. That's the way I live. I'm very intentional. I don't take anything for granted.

00:11:57.860 And so that was my major gift for my father. That was a tough period. I graduated from University of

00:12:06.800 Michigan, which was a struggle, because academically, that was really tough for me. But I managed to get

00:12:13.540 through. Then after a short stint in the Army, took a job with a fraternity brother. I had no place to go.

00:12:21.000 Wasn't going to go back to Jacksonville, Florida. His father was in the industrial textile business,

00:12:25.680 and I got assigned to Pittsburgh. Now, industrial textiles is another word for shop towels or rags.

00:12:32.240 It depends on how glamorous you want to make it. That was probably my 11th or 12th job. I was selling

00:12:39.580 women's shoes when I was a teenager. I had been working ever since I could get qualified to get a job.

00:12:46.360 I was always afraid that I'd be on my own. In any case, I didn't have many options, so I went to sell rags

00:12:52.940 in Pittsburgh. Two months after I started, I came back to Ohio at the corporate offices, and I was told I was

00:13:01.040 doing a really good job. The man who had been training me, who was an older man, I thought was

00:13:08.520 a really nice guy. At that sales meeting, I got this message, Walter, you're doing so well. Just as

00:13:14.560 soon as you could learn that job, we're going to let that man go. I went back to Pittsburgh, and I

00:13:22.160 couldn't get out of my bed. There was no mental illness in our family. Nobody really understood because

00:13:29.100 they couldn't see it.

00:13:31.040 So I ended up being hospitalized. Didn't talk about that for 40 years, because back then it was a real

00:13:38.640 stigma. I thought it would influence getting into a profession, relationships. Being in a mental

00:13:46.260 hospital was not something that you told people about.

00:13:49.580 Tell me a little bit more about how that happened. So you're obviously in your mid-20s at this point.

00:13:54.320 22.

00:13:55.120 You hear this news. It obviously upsets you. You go back home. When you say you couldn't get out of bed,

00:14:01.420 I assume you mean the feeling of dysthymia and helplessness was so great that you had no desire

00:14:08.680 to do anything?

00:14:10.100 Yeah. So when I said go back home, I want to clarify. Home for me at that time was an apartment with three

00:14:15.400 guys. I had moved into a YMCA for a couple nights, trying to figure out where I was going to live.

00:14:20.980 And so I was in a room with three strangers. That's who I had been living with for two months. So I came

00:14:26.440 back from the corporate meeting from Ohio to where I was living. I didn't call it home. It was a rental

00:14:32.100 apartment with three other guys. I never had it before, never had it since. But what happened was that I

00:14:40.320 essentially, I don't know, I would say I became catatonic. I just froze. I could not move.

00:14:47.560 Somehow they got me on a plane to Florida and got me to Miami. And then they said,

00:14:52.260 you'd be best off in a hospital in Massachusetts. So I flew up.

00:14:57.420 What was the length of time from when you returned to Pittsburgh to when you wound up in that

00:15:01.980 institute in Massachusetts?

00:15:04.200 Less than two weeks.

00:15:05.440 Your mom was obviously still alive. What was her reaction and what did you say to her?

00:15:10.320 They had no idea. They just knew that this young boy who was president of his high school fraternity

00:15:15.880 and president of his college fraternity, and this very mature young man was incapable of moving.

00:15:23.240 And to show you how things were at that time, I had an uncle who was very close to our family,

00:15:29.320 and he saw me in bed and he said, Walter, just get up. Just get up. You're fine.

00:15:34.200 No comprehension of what being mentally sick was.

00:15:39.760 What happened when you got to the hospital?

00:15:41.820 So it was a series of treatments, mostly dialogue and medication. And when I arrived there, it was

00:15:50.240 very difficult because when I saw others, I thought, wow, it really looks sick. But

00:15:55.440 I really couldn't do anything on my own. So I went from there to moving to Cambridge,

00:16:02.260 which I always have to laugh about because when I tell people I graduated from University of Michigan

00:16:08.580 and then spent some time in Cambridge, I always thought, oh, this guy is really smart and he's

00:16:12.880 really modest, man.

00:16:15.260 Went to that little school back east just outside of Boston.

00:16:18.360 Right. Really, that wasn't what brought me to Cambridge, but it was a terrific experience for me.

00:16:24.500 I learned so much about myself. I was so afraid of failing and I failed and I survived.

00:16:33.000 So it was a great experience. I spent two years in therapy, learned a lot about myself.

00:16:38.580 How long were you hospitalized?

00:16:40.400 Two, three months.

00:16:41.760 Again, you mentioned that there was medications involved. Do you remember what types of medications

00:16:46.100 of the era? I don't have a deep enough knowledge of the psychiatric, presumably some sort of

00:16:51.200 era appropriate antidepressants.

00:16:53.320 Apparently.

00:16:54.080 Did they use shock therapy?

00:16:55.720 I didn't have any shock therapy. It was a great learning opportunity for me. It was fantastic.

00:17:02.780 How did you know you were ready to leave?

00:17:04.600 Well, that's a funny story. Actually, I was seeing a therapist and it was inconvenient. I

00:17:09.380 was seeing him a couple of times a week and I'm thinking at the time I was in public accounting.

00:17:15.020 I was selling mutual funds on the weekends. I was really busy and having to go to this

00:17:20.080 therapist. It wasn't convenient. I finally said to him after two years, I said, when do

00:17:25.040 I finish? He said, I think you're done. That was it.

00:17:29.580 But I mean, when did you leave the actual hospital? After two to three months, what prompted that?

00:17:34.720 Oh, what prompted leaving the hospital, not what prompted the leaving of the therapy?

00:17:39.020 My guess I felt I was okay to return to society.

00:17:42.820 And how frightening was that?

00:17:45.160 You know, Peter, I can't actually say that it was frightening. I felt like I was in a pretty good

00:17:50.740 place. I had always been in a good place. It was like just this two or three months, I just

00:17:58.000 completely lost it. And it might've been an accumulation of losing my dad in the freshman

00:18:03.080 year, never really dealing with that, feeling the pressure of, oh my God, what am I going

00:18:07.480 to do? Then finally getting a job. And now my job is to, if I'm successful, I'll let this

00:18:12.940 guy go. And I think it was just more than I could handle.

00:18:17.300 Yeah. It's interesting. It seems that one of the real challenges of getting over an episode

00:18:23.080 so traumatic would be the fear of not knowing if it could happen again. Did you feel that

00:18:30.360 through the experience of speaking with the therapist while you were an inpatient, you

00:18:35.720 had sufficient resolution of that such that you weren't worried that you were kind of an

00:18:40.260 accident waiting to happen, an emotional train wreck that you couldn't anticipate?

00:18:45.240 I'm sure that was present. I was sufficiently back to who I was. This is a guy who had been

00:18:51.140 in pretty good place for all but three months of his life. And he had dealt with a lot of

00:18:57.040 challenges along the way, a lot of moving, a lot of unknowns and parents' health and challenges

00:19:03.800 at school that were really tough for me. So you can't say it'll never happen again because

00:19:09.600 that's just being a little naive, but I never feared that it would happen again.

00:19:15.540 So you mentioned insurance. So I assume when you got out of the hospital, you did not go

00:19:20.080 back to the textile company? Oh, for sure. I mentioned public accounting. So I was in public

00:19:26.280 accounting for three years. So I got certified as a public accountant and in the evenings I was

00:19:31.280 selling mutual funds because I wasn't paid enough in public accounting at that time to survive on my

00:19:37.500 own. I had two jobs. All right. So continue with the story. I love it. Yeah. So my brother called

00:19:44.420 actually, my brother Ray called from Florida and he said he had just made a thousand dollars in his

00:19:50.260 part time. And I said, that's more money than I'm making for my other two jobs. What'd you do?

00:19:54.780 He described he was involved in a multi-level marketing for a fellow by the name of Bob Cummings.

00:20:01.040 You'd be impressed because it had to do with health. There were nutrition through

00:20:04.380 biochemistry. It was a sale of vitamins and minerals. And Bob Cummings, I think he had like seven

00:20:10.940 kids and he looked half his age. I was anxious to make a thousand dollars. So I became a distributor.

00:20:17.840 That was my third job. I put a little card up in the laundromat near where I was living. And

00:20:24.280 the first person had said, if you want to earn money in your part-time, please give me a call.

00:20:29.540 You wouldn't get away with that today, but back then that was okay. So I answered the phone,

00:20:34.600 the person on the phone said, I'll come over. And I had my little audio visual kid and the slides

00:20:39.600 and everything. And she seemed really interested in selling the vitamins. And as it turned out,

00:20:46.020 Bob Cummings said it solved arthritis and they shut him down three weeks later. So I lost my $500,

00:20:52.700 which is all I had. But my first salesperson became my wife. So it was the best thing that

00:20:59.420 ever happened to me. And that was at 22. We were married at 24.

00:21:03.100 So what did you continue to do professionally?

00:21:08.440 Okay. Sorry for this long list of activities, but I then went into the hotel field.

00:21:13.720 Actually, we moved to New Orleans, another move. Really decided hotels weren't for me.

00:21:20.200 The search firm called and said, there's a large food service company in New York.

00:21:25.780 I'd like to be the vice president of administration.

00:21:27.940 Lola, my wife and I were, I call ourselves single. We didn't have any children at the time,

00:21:33.280 but right prior to the move, she became pregnant and delivered twins when we moved to New York for

00:21:39.180 my other job. And I decided really the restaurant field wasn't for me either. So now I'm with twin

00:21:45.860 boys in a field that still didn't work for me. I had really developed a lot of competencies. And

00:21:52.960 when I mentor people and mentor young people, as I do today, those competencies I knew were

00:21:58.880 transferable. I was contacted by someone who had a startup company in a new industry, a new niche of

00:22:07.040 an existing industry, which is the development of high-end executive conference centers for

00:22:12.920 corporations, mainly Fortune 500 companies, as an alternative to meeting in hotels. So there were

00:22:19.760 specially designed facilities with guest rooms and fitness and dining and recreation instead of the

00:22:25.940 folding walls and the bad acoustics. And so that was a startup company. I put my $10,000 that I had

00:22:33.640 into a very, very, very small percentage of the company. It was funny. It wasn't until I did that

00:22:40.420 that I began to think with more compassion about my dad, who had taken his $40,000 and put his life

00:22:48.520 savings when he had a one and two-year-old. And I had twin one-year-olds. And I was doing the same

00:22:54.220 thing as he did in a very unestablished, brand-new niche of the hospitality business. As it turned out,

00:23:01.680 the company almost went bankrupt in three years. Same pattern. The founders were asked to leave, and

00:23:08.520 I was given the opportunity to become president. I was 32 years old, had 400 employees. And over the next

00:23:16.000 25 years, became the major shareholder. We had 10 centers, ran about 6,000 conferences a year with

00:23:22.240 150,000 executives. And that was my main event, became a company that was owned by myself and some

00:23:29.680 key executives.

00:23:31.660 Where in this journey does the thesis emerge for what became your 50th birthday, if I recall? You did

00:23:42.040 something special at your 50th birthday, which in many ways became the central theme of what we're

00:23:47.080 talking about.

00:23:48.580 So now I'm into Act 2, the second 29 years. And so what I never really had, as I described in Act 1,

00:23:56.940 were good friends. And so now I was in my same home, and I was going to live there for an extended

00:24:03.180 period of time. And so I began to make friends. I'm not talking acquaintances. I'm talking about people

00:24:11.020 who I had authentic conversations with. And I was so joyful that when I had my 50th birthday that I

00:24:20.160 wanted to celebrate those friends. And so I invited the five of them with their spouses and my family.

00:24:28.100 There were 17 of us. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was just the opening weekend of Phantom of

00:24:34.380 the Opera. I really spoiled these people for a whole weekend. And I really, at that time, was still

00:24:40.660 limited in my cash. But I knew I was coming close to 53. So it was important for me to celebrate those

00:24:49.700 friends. And so at the reception, I paid tribute to each one of them in front of everybody about how

00:24:58.200 they enriched my life, what they had meant to me. And like Rick's affair, some of these people didn't

00:25:06.460 even know each other, but they became connected through me. And so that was really my first

00:25:14.780 iteration of this paying profound tribute to people while I was alive.

00:25:21.400 I want to talk a little bit more about that. I mean, a lot of people would say,

00:25:24.880 sure, I could invite some friends over for my birthday and I'll make a toast to my friends.

00:25:29.740 But this isn't exactly what we're talking about here. This is a bit more profound than that.

00:25:35.640 How deliberate were you in this first rendition or manifestation of Say It Now? And how much

00:25:42.860 preparation did you put into what you would do with your five closest friends for that celebration?

00:25:48.140 It began with the invitation. And I mailed out a carton of apples. And in each apple, I planted a

00:25:57.820 flag. And each flag was a representation of another activity during that weekend. And everybody

00:26:06.320 appreciated the invitation except my son who was going to school at Dartmouth. And he said it was

00:26:12.280 quite something carrying that crate of apples in the snow. But everybody else seemed to like the idea.

00:26:19.340 In any case, our twin sons played the role of the phantom. They came in off of the

00:26:24.540 platform outside the room before with the smoke. And prior to the reception, we had some wonderful

00:26:30.600 dinners, wonderful show, rides on the carriage. It was a life event that everybody really thought was

00:26:38.820 extra special. I also created for each of them a memento of a picture and then a summary,

00:26:47.120 which I still have to this day, of two lines, two sentences, what each one present had meant to me.

00:26:55.080 And I distributed that memento at the end.

00:26:57.220 How surprised do you think they were by what you said and how much you made this day, which look for

00:27:07.360 most people when they're celebrating their 50th birthday, it's all about them. You seem to make

00:27:11.780 this more about your friends. Do you think that caught them off guard? And can you tell how moved

00:27:17.660 they were by that? Well, it was my first experience seeing how much people appreciate

00:27:25.840 being appreciated and made more so when you do it publicly. I received within a couple months,

00:27:34.180 I think, a leather-bound book that I still read to this day of what that weekend meant to them.

00:27:43.260 Meaning they collectively put this together as a gift back to you.

00:27:49.500 Right.

00:27:50.780 So, did you think at that point that this was a movement that could be

00:27:55.300 larger than just something you did at your birthday?

00:27:58.660 No, this was at the time, you know, I'm thinking about my life. I've never won any academic awards,

00:28:05.460 ever. And yet, when I look back on it, I seem to lead most groups.

00:28:10.600 And I began to wonder, why is that? I'm never the smartest in the room.

00:28:17.540 I think I began to realize that I am kind of like an experiential learner. I kind of watch what's

00:28:23.980 going on, and I learn from that experience. So, for me, though, that left an indelible impression.

00:28:29.820 But for me, that was still locked into this fear that 53 may be done for me. So, it had no longer

00:28:41.740 term view than that. I'd never had a longer term view of my life. I remember attending a seminar

00:28:48.600 when I was in a young president's organization. The woman had an experience where she said,

00:28:54.000 I'd like you to close your eyes. I was, I don't know, must have been less than 50, maybe late 40s.

00:28:58.860 And they said, just close your eyes. Picture what an ideal future would look like.

00:29:04.080 I closed my eyes, and it was black. Tears ran down my face. I went up to her because she was a

00:29:12.060 psychologist. I said, I don't understand. I assumed this was a positive experience for everybody.

00:29:17.720 This was painful. She said, does that have anything to do with how long you think you might live?

00:29:27.260 Man, of course, that was what it was related to. So, to your question, Peter, this was never the

00:29:32.920 beginning of what happened later on. There were two more. It seems like things happen in threes.

00:29:39.600 That was the first act. There was a second act when I was 70. That was a different story.

00:29:45.280 Before we talk about that, you alluded to the idea that a part of the magic of this

00:29:51.120 experience was that you didn't just tell these five people how much they meant to you. You did

00:29:56.440 it publicly. Why did you decide to do that, even at the time? Was that just intuition? Or did you

00:30:03.360 have a stronger belief set that it was more meaningful to do it that way, as opposed to tell

00:30:07.580 each of them privately the exact same things that you would have said?

00:30:11.560 Oh, I love that question. I had spent, by that time, 20 years in the conference business.

00:30:17.340 And one of the focus that I had that was transferable was that I always saw the power

00:30:24.800 of expressing something in a group. So that if 10 people told you individually something,

00:30:31.120 it was not as powerful as 10 people gathering to tell that person.

00:30:36.000 In the positive and the negative?

00:30:37.700 Both, for sure. For me, it's always generally been the positive. So once again, the life experience

00:30:45.800 is, Walter, there's power in a group. There's power there. And so it seemed quite natural to me.

00:30:52.040 Is there anything between 50 and 70 that, I mean, aside from the obvious, which is at some point you're

00:30:59.500 54 and you realize you did it, at what point does the fear of, well, you know, it's funny, mortality is

00:31:07.580 100% guaranteed. So this idea that we're afraid of dying is a bit misguided. In some ways, it's we're

00:31:15.400 afraid we don't know when we're going to die. There's probably some fear of not existing as well

00:31:20.980 and understanding that life is finite. But how did you come to grips with that as with each passing

00:31:27.620 year you found yourself alive? Well, it was a gift that kept on giving because I always had my foot

00:31:36.040 down on the pedal, not to the metal, but down on the pedal. I acquired an innate intentionality.

00:31:46.640 People to this day say, how do you do what you do? And they said, one of the big reasons is I'm

00:31:52.540 really good at deciding what I don't do. It's guided my life. So I knew however long I would

00:32:01.500 have, I was just going to make the most of it. I was very grateful for every year.

00:32:08.140 That's a really important point, Walter. At what stage in your career did you go from always

00:32:15.380 incoming, receiving, taking every opportunity that comes your way to this more deliberate focus

00:32:20.740 on saying no? Because I'm sure that the day you graduated from college, you would have done

00:32:27.000 anything, or I mean, you did anything. But at some point, as a person matures and becomes more

00:32:32.720 successful and they have more and more obligations, the no button becomes a very important button.

00:32:39.540 How did you discover that? And what were your guiding principles?

00:32:43.180 I would say that the fine tuning of that, I always was concerned how much time,

00:32:48.860 but that doesn't give you focus. That gives you just a concern for time. But I attended a program

00:32:54.520 at the Center for Constructive Change when I was in my 30s. It was taught by Fred Jervis,

00:33:02.860 may he rest in peace, and it was a process of thinking that has changed every day of my life.

00:33:13.680 I do not think in traditional ways that I thought before that. I always think in reverse. So when

00:33:22.460 I'm thinking I'm going to have the pleasure of spending time with you, I don't think I never

00:33:29.760 would ask you, what will we do? I would specifically say it. If this conversation is really successful,

00:33:37.260 what would have happened by the end of it for us to know that our time was well spent? I ask that

00:33:44.140 question for everything important that I do. Every day.

00:33:51.660 Including personal interactions?

00:33:54.340 Including personal interactions.

00:33:57.480 Hmm. I want to talk about that a little bit because that makes a lot of sense in some contexts.

00:34:04.020 That makes a lot of sense at a meeting. If you have your senior leadership in for a meeting,

00:34:11.220 it's really important to say, what is the desired outcome of this meeting? How do I want behavior

00:34:15.640 to change? How do I want people to feel? Whatever. On the other hand, I have a hard time wrapping my

00:34:20.100 head around that. I'm not pushing back on the idea. I'm just sort of thinking through it, which is

00:34:23.980 I'm going away with one of my kids for the weekend. And you're saying, instead of thinking

00:34:29.620 through the activities you're going to do, walk me through what you're thinking.

00:34:34.160 I'll give you a real live example. I was actually doing mentoring with one of Jason's friends. He

00:34:39.900 came to see me and he said, you know, I... Jason's one of your sons.

00:34:43.060 Yes. Sorry. So one of his friends, he was, I think, in his 30s at the time. He just came down to see if he

00:34:49.740 could get some coaching. And so I said, well, give me some situations you're dealing with. He said,

00:34:56.340 Walter, I work so hard during the day. And then I go home and I spend all my energy with my kids.

00:35:03.300 From morning to night, at the end of it, they don't seem very fulfilled and I'm exhausted. And

00:35:08.820 then I start all over again. Wow, that's a tough life. I have a question you might want to ask them.

00:35:16.940 They're now, I think, nine and 11 years old. I said, when you get home Friday night,

00:35:22.700 why don't you ask them the question to each of them? If this were a really a fantastic weekend,

00:35:27.460 what would you like to have happen over the weekend? They obviously gave them specifics.

00:35:33.500 He was able to do it in like a third of the time. The kids had a fantastic time and he had two thirds

00:35:38.780 of his time to relax. Now, do you always need the input of someone else when you're thinking through

00:35:45.440 that? No. Sometimes, sometimes not? No, I would ask myself. So if I were even meeting a friend

00:35:52.280 or meeting a mentee, I'd say, well, if this were a really successful experience,

00:35:59.400 what would have happened by the end of it? To me, it's like saying good morning. It's just so

00:36:04.000 intuitive. There's not a formality. It's a freeing. Peter, it's a freeing. It is not a limitation.

00:36:10.840 It may sound like too much structure. It's the ultimate of being free because I don't ask myself,

00:36:17.200 what will I do? I ask, what is it that I'd like to have happen? If I'm meeting with a friend who's

00:36:23.860 going through a difficult time, when I'm done, I would like to figure out sometime during that time

00:36:30.080 that I will help him lighten that load. I'm not sure when, but when I leave, I want to be able to do

00:36:36.620 that. To me, it's very natural, very powerful, very intentional, very focused, and very gratifying.

00:36:45.820 Say a little bit more about what you learned or how you developed your palette around saying no to

00:36:53.180 things. Oh, well, that's the larger question. So this process of asking about what success would

00:36:59.820 be for an individual one for probably over 40 years, I asked myself the question, if my life is

00:37:08.700 successful over the next three years, used to be five, now it's down to one, but it's far enough out

00:37:16.420 that I'm not thinking about what I did last year. If I had an ideal life in the next three years,

00:37:23.160 how would I know it? What would be happening? And I would go from my personal relationships,

00:37:29.360 my family relationships, my financial relationships, my health, every key area of my life would have an

00:37:36.820 indicator, and that would be like my ideal outcomes. And then I would kind of, what I think, think

00:37:43.080 backwards. Well, if I want to be my cholesterol at under 100 and I'm at 110, what would it be each

00:37:51.240 six-month period? So each one of them have benchmarks. I may be getting into too much detail

00:37:57.180 here for you, Peter, but each benchmark is, to me, powerful because it says to me at six-month

00:38:03.900 intervals, if I make it, I'm on track. If I don't, I haven't failed. I just tell myself, well, whatever

00:38:11.600 you're doing isn't sufficient, so what are you going to do differently? Wow, is that powerful.

00:38:16.760 That's how I've been leading my life. So to your question, it is so easy for me to say no

00:38:25.580 when it isn't consistent with the outcomes and the indicators that I've been committed to.

00:38:33.580 Yeah, that takes a bit of discipline, doesn't it?

00:38:36.000 The first time, it'll seem awkward. After 44 years, it's awkward not to do it.

00:38:39.860 Yeah, but I mean, the discipline is in the ability to contemplate something that in the

00:38:50.600 moment seems enticing. People talk and are familiar with this idea of fear of missing out.

00:38:55.880 Someone comes to you and says, Walter, I've got this great opportunity for you and da-da-da-da-da.

00:39:00.280 And on the surface, it sounds pretty interesting, but then you have to say, wait, how is that aligned

00:39:05.120 with the goals that I have? One of the tools that I've learned for that, and it's been very

00:39:10.240 helpful for me, I've been in a very concerted effort for the past five years approximately

00:39:15.560 of trying to be more disciplined about that, is forcing myself to never say yes to anything

00:39:21.800 when asked. So even if I'm really leaning towards doing it, just asking for a couple of

00:39:26.520 days to think about it. And if I just commit to that one rule, that's literally the only rule

00:39:31.960 that is absolutely black and white, which is, this sounds very interesting, Walter. Let me think

00:39:38.420 about it for a couple of days and get back to you. And then it just buys me the time to try to do my

00:39:43.520 own version of that. I still think I probably say yes to more than I should, but that one step has

00:39:49.280 probably saved me 80%. That's great. We all have our own techniques for me. I have to say,

00:39:57.920 when you say it's a lot of structure, my structure provides freedom. It provides a built-in discipline

00:40:03.860 and it allows for a lot of creativity because I never, never talk about how I'm going to do it.

00:40:10.320 So I am completely free to figure out how.

00:40:15.620 You mentioned something at 70, the second phase of insight. Say a little more about that.

00:40:21.900 Now I had this experience when I was 50 and so still being sensitized to the 50s thinking, well,

00:40:29.840 my father never worked out and I've been working out since I've been 30. So I've got a few more

00:40:35.100 years over him. So my adjusted age is 58, 59, 60. So it's still present. Well, they have these

00:40:42.960 moments. It was Tim Russert's funeral that I saw.

00:40:46.120 He died in about what, 2007?

00:40:47.880 50s. Yeah. 2007, 2008, 2007. He was in his early 50s. I thought he was brilliant with

00:40:55.160 Meet the Press. Never been a moderator in my view that's been better. And at his funeral with former

00:41:02.180 presidents and astronauts and celebrities, the tributes were unbelievable. And it occurred to me.

00:41:10.140 He never got to hear it.

00:41:11.500 He's never going to hear a word of it. That registered, I thought, that doesn't make sense.

00:41:19.580 And I briefly mentioned I'm reading challenged. So reading books are very difficult unless they

00:41:25.400 can be done in small chapters with no recall of the previous chapter. I was able to read what

00:41:32.220 Tuesdays with Maury that had been written, where in his final years, he got very authentic and very

00:41:39.000 deliberate. And I remember reading part of the last lecture, which a professor at Carnegie Mellon,

00:41:46.320 I think. And he wanted to do one last lecture because he was dying from cancer and he wanted

00:41:51.620 to leave a message for his kids. And I'm thinking, wow. And then the KPMG chairman in his 50s got brain

00:41:59.620 cancer. I believe it was brain cancer, had four months to live. And he wrote a book called Chasing

00:42:04.680 Daylight about what he wanted to do in the last four months. Experiences, experiences, experiences.

00:42:13.100 It's either too late or it's almost too late. I don't want that to be my life. That may be customary,

00:42:22.680 but sometimes customary is not good. It's just usual and common, but not smart.

00:42:34.680 And I made a commitment and it was in my late 50s when I had those four or more impact that I was

00:42:40.980 going to do it differently. And I was coming on 70 and I thought, oh, I did my 50 and now my 70. And I

00:42:47.980 asked Lola, I said, you know, I have an idea for a gift for my 70th. She said, what is it? I said,

00:42:54.420 I want to spend as much time as I need in the coming year to sit down with everybody that had been

00:43:00.380 important in my life. I wanted to go visit with them. I want to sit with them. I want to have an

00:43:05.840 experience with them after I talk with them. And I want each one of them to know how important they've

00:43:11.680 been in my life. Lola has been either the creator or the supporter of everything important in my life

00:43:17.920 said, if that's the gift you want, you should take it. And that's what I did for the following

00:43:23.840 11 months. After I was 70, I visited with 44 people, brought me to Kenya, to Mexico, to Canada,

00:43:32.340 many places in the United States. It was a remarkable moment of my life.

00:43:40.280 Give me an example of what such a meeting was like. Obviously, if you're seeing 44 people

00:43:46.100 across the globe in 11 months, we're talking about only days that you're spending with each person,

00:43:52.240 right? Oh, literally a day. So you would fly into Mexico City?

00:43:58.200 Yeah. So most of them were domestic. In fact, some of them I was able to do two in one trip or

00:44:04.480 three in one trip. I had a few in Florida, so I would combine them. So it wasn't like I had 44 trips.

00:44:11.000 Some were from Southern California, which is where I live. It didn't require traveling. I don't want to

00:44:16.160 make this seem like this was an extensive travel, whatever. But I want to highlight the simplicity

00:44:22.840 of it. First of all, I hesitate to typically tell this story about 44 people because people

00:44:29.020 and your listeners will probably say, oh, I don't have 44 people. You have one, at least.

00:44:36.040 And that's all I'm trying to inspire. So for me, the journey was my personal journey. It had nothing

00:44:43.600 to do with inspiring anybody for anything. It was my personal journey. And I said, well,

00:44:48.720 what process will I use? Took out a legal pad and I wrote the question, what difference did this person

00:44:57.880 make in my life? And I would put bullet points down underneath it. Sometimes it could be two pages,

00:45:05.480 but typically one, I've got to go see him or her by the product of that process. I took that legal pad

00:45:14.340 with me and it was, I had four bases that I covered in every conversation. So yeah, there's some

00:45:21.360 systemization to this, but each one was so different, but they followed a similar pattern.

00:45:27.880 And what was that pattern?

00:45:29.840 Well, the first base was just, how did I have the good fortune of meeting you? How did that happen?

00:45:37.140 Then we talked about next base was all these shared experiences we had. Wow. Amazing.

00:45:46.200 Third base was the major one. I had my pad and I said, this is for me to express to you how important

00:45:55.280 you've been in my life. And I want to tell you why, because to me, the specificity, never do say that

00:46:02.580 word too easily, was where the richness of the conversation. It wasn't, I love you. It wasn't,

00:46:09.920 although I did tell them I love them. It wasn't a general remark. It was a specific remark.

00:46:15.580 So third base was the big one. The fourth one was kind of for me, which is that I had known these

00:46:23.260 people over a thousand years. And I said, this is my only opportunity. Incidentally, I recorded every

00:46:30.120 conversation. And because it's so hard to take in acknowledgement and appreciation, at the end of

00:46:35.940 this year, I mailed to each one of them a picture, 120-word letter summarizing it, and the CD, which

00:46:44.260 summarized our conversation, and framed them and mailed it to 44 people. But the last piece of it

00:46:50.680 was that I wanted to learn something about myself. And so I said, listen, I would appreciate it if you

00:46:59.040 could give me one piece. I'd like to create a mosaic about who I am. Would you be good enough to

00:47:05.560 share with me? What would that piece have been from your perspective? And that was my fourth base.

00:47:12.460 That's the whole experience. That's the whole process. What was the most interesting thing you

00:47:17.000 learned in that year about life, not necessarily about yourself, but just about life and the richness

00:47:22.380 of it? First thing was how blessed I was. Relationships are interesting in the sense that

00:47:31.640 I equate it like I put a flashlight in a dark room. Those qualities of the friends were always

00:47:39.740 there, but I just brought them to light. And when you bring them to light, it's an extraordinary

00:47:47.000 feeling. I mean, if you had one or two or three, it matters not. I mean, here's a guy who never had a

00:47:53.860 friend until he went to high school. Come on. So I felt such a richness from the experience.

00:48:01.940 Actually, towards the end, I was in Kenya on actually another mission, actually building a

00:48:07.880 school over there. And the founder of this nonprofit heard what I was doing and, in fact, was on the

00:48:14.880 journey. And he said, well, would you tell the story at dinner about what you're doing?

00:48:18.900 And they all broke into applause at the end. I said, you know, maybe this story has to be told

00:48:25.740 more. Maybe it shouldn't just be a personal story. And so once again, Lola's, I guess it was about

00:48:33.880 right during this time, had lunch with an acquaintance, told the acquaintance about what

00:48:39.060 I was doing. The acquaintance said, I'd like to hear the story. Turns out she was the editorial

00:48:45.100 director of Hay House. And three days later, I had a contract to write the book. And that became

00:48:52.520 another platform. It's called This Is The Moment, how one man's year-long journey captured the

00:48:59.040 extraordinary power of gratitude. It's interesting. You talked about how some people might hear that

00:49:05.960 44 people made this list. And that's a pretty selective list. You were very deliberate in saying

00:49:13.240 these are not acquaintances. These are very close friends. These are people who, I mean,

00:49:18.360 these are big questions, not how did we meet, not what are the shared experiences, but telling them

00:49:23.740 with great specificity, the impact they've had on your life. That's not a big group of people.

00:49:29.000 The fact that it's 44 for you is probably not surprising to anyone who's listening to this

00:49:34.800 conversation or to anybody who knows you. And it probably speaks to how deliberate you are at

00:49:40.900 cultivating relationships. I think it's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason that richness in life

00:49:49.740 is much more about relationships than other successes, whether it be success in victory,

00:49:57.300 success in material, you know, or monetary means. Do you find that one can realize that without some

00:50:06.860 suffering? In other words, how much of a role did the pain that you experienced in the first

00:50:13.080 29 years of your life paradoxically become the greatest asset to allow the second and third 29

00:50:21.840 year periods to have this degree of richness? That's a wonderful question. Clearly, I was at an

00:50:29.320 advantage because of my deprivation. But I think there's a level of consciousness in that I have,

00:50:38.880 there have been thousands of people who have since acted on this message. And there have been,

00:50:44.800 remember, I knew it was going to be good because he was an acquaintance and he's a motorcycle,

00:50:50.480 cigar smoking, really tough dude. He said, that's a hell of a message. He said,

00:50:55.620 there are some people I need to speak to. And so the wide range of people that realize we are not

00:51:04.080 self-made. Everybody really knows that. The question is, are we going to acknowledge those people that

00:51:11.540 helped make us while they're here? It's not complicated. It's not complicated. What I find

00:51:17.980 incredible and why I'm really excited about this latest movement, and we can maybe get into more of

00:51:24.780 that in the discussion. But I think my contemporaries and even people in their 40s and 50s,

00:51:33.740 they've been so focused on the traditional measures of success that relationships don't have the focus.

00:51:43.500 And at the end of the day, another couple chapters I read of a book called How Do You Measure Life or

00:51:50.580 Something Like That, Written by a Professor at Harvard. Now, these are all these bright guys who

00:51:54.980 graduate from the business school, go out and become financial hoo-was. In five or 10 years,

00:52:00.460 they've made a fortune. They come back for a reunion and they're miserable. He said, there's something

00:52:05.520 wrong with this picture. And he changed his focus to have them look at what successful life looks like,

00:52:12.580 not how much success you may have in business. And I think there is an enormous opportunity,

00:52:20.500 missed opportunity, in really placing education around what's really important.

00:52:29.460 And I don't know about you, but to me, there's nothing more important than my marriage. I have 60

00:52:35.460 years, over 20,000 days. My children, they're grown. Twins. My good friends. What did they ever teach me

00:52:47.480 about that? Where did I ever learn about what it is to be a compassionate, loving, caring husband? Or a

00:52:56.380 father? Or a friend? What do you do when your friends are struggling? How are you helpful? How do you

00:53:05.220 show compassion? Show me a school, and that's where I'll go. One of the things that I want to

00:53:12.480 understand a bit better, Walter, is I know a lot of people who are surrounded by people that are

00:53:20.780 supposedly friends, and they have world-class experiences constantly. But deep down, they don't

00:53:29.680 seem particularly enriched by them. And I don't want to sound judgmental, because one can never know from

00:53:36.740 the outside. But my appearance is that both these so-called friendships seem superficial, and the

00:53:43.980 experiences maybe seem too hedonic, and not relationally rich. It's also clear that when you talk about these

00:53:53.080 44 people, that that's not what it was about. I suspect that when you talked about the experiences you shared

00:53:58.920 with them, it wasn't, when we went to Vegas that weekend, and gambled all this money away, and partied

00:54:06.240 really hard, or something like that. I suspect that some of the experiences you talked about sharing were very

00:54:10.880 subtle. How do you think that you naturally gravitated towards that? And why do you think that is not

00:54:19.520 necessarily a natural thing for people to do? Wonderful. I think a lot has to do with our life

00:54:26.260 experiences. I don't have much time to waste. This urgency from literally the fear of death.

00:54:35.300 I don't know if it's a fear of death. It's a realization somebody wasted an hour of my time this

00:54:40.860 week. It was a pure waste. I really resented it. They didn't do it intentionally. It just turned out to be a

00:54:48.160 wasted hour. I would have rather written out a check. I can't get that hour back. So, I tend to

00:54:56.700 not have a lot of time. I have to laugh because one of the fellows, I've been in these, what we call

00:55:03.460 forums. There are groups of 10 or 12 presidents. One I've been in for 37 years, one for 20 years,

00:55:12.080 another one for 22 years. I've been to like 800 of these sessions. Well, they're all authentic.

00:55:18.860 They're all about life. I've spent probably 4,000 hours talking about presidents' issues,

00:55:24.680 as deep as you could be. So, that's where I spend a fair amount of time. All my mentoring,

00:55:30.100 my mentoring is about real-life issues. It's not about entertainment. And friends that I hang with

00:55:37.620 are typically ones where I can have meaningful conversations. So, I really think it's how

00:55:45.260 you normally relate in your life. I think it's getting to the point where people are more

00:55:50.580 comfortable being open. I also find when people get older, they're getting a little bit more

00:55:55.400 comfortable. I, myself, was very secretive in my 20s. I'm not secretive now. They're all lessons.

00:56:02.680 So, it's kind of interesting. In these men's groups, I would not be the smartest, for sure.

00:56:11.640 I would not be the first one I would call to go have a beer with. I don't drink it,

00:56:15.760 but they wouldn't ask me anyway. Not the bantering kind of person. But the moderator of the group said,

00:56:21.900 Walter, I don't know if you know it, but this is the person who was on the journey. He said,

00:56:26.040 of all the members of the group, you'd either be the first or second person that everyone would come

00:56:30.540 do if they had an issue. Why do you think that is? Is that innate? Is that deliberate? Meaning,

00:56:36.040 is that a skill you are cultivating? Is it simply part of your personality? I mean, let's be clear.

00:56:42.040 I think it's interesting to me that the straw that broke the camel's back in your own mental breakdown

00:56:48.660 was one born of empathy. I mean, it was that you couldn't stand to take this older man's job.

00:56:56.040 And while I'm sure many people would be disheartened by that proposition, and even if

00:57:01.960 someone just chose to say, well, I'm not going to go back to work, it impacted you in a way that was

00:57:07.200 so much deeper. If someone's listening to this thinking, I would like to be a person that at a

00:57:13.380 minimum my friends could come to when there's a problem, not necessarily everyone would feel that

00:57:19.200 way who knew me, but those who know me well. But it's not happening. I can't tell you the last time

00:57:24.440 someone came to me because they have a problem. What do they need to do to cultivate that skill?

00:57:31.140 And let me ask you a follow-up question in a moment, which is, why should one want to have that?

00:57:38.900 Well, first, the question is, how do you develop that skill? I think it's based on authenticity

00:57:43.900 and empathy and compassion. And I think we all have it. I don't know that we all use it,

00:57:52.320 but I think deep relationships, you mentioned earlier that people who have

00:57:56.220 these wide range of friendships, and it's, I don't want to correct, these were not all good friends of

00:58:02.460 mine that were on the list. These are all people who had significantly impacted my life.

00:58:07.640 That doesn't necessarily mean that they were my good friends.

00:58:10.500 Many of them were good friends. The primary selection criteria

00:58:14.340 was these people altered the course of your life. And some of them might have been a professor in

00:58:19.180 college. Well, the blind man in New Hampshire who taught me how to think, I might have seen him

00:58:24.920 30 times in my life. He would not be someone who's a friend. In terms of why would someone want to

00:58:31.080 be more authentic? That's an individual choice. I think there's a natural aptitude to

00:58:37.800 show and tell. And for me, authenticity transcends show and tell. I find it very rich. I find a lot

00:58:48.280 of these apparent friendships were really just, we were in the same organization together and they

00:58:55.320 were very friendly. You leave the organization and you don't see them again. That's not a friend.

00:59:01.360 And that's just an association. And I think sometimes it gets confusing. And sometimes as

00:59:06.800 you elevate yourself in the world, people will befriend you in ways that you actually think

00:59:12.220 they're a friend, but they're really, in some cases, just because of an association.

00:59:18.560 So let's go back to Tim Russert's death circa 2008. This has a profound effect on you, right? You see

00:59:25.680 all of these people coming to say the most amazing things to him that he never got to hear.

00:59:33.700 What else crystallizes for you there?

00:59:36.500 That was one of three or four that came right at me and it followed a real memory of my 50th and the

00:59:43.080 fact that, oh my God, I'm going to make 70. I think those compounded it. The 70th experience in which

00:59:49.200 I wrote the book, I spoke about the book. People wrote me about what the message had meant to them

00:59:54.580 because the book was structured in three ways. One is, how did I come up with this idea? Where did

00:59:59.500 it come from? It's absolutely unbelievable to me. And now I'm seeing more research come out

01:00:05.640 because mental health is becoming so much more of an issue. They're now coming out with studies that

01:00:10.960 are done five and 10 years ago about the power of gratitude. It makes you feel better. It's less

01:00:15.820 depressed. And none of mine was based on any study. It was all experiences. So the feedback I got from

01:00:23.700 speaking on the subject matter really elevated my appreciation of the power of the message.

01:00:31.200 It has been gaining. And then really a decade after the book was published, it still had legs.

01:00:39.240 I heard from a girl in the Philippines who had picked the book up in a library and she wrote me an email

01:00:46.920 and she said, I just wanted you to know I was thinking of killing myself. First of all,

01:00:51.740 I had no idea how the book was in a library in the Philippines, but she said, I had been abused in

01:00:57.680 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

01:01:03.260 realized there are a number of people who have actually helped me in my life. And how can I forget

01:01:10.560 that at this moment? We had one or two exchanges. Decade later, I heard from her, she's married,

01:01:17.300 living in I think Denmark or Sweden. There are many of these stories. It elevated to me the importance

01:01:25.000 of thinking about maybe there's a more powerful way to do it. Most of my life has been spent one-on-one

01:01:30.820 in small groups. All my mentoring is one-on-one. All my small groups is 12 people or less. My conference

01:01:36.660 business was 25 people or less, typically. The book was the first time that I have influenced

01:01:42.480 thousands of people. And during the pandemic, I thought, oh, this is going to make this group

01:01:49.100 get together end. And I actually was having a conversation with my son. He said, you know,

01:01:54.240 you could do it by Zoom. I said, really? And so three days later, we did the first of the

01:02:02.100 Living Tributes. He insisted on using me and brought my mentees together. And that evolved

01:02:07.440 into what became the Say It Now movement today. And this may be my biggest legacy.

01:02:15.820 How does a person go about doing this?

01:02:19.560 Well, first of all, this is not a business of mine. I invest in it. There's no royalties,

01:02:25.540 no rewards, there's nothing. I want to make it really simple. This is not complicated.

01:02:30.460 Once again, I will tell you of the thousands of stories that I've heard over the years.

01:02:36.580 I've never heard one that the person said, I'm sorry. I just got a card from someone this past week.

01:02:43.180 He sent me, and he said, I just want you to know you inspired this. The card was printed 70 for 70.

01:02:50.640 And he proceeds to say, he has written to 70 people on his 70th birthday. He outdid me.

01:02:56.380 So I dropped him a note, asked him what the experience was like. Very similar experience.

01:03:04.080 Oh my God. It was so easy to do. It felt so good. It reconnected me with people at levels I haven't

01:03:10.640 been at. It's not complicated. There were short notes to each of those people. And I say,

01:03:16.740 it doesn't matter how, but it does matter now. I recently came across an interview by Hadley

01:03:26.800 Vajos. She is a hospice nurse. She just wrote a book called In Between. And in it, they asked her

01:03:37.280 the question, if you had an ideal death, what would it be like after you see these people who have had

01:03:42.480 these for months before they die? And she said, well, for me, I would want people to come to me

01:03:48.580 and tell me that I mattered before I died, right? When I was dying. I'd like to hear that.

01:03:55.220 She said, I was with these people for six months before they died. Their central word was,

01:04:00.240 I don't matter to anybody. Then she would go to the funerals of these people

01:04:05.940 and hear the tributes that are paid to the person who's dying, who feels unloved, unappreciated,

01:04:14.160 unacknowledged. So what I decided was, in some ways, we have to unlearn this idea that what is

01:04:24.580 customary, you have to unlearn. Celebrations of life are great for some things. Memorial services are great,

01:04:31.020 but they're not for paying tribute to somebody who's been important in your life. Those are not

01:04:35.920 the moments for that. Why do you think we do that, Walter?

01:04:40.580 Custom. But is there some level of discomfort we have? I mean, when you say it this way, it's so

01:04:48.060 obvious. There's nothing you're saying right now that anybody listening to this would go,

01:04:53.400 no, that doesn't make any sense. We should absolutely let those people in hospice die thinking

01:04:58.140 that they didn't matter and wait till they die to tell a bunch of other people how important they

01:05:03.300 were. You know, again, when you state it that way, it sounds ridiculous, but there must be some reason

01:05:08.900 that this custom has stuck. And it's wonderful that you're going to shatter that. But as I even

01:05:16.460 examine my own life and I think of these people in high school, in college, at all stages of my life

01:05:26.280 who mattered, it's clear to me that most of them might not realize it now.

01:05:32.940 I was with a limousine driver and we started, he said, what do you do? And so I told him the story.

01:05:39.420 He said, oh my, God, my immediate thought goes to my basketball coach. Now he must've been in his

01:05:44.260 forties. That guy taught me so much about life and about playing. It wasn't about the game.

01:05:49.340 And I said, well, is he still alive? Yeah. Maybe you should connect with him.

01:05:56.060 Next time he picked me up to go to the airport, he said, I got to tell you something. I met with

01:06:00.640 my basketball coach. I said, what was that like? I get psychic income out of all these stories,

01:06:05.760 right? He said, I called him. I said, coach, I haven't seen you in a long time. I'd like to come

01:06:09.760 see you. Sure. Come on. So he comes and he's, he says, I'll see you on the basketball court.

01:06:14.320 Right. So the young fellow says, coach, I didn't come to play basketball. What'd you come for? I

01:06:21.540 said, I need to have you sit down on the bench. I want to tell you what you mean to me. Change their

01:06:26.600 lives. So the reason that I think it's a little hard is because not too many people are modeling

01:06:34.280 that this is the way to do it. So I thought strategically, what we should really do is teach

01:06:42.320 younger people about doing it. They don't have to unlearn anything. So my major thrust this past year

01:06:51.480 has been to educate young people. And they are teaching materials now. I think we're in 38,500

01:07:00.300 classrooms around the world. And so 75 different countries. So it is a global movement.

01:07:07.280 And they're primarily fifth through the 12th grades. And they all have materials on practicing

01:07:14.640 say it now. And so that's where it's starting because they're going to go home, tell their

01:07:20.640 parents. I got a note from Joanne in Ontario, Canada, a fellow Canadian and kindergarten teacher

01:07:28.440 who had been so committed to her profession. But during the pandemic, it was so tough.

01:07:36.660 And then when she went back to school with these kindergartens, where it was their first

01:07:41.100 experience, she introduced say it now to kindergartens. And she writes and she said,

01:07:47.280 one child chose to express what I meant to her by doing a drawing. And she told me what the drawing

01:07:53.220 meant and why she appreciated me in the drawing and how she helped me learn how to sing and why that

01:08:00.560 made a difference. This is a kindergarten. So my hope, I set a goal for a million expressions of

01:08:07.620 gratitude by my 85th birthday, which is next month. We crossed a million four.

01:08:14.940 And we're just beginning. What does finishing strong mean to you?

01:08:23.680 Well, you'll see the pattern. So I had a recent medical scare that I thought,

01:08:31.180 hmm, maybe this is 53 after all, except this 83 or 84. And so I asked myself the question, Peter,

01:08:39.680 I think you could probably ask it right now. You've heard it for our conversation. I said to myself,

01:08:46.360 if you could ideally finish strong. Now, in this case, it was end of life. What would be happening?

01:08:56.020 How would you know? And I detailed key results. And for the last year,

01:09:03.840 I achieved all of those results. What were some of those things?

01:09:09.680 Well, one is we have two homes. When something happened to me, I think it'd be a lot for my wife.

01:09:18.100 And so I said, I need to find an environment for her that would provide a lifestyle. And so last week,

01:09:26.780 we moved into a place that would provide that lifestyle. We still have our primary home,

01:09:31.920 but this place would be a place we're already starting to transition. So she would feel comfortable.

01:09:38.100 I am very current. I talk about currency. I'm very current with my relationships. Really current.

01:09:46.440 I make sure I've circled the block with all my mentees that have been important. They all came

01:09:51.640 to my TEDx talk, or most of them came to my TEDx talk, which gave me a chance once again,

01:09:57.460 to publicly acknowledge how they each had changed my life. Now, is that counterintuitive?

01:10:04.520 Not for me, because I had. So as much as I enjoyed my TEDx talk this year, the dinner following was so

01:10:15.280 significant for me. So in terms of additional things, there was one investment that would

01:10:22.860 require some work. It's not an operating company, but just a little involved investment. I don't want

01:10:29.000 my wife to have to think about that. So I'm just finishing liquidating that. So everything is

01:10:36.440 very easy. My wife has a list of here are 15 things to do from a financial point of view. If

01:10:43.380 something happens to me, this is exactly what you do. 15 steps up to date. Financial affairs are up to

01:10:50.200 date. My friendships are up to date. Still working out, still hoping for the best. And I got some good

01:10:56.400 news. Cancer that I had a year ago is in remission. And somebody up there thinks I got some more work

01:11:05.300 to do. When do you think people should be thinking about this? I mean, in some ways, you could argue,

01:11:11.780 given that we have no idea when we're going to die, obviously being 85 versus being 45, the odds are

01:11:19.200 much longer. But how should a person operationalize that? Because that's a very tactical list of things.

01:11:25.440 Some of those are at least the financial planning, the consolidation, all of that stuff. Do you have

01:11:31.540 a sense of how many people, I'm assuming it's men typically dying before their female spouse,

01:11:37.640 are kind of leaving their spouse, I don't know, ill-suited to deal with the chaos of their demise?

01:11:45.260 Yeah, I've been doing this for 35 years, Peter. This one was a little grander before I always had my

01:11:52.360 estate in order and provided life insurance and homes and the things that are for their comfort.

01:11:59.640 This one had a different tone to it. I also want to say that I think we wait too long to give it now.

01:12:09.280 Part of what I accelerated was I've been spending the last 30 years in philanthropy. I accelerated that

01:12:16.820 program, not just for nonprofits, but for people who have been important to me, but haven't been as

01:12:23.020 successful. I accelerated it. Is it normal? No. Are you worried about giving people money? A little,

01:12:29.060 but I'm worried more about not. Same thing. It's not customary. I understand. And one person said,

01:12:36.280 it's difficult. Of all the people, one person said, I just can't do it. I said, well,

01:12:43.060 meaning one person couldn't accept the money. And I said to them, I really understand. And I appreciate

01:12:49.940 you being so honest about it. But let me tell you a little story. And that is, you're keeping me

01:12:58.320 from the pleasure of giving a gift. So give some thought to it. She said, I can't keep you from that

01:13:05.440 pleasure. And I gave it to her. How much of this do you think your twins have naturally been infused

01:13:15.280 with through the osmosis of your example? I have had evidence that the modeling is more important

01:13:22.960 than the speaking. I'm very proud of them. And I think they get the message and they'll do it in

01:13:28.620 their own way, with their own approach. How much of this is something that you think

01:13:36.540 happens between parents and children as well? In other words, do you find yourself also having

01:13:42.420 the same discussion with your kids and with your wife? And I can't imagine you don't feel that way

01:13:47.960 about them. I know how much I do. I sort of look at my wife and my kids and acknowledge that without

01:13:53.900 them, I'd be in a pretty rough situation. I wouldn't be the person I am, including whatever

01:14:01.160 external successes I've had. Do you have a different way in which you communicate that to family?

01:14:08.460 Well, one of the things I recall is, and perhaps this isn't an exact answer to your question,

01:14:16.320 but what I heard the question being is, how do they model some of what they may have learned from

01:14:24.740 you? And how do you learn that they in fact get it? That may not have been the precise question.

01:14:32.140 But I remember one of our sons writing, he used Father's Day for the occasion, and he said,

01:14:39.740 you know, when I think back over our life together, he always gave me footsteps to follow.

01:14:46.320 When I needed someone to lead. You always walked behind me when I needed encouragement. And you always

01:14:59.400 have been by my side when I needed a friend. I've read that a thousand times. That was from my son,

01:15:08.660 Jonathan. From my son, Jason. He has written, both on the occasion of my 80th birthday and most recent

01:15:18.700 Father's Day, all of the messages that he got from me over the years in his own way. So,

01:15:28.540 it means a lot to me. As a matter of fact, one thing I wanted to highlight was when I was going

01:15:36.140 through this, and this is really what I've learned in the last year that I never knew beforehand,

01:15:42.380 when I was kind of thinking that this could be the final year for sure. And there were some other

01:15:48.740 issues going on that I was also preoccupied with. At the end of the day, I have a portrait

01:15:57.420 of the 44 people on my journey in my office. I have next to that pictures of my mentees,

01:16:06.420 and I turn on Brooks' Violin Concerto, which I love, and I go one to one. There are probably

01:16:16.400 almost 60 lives that I touch during it, reminding myself what they had given me.

01:16:25.400 I feel so blessed. I have so much oxygen. I have never been in a better place than in the toughest

01:16:35.000 year of my life this past year. That's just amazing, Walter. I certainly don't doubt the

01:16:41.300 sincerity of how you say that. But again, that's a very counterintuitive way to describe what could

01:16:48.680 easily be the last days of your life, the last year of your life. I want to understand a little

01:16:55.300 bit more what you think is driving that sense of peace, because it can only be described as a sense

01:17:03.040 of peace. I have to say, I don't personally feel peace in that way. If I try to imagine this being the

01:17:10.280 last year of my life, I wouldn't take a positive thought from it. I'd be very sad. And you could

01:17:16.900 say, well, Peter, that's because you're 50 and Walter's 85. Maybe, but I would bet that there are

01:17:22.680 a lot of 85-year-olds who also wouldn't have much peace knowing that they're at the end.

01:17:28.180 How do you reconcile the peace that you can have at the end of your life with the fact that you

01:17:35.740 undoubtedly have more to do? Because to me, that's the struggle.

01:17:41.300 Mm-hmm. I love that question. First of all, I think there is a difference between being 50 and

01:17:46.820 being 85. I was on the island of Corsica, and I literally was on a cruise, taken off the cruise,

01:17:54.560 and had to be operated on immediately in a clinic. If they didn't, I would have died.

01:18:00.100 And I said in my 60s, just give me a little more time. I promise I'll be of service. I had already

01:18:08.100 been of service, had no intention of doing anything else, haven't done any business in the last 30 years.

01:18:13.260 All I've been is business. So that was not a big commitment. It was a natural commitment,

01:18:17.460 and I bought more time. I think if we don't turn on the flashlight to bring light on what we've been

01:18:24.780 blessed with, there is no opportunity to get much fulfillment at the end for the gratitude

01:18:32.000 that these blessings have provided. So in a sense, it's to your point, and it relates to whether you're

01:18:39.600 saving money for your kid's college. If you wait till they're junior in high school, it's tough.

01:18:45.380 Not much time. If you want to save for retirement, if you wait until your 60s, it's really tough.

01:18:51.500 If you want to start being grateful, and you want to wait till your 80s, it's really tough.

01:18:58.120 But if you can build that, which I hope I'm building in millions of young people,

01:19:05.680 this awareness and expression of gratitude is not just awareness, it's expression of gratitude,

01:19:11.800 because they will be enriched by expressing it, and the person receiving it will be.

01:19:17.800 So I actually think, and my dream, and my hope, is when I say the word pay it forward,

01:19:25.100 most people know what I'm talking about. They know the concept of pay it forward means if somebody

01:19:30.520 does something nice for you, you in turn will do something nice for three people,

01:19:34.460 not necessarily have to do something for the person who is nice to you.

01:19:37.960 I want say it now to become as ubiquitous, as common as that. And someone says, you know,

01:19:45.600 I need to do a say it now for Gene. I need to do a say it now for Peter. I believe that will elevate

01:19:54.480 our own sense of value. I want to make the other point. It may be helpful to you and others.

01:20:03.640 I always want to get done with this project before I go. But I came to two conclusions during this last

01:20:12.780 finishing strong exercise. One was that I never wanted to leave my wife a widow. We've been married

01:20:20.840 60 years, never wanted her. I work out every day, almost every day, most every day, because I wanted

01:20:26.940 to outlive my wife. I came to the realization that is not for me to decide. That's going to just be

01:20:35.580 what it is. You can do the best. But if she's a widow, just take care of her as you would want

01:20:42.460 her taken care of and relax. Have peace. Have peace. The other thing was, I got to finish the project.

01:20:53.740 And I said, Walter, you've been doing projects for the last 30 years. And you're not going to stop

01:21:00.820 doing projects. So you, by definition, will die with an unfinished symphony. That is the nature of

01:21:08.760 your life. And don't stop just so you could finish. I think back to one of the other friends that Rick

01:21:17.320 introduced us to at the event, which was the gentleman who was a little over a hundred years

01:21:25.020 old and who's still working on deals. He's still talking to Rick about business ideas. And it's like

01:21:32.900 he's 50 years old. And I really think it's impossible to prove these things scientifically

01:21:39.400 because you can't do randomized controlled experiments. So we'll never truly know the

01:21:47.500 causative nature of having a purpose in longevity, but it's very hard for me to believe that there

01:21:57.440 isn't causality there. Meaning that the people who continue to have a purpose in life. And again,

01:22:05.360 your purpose for the past 30 years, hasn't been to make a dime. It's been in this say it now

01:22:11.640 movement for some people, their purpose in life is public service through politics. For some people,

01:22:17.020 it is indeed working in the private sector. The point is, I think the people who continue to have

01:22:24.180 some sense of purpose that is far beyond themselves and their own joy and pleasure undoubtedly seem to

01:22:31.160 live longer. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if people, you know, I was thinking today of the word

01:22:37.520 past time. Well, past time, you know, well, it helps past time. It takes my breath away when somebody says

01:22:44.700 that. Past time. Wow. For me, it's purpose time. You can be time, it's purpose time. I can't imagine not

01:22:56.040 living that way, but I don't suggest that everybody will live that way. I can only suggest

01:23:02.160 that for me, it's given me an extraordinary life and it didn't start when I was 80. It didn't start

01:23:10.300 when I was 70. It started when I was in my twenties. And I don't want to suggest that the purpose of a

01:23:17.240 person's life needs to be as grand as your ambition or starting a new business. It can be simply taking care

01:23:23.560 of another person. And one of the things I do with all of our patients is take a detailed family

01:23:27.620 history before we start. I can't tell you the number of times I go through the family history

01:23:32.660 and we're talking about their grandparents and they'll say, one of them died from some disease

01:23:37.980 and the other one died very shortly thereafter, despite being completely healthy. They just lost

01:23:44.780 interest in life. They describe it to me as they died of a broken heart or they just stopped thriving.

01:23:51.420 I think that's an extension of this as well. Having that other person there is part of purpose.

01:23:57.820 Peter, you really, not only are you making these keen and important observations, I just want to

01:24:04.560 take a moment to say, you know, you work really hard at this and you need to know on behalf of those

01:24:11.580 people who have read your book. Unfortunately, I had to choose just one chapter because I'm only a

01:24:16.580 one chapter guy. Of course, I'd choose the one on emotional health. To me, it was the door to you.

01:24:22.940 It was the one that proved to me you're really authentic and the person that I wanted to connect

01:24:28.580 with. And I think your conversations that you're having carry that chapter 17 with you in all that

01:24:36.460 you do and that you are enriching lives of millions of people through your writings and through your

01:24:44.100 podcasts and through your good work. I personally just wanted to acknowledge you for that. And I

01:24:50.140 wanted to just piggyback the thing, you know, after 60 years of marriage, best decision I ever made.

01:24:57.100 And nobody ever helped us being a good husband. Nobody ever helped us. And for sure, we didn't have

01:25:03.440 great models. My father died, as I've described. So I didn't have a good model. So where do you learn

01:25:08.060 the most important decision in our life? We have no training for, as I mentioned earlier, nor with

01:25:13.920 kids. But one of the things that is amazing to me, and I'm getting very respectful of why

01:25:19.860 so many marriages don't last. And that is, there are so many stages. I described three stages of my life.

01:25:28.000 But in marriage, you've got dating, you've got marriage with no kids, and you got the kids,

01:25:33.460 and then the kids leave the house, and then you retire. And then the last chapter is one of them

01:25:39.560 slows down a little bit. I'm married to an energizer bunny who's slowing down a little.

01:25:45.840 And during the pandemic, I got a chance to love her in a way that I never did before.

01:25:51.280 And that's another thing you never know. You always know you love the person you married.

01:26:02.820 The question is, can you always love the person equally or more when they're not quite the same

01:26:08.440 person you married? And I want to suggest that Lola's still super active, but she's not as active

01:26:14.520 as she used to be. So, this is to your point, is I love caring for her when she needs it. I love it.

01:26:24.120 And I do think that story that you just mentioned is to the extent to which we are so self-focused.

01:26:31.660 I don't know if you can die from it, but you won't live from it. You won't live a long life from it.

01:26:37.160 And I think it's the focus on others that provides me with my energy. I said to myself during this

01:26:44.240 recent challenge, don't take anything away from me that'll prevent me from helping others.

01:26:50.780 I refuse that treatment. I'll take as long as I have, as long as I could be helpful to others.

01:26:58.520 So, Walter, first, I want to thank you, by the way, for what you said a moment earlier.

01:27:02.140 That means a lot to me. So, thank you.

01:27:04.980 Well deserved.

01:27:05.620 If someone's listening to this conversation and hearing about this idea of saying it now

01:27:10.940 for the first time, and it resonates with them, where do you recommend they start?

01:27:17.160 Well, it's going to sound self-promotional, but I have nothing to promote. So, there's no business

01:27:21.820 here. I would go to justsayitnow.org, and it'll give you the concept. You'll also have my TED Talk on it.

01:27:30.720 I have a theme song for Say It Now. So, there's a song. In the coming months, there'll be a book.

01:27:36.940 But for a person who says, you know, that makes sense, but I don't know how to do that.

01:27:41.380 There are tools right on that website that could help, whether it's a note, a phone call. It is

01:27:49.200 very uncomplicated, and I've never seen anybody. I come back to the story of the fellow who I had

01:27:56.920 a few years ago, I had dinner with. He said to me, what do you do? The same kind of quote,

01:28:01.780 what do you do? And I said, it doesn't really matter. You can call him, and you can do all

01:28:05.840 these things. And so, the website will help you with that. He called me about a month later,

01:28:10.160 and he said, I want to come tell you what happened. I said, I love these stories. I always encourage

01:28:14.980 people. Tell me about them, because that is my psychic income in this transaction. And so,

01:28:20.440 he said, Walter, I want you to know I wrote 17 letters. I said, that's great. And he said,

01:28:26.880 one I wrote to my sister that I haven't spoken to in 10 years. I realized she was a great sister.

01:28:34.260 What she did that ended the relationship always bothered me, but when I looked at our life,

01:28:39.700 I realized she'd made a real difference, and it rekindled our relationship. It's easy to do.

01:28:46.680 The outcomes are sometimes very surprising and always rewarding.

01:28:52.820 Walter, thank you very much for coming all the way over here. I wanted to do this in person,

01:28:58.340 and I know it's been hard for us to get together, and we could have done this a year ago remotely,

01:29:03.300 but I really believed, and I believe now, that this is a discussion I wanted to have with you

01:29:07.440 sitting a few feet away from me. So, thanks for trusting me to take time, which is precious.

01:29:14.160 And I know it's taken you away from something else and someone else, but I think sharing this

01:29:18.740 story with a lot of people here through this podcast is a great way to continue your legacy.

01:29:22.980 So, thank you.

01:29:24.240 I appreciate the opportunity. When I'm committed to something, I do it when it's inconvenient.

01:29:30.580 When I'm interested in something, I only do it when it's convenient, and I have no interest.

01:29:35.940 I only have commitments, and I was committed to having this moment happen with you.

01:29:40.480 So, thank you for the opportunity.

01:29:43.240 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. Head over to

01:29:47.020 peteratiyamd.com forward slash show notes if you want to dig deeper into this episode.

01:29:54.220 You can also find me on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, all with the handle peteratiyamd.

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The Peter Attia Drive - November 24, 2025

The impact of gratitude, serving others, embracing mortality, and living intentionally ｜ Walter Green (#288 rebroadcast)

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