Stanford Professors Bill Burnett & Dave Evans On How To Design A Meaningful Life

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delivers. And no matter where it takes me, which is basically everywhere, I arrive, recharge. This is the greatest crisis of meaning in the history of the species. You want to live more meaningfully, we can help you with that. Meaning is that which? Dave Evans and Bill Burnett are the founders of the life design lab at Stanford University. They've both worked at companies from

Apple to electronic arts. They use design thinking to influence every part of

their life. All we're trying to do is offer tools that we're for human beings. They're happier, more meaningful version of you. Prototype your way to do it. Making a little progress on a huge question is fabulous. This is his good as it gets. Welcome, guys. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having

us. Thanks for having us. We're really thrilled to be here. This is going to be a

“conversation about designing a life of meaning. But why does this matter?”

How is availing myself of your accounts are going to make my life better? Well, we do human-centered design. We teach in the design program at Stanford, started 1963. We called Product Design, now it's called the Design Program.

The original methodology for how to innovate a solution to a problem is called

human-centered design. HCD now called Design Thinking, which is just a re-branding of the same basic idea. So it's about the human thing. So we're kind of in the, how do humans innovate together? Well, to make something humans could use? Well, so Billing off and said, if you get the human part right, you can't go wrong. So we're in the meeting business

because the humans we've been talking to have said they're in a lot of pain about that. Yeah. Every time I have academics on the show, they are just lamenting the mental health crisis being experienced by the student body. Yeah, I'm, I'm full time with the on my undergrad's, and I'm actually teaching the graduate class as well.

“I think, you know, what's going on is they're lonely, and social media is kind of”

interrupted the normal process of communicating with each other. You know, if you look at all the surveys, the constants are having less sex, partying less, and having less fun. So that doesn't seem right. You know, you want Stanford, I want Stanford on the undergrad. You're supposed to party when you're an undergrad.

I think the loneliness thing, and then a sense of right now, particularly a sense that, oh man, if I finish my degree, and I graduate, will everything I know be obsolete because of AI. So there's a lot of pressures on them. But I would also say, you know, it's still a very optimistic generation, and they want to, they want to have impact in the world. They don't want to just

go get some perfect job. A lot of them are walking away from the business consulting thing or the private equity thing and looking for something that's got more substance, more humanity. You know, computer science enrollment dropped 16% this year because everybody's

“realizing, maybe that's not the path to a job. And I think as people”

realize, oh, taking these degrees, I didn't really want just to get a job. Is that pressure goes away? I think you're going to see more and more students taking, you know, a humanities major, a poetry major, a creative writing major. So I think there's optimism in the students, but it's a lot, it's a lot of loneliness and a lot of pressure.

It's a really interesting dynamic, and I suppose on some level, unprecedented, we were chatting before the podcast, you know, about like when I was at Stanford, it was just about, you know, getting to the career center, and what's the path to the safe and secure, like high salaried career, the McKinsey, the investment banks,

But there was a kind of sense of security, like or certainty, like if I go in this direction, like I will, I can foresee a career path, and there are kind of steps that I can take, and this is how it's going to play out. And the world is very different now. You mentioned it, like AI, I mean, it's more than social media. There's existential threat, like what is the world going to look like? How can we even prepare for something that,

you know, we've never been presented with. We can't conceptualize what the world is going

“to look like. And I think it's hard for any of us to imagine the level of sort of fear and”

dread that that must instill in a young generation that's trying to forecast, you know, a future life for themselves. Yeah. You know, it's unprecedented and as old as the hills. I mean, so, you know, human beings are meaning makers. We're meaning story seekers, you know, Victor Frankels, man, starts from meaning, invented a whole new school of psychology called logo therapy, defining that the fundamental definition of the human person is a meaning

maker. And we've been at this question for a long, long time. Now, there are periods in history and there are periods when you're in college. And when I was in college, when there is a performer answer to what should I do, there is a track that's ready for you to run down and it'll work for a while. And then you wake up at what we used to call the midlife crisis, you know, and then you're 40 and like, why am I doing this? You know, you stare at the person in the mirror

at three in the morning and the bathroom going, what were you thinking? You know, why, why are

“you doing this? How does it get to be a lawyer? How does it get to be a lawyer? How does it get to be a lawyer?”

It's just moving up, you know, and so society and circumstance and politics and technology has brought the existential question up sooner, but it's the same question. So in a sense, the good news is if we can help these young adults get their hands on better answers to bigger questions sooner, they've got a longer runway. Yeah, because that is a very curious thing that teenagers and people in their early 20s are grappling with the big questions and not waiting

until, you know, the midlife, you know, situation where you're starting to wonder why you made all these choices that led you to this place of, you know, where you're lacking fulfillment, meaning and purpose. Like, perhaps, or, you know, to put an optimistic lens on it, they're going to answer those questions for themselves so early in life such that they're paving the way for, you know, decades of meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction and purpose that,

you know, our generation, the older generations just didn't really even ponder. Like, when I was in college, nobody was walking around thinking about, like, how I'm going to have it, it will not, any, I mean, there were some people, but for the most part, like, people were just, you know, kind of in their own self-obsession about getting ahead in the world or, or putting their stamp on things, not like, what is going to be most meaningful or even, you know, from, like, even beyond

just impact, like, what is going to create, you know, true contentment for me? Well, I think, I think it's one of the reasons that our classes are popular and that the idea, I think the students are realizing, I'm not going to be able to plan this because it is unprecedented, no one's going to know what the jobs were look like in five years or 10 years. And we reframe that through the design lens saying, don't you think it's so cool that five years from now,

you're going to be doing something that hasn't even been invented yet. So the goal is prepare yourself for that future. And so the planning strategies won't work because there's not enough data, but a design strategy, a design strategy for your future, it has the most flexibility,

because we are always looking for lots of answers or we're prototyping lots of solutions.

And so I think what we hear this pretty strongly from students who have taken the class, I feel more hopeful, this is a really good lens to think about my future. I was trying to plan it and optimize it, and that wasn't really working, and I could see that would fail. But this idea of designing my way forward, prototyping things, taking small risks, and learning as I go,

“that feels doable. And so that's why the class is successful, I think that's why the first book,”

you know, people found something in it that was useful, and we're hoping now with the book on meaning, you know, we're taking it up to the next level, it's like, well, what were you looking for in a well-designed life? Meaning? Okay, well, we're not philosophers, so the big meaning of life question, you know, go back to philosophy, want to win for that. But if you wanted to get more meaning in your life, or you want to get more meaning out of your life, you want to live

more meaningfully, we can help you with that, because that's a design problem. Walk me through the epiphany that you guys had around how product design could inform personal development, because that's like the big idea here. Like you're sort of approaching it as an engineering problem that's the design problem. Yeah. Well, it really starts back in 1999. So, you know,

I'm a high tech guy, but I'm always cared about people, and I always did youth work,

you know, I taught 70 school in a coach a little league, and I've always been doing stuff with young people, and I got too busy, and I was just doing my business work, and I'm doing my own

get back to it, and that was in the 90s, and I hadn't been around college students for a while,

I'd gone out with college students a lot, so I'd been able to go back and check in with what's going on with college students, and I'm talking to a bunch of people about that, who run programs or education or ministries or what have you, and this guy at Berkeley says,

“you should come here and teach a class, which is, well, that's crazy, and that's not going to”

work. There's no it is, and he explained how it could work, and so I taught a class at Berkeley, called finding your vocation subtitle is your calling calling, which is actually the origin class that turned into design annoying. I thought we'd do it once at the end of the semester, one of the kids says, "My roommate couldn't take it in the fall today, or you're coming back in the spring." I said, "If he gets nine more people with him, I'll come back." So 14

semesters later, we're onto something. So I had this idea about trying to help people find their way, and then build the job full-time at Stanford, you know, maybe the bright decision to take a 50% cut and pay, stop running a company and start teaching full-time, and we had lunch, and he said, "What are you doing? I'm doing this crazy thing at Berkeley." We should totally do this at Stanford, you know, and through the design line, and through the design lines, and then, and that became

more inclusive, and we got better, and then we wrote a book and it became this huge thing. So the invitation to get into the conversation really started very opportunistically. It wasn't a top-down strategy, so as if hey come help us, we did, everybody had that problem, and then now that we've had,

you know, a couple of million readers and trained thousands of educators, we get a lot of feedback.

So we keep getting questions, and when the questions get asked strong enough, we get forced to write a book. Well, you're definitely meeting the moment right now. We are in this crisis of meaning, and this epidemic of loneliness. We touched on, you know, AI and social media, et cetera, as driving forces here. But are there any other elements that you think are contributing to this situation that we're in right now, where, you know, a book about,

like how to, how to engender your life with more meaning, it seems like an urgent and valuable, you know, offering. Well, another, another trend that's obvious is that people are living kind of isolated in their echo chamber, or they don't have strong communities. If you used to have a faith community, or a neighborhood that was your community, those things have sort of mostly fallen by the wayside.

So people are in addition to their personally lonely or struggling or anxious. They're looking

for other people to hang out with. I mean, we're communal animals, and so we really were looking Dave's teaching a program he can tell you about called the Distinguished Courage Institute at Stanford. I mean, it's all about creating a kind of a community. And so we were thinking, I mean, it forgets students for taking a tech people in the 30s and 40s. Okay, they're in the middle of having kids, maybe. They got older parents that they're dealing with. But they don't have

a community to hang out with. And they don't have anybody to talk to about what's going on. And so that was another one of the things we thought. That's a design. We can design a solution to that and help people figure out how to how to create these political formative communities. You want to talk about the DCI program a little? The Distinguished Courage Institute at Stanford started in 2015 by the, at that time, just recently, you've retired dean of the medical school,

Phil Piso, which is really a gap here for grannos. It's a gap here for grannos. But if you charge as much as Stanford does, it's a big number. You need it a much fancier name than you have for grannos. And so anybody from can be as young as 45 up to 90, it's mostly 55 to 75 people.

“It's what we used to call retirement age, taking a whole year off and going, now what?”

What do I do in the rest of my life? What do I do in my one wild and wonderful life? Now, so these are open-minded, teachful, thoughtful people. But they are people who are asking that big question and don't have a framework to address it. I mean, so we learned a lot about them and the whole idea of formative communities, which is a big one of our four top ideas, comes directly out of my experience with those people. But I think your question, why is this

arising so much now? Is that, you know, the institutions and the traditions that helped form people that said, gee, when that question comes up, here's how you might want to think about it, have fallen by the wayside. Yeah. And now the common square is the internet. And so the hue, we heard literally a hue and cry that it's not working for me. I'm not having the, I wanted to have an impact and that's not working or I wanted to be fulfilled. The two things we heard people

saying over and over again that weren't working for them is the fulfillment thing is not working and the impact thing is not working. So we said, okay, then we need to reframe those problems and give you different ideas. Yeah. The word meaning is sort of a loaded that word. Yeah. Like

“how are you defining this? I think the word's like purpose, meaning, passion. Sometimes it”

feels like they do more harm than good because they're so large and a femoral, right? So when you're talking about meaning, what are you talking about specifically and where do you think people get off track and how they are commonly thinking about this word? We were talking about this just

So, you know, I at least have like we and we reference in the book. What agree with the answer,

Joseph Campbell gave in a PBS interview many years ago in a video series. When he says,

“I'm not sure it's truly meaning, we're after I think what people are really talking about”

is the rapture of being alive. I'm here for the rapture of being alive and we're human standard designers. So I think what meaning is is when am I having an experience that makes me feel like I'm really having the fully human experience. So meaning is that which makes me have an experience of becoming more fully human. That can come in a variety of forms. I think modern people have gotten stuck on just two few forms which is why there's a bit of a crisis around this thing. So my

version of that would be, it's that which moves me along toward having the experience of being

more fully human. That's the shortest answer I can give. Do you want to add to that?

No, I think again, we're all about how do you get more out of life rather than cramming Moran? I think you're right. What's your passion? I don't know. I'm supposed to have one. Yeah, and then you feel bad about it, you know, or what impact have you had today? Like, you know, give me the memo on your impact. It's just too much. This is too much pressure. Yeah, exactly. If you died today, will it have been with it? Yeah. So for us, it's like,

the way man, we're not trying to cram Moran. We're not trying to set a bar. You can't clear. We're really about low bar, you know, set the bar low and clear it. You know, all of our stuff is psychology based. It's a positive psychology based. You know, the things like, you know, James Clears, you know, Tommy Cabbets, like small changes are how you make big changes. So we rely on a lot of that stuff. But in the case of the meaning question to sort of take out the pressure,

“it's like, what I think what you're looking for is to be fully alive. We have, we have”

fully aliveness. You want to live this. You want to feel a connection to other people. That's the community thing. You want to feel like you did something today that wasn't just about you. It was about something bigger than yourself, right? We talk about the Maslow's pyramid and it used to be that the peak of the pyramid was self-actualization. Maslow said, you know, that when you get everything else figured out, you become the fully realized version of yourself. What people don't know is that in

his diaries and the last couple years of his life, he said, now actually that's not it. That's all about the ego that peak of human development, whatever, is self-transcendence. It's being doing something for someone other than yourself. It's transcending yourself and it's, which is in the, in wisdom traditions, is compassion, is, you know, altruism, is empathy. That's where we're asking people to look to see where, where is it that you have the opportunity to be fully

alive and transcending your own ego. And by the way, he also got it wrong because you can be self-transcendent at any level of the pyramid. It's, you know, you don't have to be rich or fully realized or anything else to be transcendent or to care about others. And we have so much, in the wisdom traditions and the theological traditions in science now, we know that altruism, empathy, the sense of awe in the

world, are always of achieving a transcendent kind of point of view. And when you do that,

all the research says in our experience says you will experience your life as being meaningful. The meaning question, by the way, really goes to, so I want to have a meaningful life. Oh, what's a life? What's a person? So your definition of the human person absolutely informs your definition of what makes a person meaningful. And our shortest definition of the person is you're becoming. So a person is to become, you're an ever growing person and we say in the

life design lab, all of us contain more aliveness than when lifetime permits you to live out. There's more than one of you in there. So if according to the 1943 paper by Maslow fulfillment,

“which is the result of self-actualization occurs when you become all that one can be. That's what”

he says in print. And if there's more of you than a life permits you to be, oh, you can't have it. So the traditional understanding of fulfillment is a thing that's literally unattainable. So if I buy into that, which the NIH says is the stickiest idea in the social sciences, one of the stickiest ideas of all time, in 1943 we're still looking at that permit. And so a lot of people are going down a pathway that there isn't an end to, there's a dead end to. So we talk more about fully

a live-in fulfillment. And the outcome, according to Maslow self-transcendence, is meaning-making. So I can either be ego-driven and I get to be all of me. I get to be fully manifested. Well, actually, that's okay. It's not a bad thing. But becoming actually all I can have experiences of participating in bigger than myself as part of us. And we now know consciousness is collective. There's a lot of neuroscience on this now that we don't just hang out with each other.

We're not autonomous beings bumping into each other like molecules. We are in fact part of a social

helps them experience that aliveness as humans. There's a semester's worth of information

“that you just dumped in. Those two shares, like so many threads that I want to pull there.”

Okay. But sticking with Maslow for the moment, taking into consideration his, like, amendment from self-actualization to self-transcendence, irrespective of that update, the stickiness of the self-actualization idea. It's like this vestigial limb that is kind of refuses to go away. Right. And implicit in that is this notion, there's a singular self-actualized self. And it's the right to embody that fully. And everybody dies before they're

able to do that. And I've heard you talk about the quantum physics of all of this. We live in a multiverse. And we contain multitudes. And there is an infinite number of selves and possibilities with every decision and thought that we have. Right. So disabusing people of this notion that there is one thing. But that is the stickiest idea of all, like whether it's, you know, be your best self. Self is like a single, it's, you know,

the other thing that there is one thing. And we're always falling short of it, which is contributing

to us feeling bad about it. We have to know, there is no best to, but there are lots of good news. Let's go try some. Yeah. And this bias to action, you know, which gets into kind of your prototyping idea of getting out of our indecision and our kind of naval gazing or paralysis around, like, well, I don't know if this is the right decision. Because there is this fully actualized version of me out there. And if I, if I make this decision, is that moving me away from that, or this is it,

right? Oh, no. Yeah. Well, one is we do believe that there's more aliveness in you than one life can contain. And that's actually the good news. And then two, you know, a couple of the mindsets in the, in the book are, you know, let's, let's practice radical acceptance, radical acceptance is, well, where am I right? Design starts in reality. You know, I was at Apple. We were designing the modern notebook. I know the guys on the iPhone team. When you're doing something

that's never been done before, you got to start with, what do we got right now? What are the

parts we can put together? So radical acceptance and then availability, the other mindset is like, okay, if I'm here in the present moment, what's actually available? I mean, this, this hypothetical best self way out there. It's like, it's like, oh, I'm going to run a marathon, except you looked at my phone, I only did six thousand steps at any, right? So this is not going to happen. So we got,

“you got to get in the moment where, where are you right now? And what's available to you to go forward?”

And if you could just put aside the, I'm optimizing my best self, or I'm hacking, you know, my, whatever, that they get to someplace, what could I actually do in the next moment in the next few days and next few weeks, that would be coherent with who I think I am, where I think I'm going, because you're still got to have a direction, right? We talked about building a compass and having coherence in your life so that you, you, you may not know exactly what the next

step is, but you know you're going in the right direction. So the chance of suddenly going this way when you wanted to go that way is lower if you actually, you know, if you know yourself a little bit, radical acceptance of availability, puts you, it's kind of the mine for the two for mine sets that the power set is like, I know where I'm at, I'm being, I'm being honest with myself about what's possible. And then I'm trying to figure out what's available. What can I make

available? And when you start with that, you realize, well, there's so many more opportunities

than I thought, right? Designers never do their first idea, right? You also, a lot, you know,

lots of, I mean, lots of research, lots of ideas, leads to the better choices. So you want to be

“able to have lots of ideas and then why don't people actually make the change, because it's scary?”

I just read a neuroscience paper where they've actually proven that your brain is much more comfortable to work on a problem that you've got that maybe is quite painful than to actually make a change to solve the problem, that the stimulation of the, you know, the, the, the the angle is much higher to do something new than it is to just deal with the pain you've got. So our thing is like, all right, well, then you're going to take really small steps,

called prototypes, try something, have a conversation with somebody, see what it's like? Do a little experiment, have an experience, so you have a felt sense of what it might be to move in this direction. But if you practice radical acceptance and availability, all these opportunities start showing up. And so, you know, you do make some motions in the right direction, and then you get the felt sense of, this is a good direction, or maybe that wasn't quite right.

But no matter what you prototype, you're always learning something. So it, it really is that the designers mindset rather than the planners mindset or the engineer, the engineer would need to know, what's the formula that predicts the outcome? I don't have a formula, you know, a planner would

effects are, but I know how to way find into this in certain future and know that I'm in the right

direction, and radical acceptance, availability and prototyping is the sort of simple, I mean, it's, the other thing, the message in this book, it's simpler than you think. You don't need to spend ten years developing a meditation practice, you don't need to go out and do, you know, forty-day fast in the wilderness. Yeah, maybe I'll just fly a kite today. Yeah, you can do the Ayahuasca thing in Mexico, whatever you want to do, but you can just start today by looking at

what's available and seeing how you can see it a different way. And then slowly build up the confidence that you have a compass, you are going in the right direction. We're brought to you today by seed. If you've enjoyed my conversations with microbiome master Dr. B, then you know that a happy gut means a happy body and a happy body means a happier life. But to get there, you need a ritual, and mind starts with this right here, seeds, DSO1. Here's

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This episode is sponsored by Better Help. You know, I was reflecting this morning on how my life and really the life of my kids, our family all together, it really just doesn't work without my wife.

“She quietly carries so much, and I think this is the case for women across the board who go wildly”

underappreciated for their gift to hold space for others while selflessly spinning a zillion other plates at the same time. And that kind of emotional labor is very real, and it deserves care, it deserves support, which is why I'm so bullish on Better Help, because it provides this place to pause to reflect on the roles that you're playing and to make space for your own well-being. Better Help connects you with fully licensed therapists who work according to a strict code of conduct.

They start by asking a few simple questions to understand what you're looking for, and they handle the initial matching so you can focus on your goals. If it isn't right, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. With over 30,000 therapists,

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people, with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Your emotional well-being matters. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/Ritroll. That's BetterHEP.com/Ritroll. Product design is such a tactile way to deconstruct this problem, because as you're sharing, I'm thinking about a group of people sitting around, Steve Jobs comes in, and he's like, "I want to make a portable MP3 player." And then he leaves the room. You guys got to figure it out.

You have all this gear in front of you. Well, if we do this, it's going to be this big. Is it really

“portable? Like, you've got this giant problem. You have to solve. There is an infinite number of choices”

and tradeoffs that you have to make. But that's the job. It is by definition, grappling with uncertainty. But the human animal has a severe distaste for uncertainty. Particularly when it comes to life choices. Right? So finding a way to engage at a very kind of low bar where the risk is so minimal is a way like that prototyping idea is a way of dipping your toe and doing it. I guess is what?

the iPhone, but I know some people were. But in the I6x biography, they said they brought prototypes to see three times. He said, "No, that's not a do it again, do it again." So he did come in and say, "I want a smart phone. I don't even know what it is." Figured out. And I know they built over 300 prototypes. Both, industrial design prototypes and works like prototypes. Because nobody, like if you put a if you put messaging within a browser and you add a phone to it, like, "What's that?"

I don't know. Let's try it. So even they, creating the, you know, the revolution of the smartphone was, had no idea what it was when they started. But they knew the process of finding it as they went. And so the future of you, the thing you're trying to design in the future, the happier, more meaningful version of you, prototype your way to two it, just the way we invent the future. Which is also all about essentialism, right? Like it's like what is really

serving this? And most of it is stripping away. You know, I know, you know, like in the context of like the iPod, there were a lot of people who thought it should have all kinds of whizz bang stuff. And it's like, "No, we're just doing this one thing." Like, what is the, you know, the essence of this thing that we're trying to create? And then thinking about that in the context of our lives,

“I think we think of this as an additive problem. And not enough as a reduction, as, you know,”

like, a removing, like, what is what's not serving me that I can strip away? It's not about going out and getting this other thing and bringing it in as much as it is, like dispensing with the things

that are leading us astray. Surface is two really critical things. So what do we do? Where the design

goes? Well, you know, we help people get unstuck. We mostly deal with stuck people with people stuck on meaning right now. And we'll probably give you some reframes to think about your problem differently and the goal of the reframes to be closer to radical acceptance and freer, so you've got more choices. And then we'll give you ideas and tools for how to actually act once you've gotten more free. And so the reframing thing is a big deal, because you got to be

working on the right problem. Problem finding precedes problem solving. You're working on the rock wrong version of the problem really, really, really well. You're still going to get nowhere. So the two things that surface in the conversation you'm building just having for me are back to that personhood thing. So people kind of, "Is this it? Am I getting it right? Is this really my best self?" And how you're mentioning how sticky that is. If it's actually true, there is no

“one best you. There are lots of wonderful use and it could be pretty radically different, you know?”

You know, what if you just went back and stuck with the lawyer thing and did that really well? That's really different than what you're doing now. But that could be a wonderful version of you. So once you accept, there isn't a right, then that thing, because people have the experience well, this is pretty good, but I'm not sure it's really it. And I don't know enough. I don't know what, and feeling like I found it feels like, but this isn't it yet. So there's this elusive

never-ending thing I should be doing, but I'm not. And you're going to go, "No,

you're fine. You are a becoming. You're going to become more. If I'm better tomorrow, I was worse yesterday." And I'm never going to be done. So it's all partial credit and essay questions. There's no right-wrong multiple choice thing. So the thing when you're becoming, so relax tomorrow's another day. And then the whole issue of, "Well, is the apple this or that?" You know, "And am I going to be the lawyer, the athlete, or the podcaster?"

You know, "Which I can't do of them all really well at the same time, brings us to, you talk about essentialism." We talk about the importance of understanding the scandal of particularity, you know, which is a philosophical concept that we think is terribly important. We knew we had the right editor when she underlined that introductory paragraph on that topic and said, "If we get this right, we've done our job. Great, she gets it." It's terribly important.

The scandal of particularity simply is, "No ultimate is ever experienced in this life." Truth, beauty, justice, compassion, richness. And is this really the ultimate authentic rich?

Have I got Bill right yet? No, you're a becoming that will never be realized. So even your own life

is a particularity, a particular expression, and a particular space in time with constraints and compromises, and you get to choose one of two reactions to that particularity that constraint. Either shoot. Still not enough. Not quite. I'm a little disappointed. Or, "Awesome." That's an honest reflection of something I care deeply about. And my longing says, "It's kind of like that.

“I see the amazing sunset." And my soul goes, "Yeah, that's what beauty's like. Go there."”

And then when it goes down, you don't go, "Well, that's what thank God." You go, "More do it again. You're never satisfied." That never satisfiedness about life, that never satisfiedness about meaning, that never satisfiedness about yourself isn't the bad news. It's the reminder that you're a human being, and deeply implanted in you is the same called longing. So be friend of that.

drive to move into my ongoing becoming project. It's going to stay interesting all the way to the end. So rather than flogging ourselves for having that longing or the sense of missing something, understand it to be this generative force in our perpetual becoming. Yeah, so the radical acceptance of the particularity, then joins availability and we celebrate it. So you celebrate, "Oh, I actually get a chance

to taste some coffee." How's this coffee today? I'm just going to celebrate the fact that I have access to something that reflects taste. How cool is that? So it's really a position of the matters. Yeah. And that sense that in and of itself was enough. I mean, then there'll be another beautiful sense that maybe I could even put myself someplace like big surre where the

sense that's will be amazing. But that sense of, I've got a couple of young grandkids

and watching them play reminds me what curiosity looks like and how intrinsically wonderful human curiosity is, because everything to them is new and everything is something to play. And oh, Grandpa, look at this. Look at this. What is it? It's an ant. Okay? But it's an ant, Grandpa. You know, it's like, and so I'm reminded that we have the capacity for wonder. We have the capacity

“for awe and joy and all these things. But they show up in moments, right?”

I'm so joy, moments of curiosity. And most often people find it in nature, because that's a huge, you know, trigger for what we call flow or a bigger definition of flow. And it often shows up in interactions with people, because that's where we find connection and community and joy. So go for those things. They're available. Talk more about curiosity, because it feels to me like curiosity is really something that we can control that we have agency over

and it's this portal to all these other things like awe and wonder and connection, etc. Oh, it's absolutely the gateway drug to wonder. It totally is. It's an intrinsic human capacity. Oh, how interesting. I wonder what's here. And if you lean into it, it's going to draw you into all kinds of things. So we have a little equation, the wonder equation, that curiosity plus mystery, which is anything that's more than what you understand. Even if it's understandable, I don't

at the moment, I understand it. Equals wonder. I can be in wonder. And that's available all the time. So curiosity plus mystery equals wonder. Yeah, and I'm actually going to go to a quote,

“I kept my phone because the thing I can't ever remember how to say, and remilir the playwright,”

said, quote, I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass. It becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in and of

itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times, and I have never been disappointed.

Now that's a guy with a wonder mindset. So now there's more to curiosity than what I mean. This is all rooted in being present in your life. There's a kind of an eastern aspect to this in the sense that the answers that you're looking for are in the right here and now. And if you're bored or you're like, you're just not paying attention enough because if you actually focused on anything, a blade of grass, pick your whatever, these things are infinitely fascinating. But we're living

our lives in this daydream where we're constantly captured by the past and the future. And even a discussion around designing a life of meaning is very forward casting, right? If you're in that costume, you know what I mean? And you're teaching Stanford students and these

people are all like, you know, like, here's what they're all forecasting, right? I'm trying to put

“all the pieces together. And we're all missing our lives in the moment. But the only way that we can”

experience awe and wonder or true connection with another person or even find a locus for our curiosity is when we're anchored in the moment that we're in, which is actually the only thing that's real anyway. I'm going to build a comment on that, but I could just see you by the way, you caught us with that comment because after we figured out what we thought the book might be, if we were going to write this book, we looked at each other and said, it's just about the

present moment. Ram dos was right, and it would be here now, like everybody knows that. Why waste their time? Why waste the paper? And so we came to the conclusion, we talked for quite a long time. Almost two years, do we deserve to write this book? Doesn't everybody know in a sense? It's not the only thing we're talking about, but it's most what we're talking about,

fresh take with a really implementable, accessible doable set of tools and approaches to get people

“back into this thing that we've lost track of. So you figured it's really about the present moment,”

is that kind of pretty much what the whole book is about? Pretty much. Pretty much. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's not that hard. And it's not that hard. You don't need to, you know, the fast for 40 days. But, back to curiosity, you know, the psychologists talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivations is, if I work hard, I get paid more money. The money's the extrinsic thing. And we were talking about, or save the world, or if you're can't do it. Right, yeah.

And my parents will tell me they love me. You know, my parents will tell me they love me. Yeah, it should be mean at this time. And intrinsic motivations, curiosity, autonomy, mastery, wanting to get good at things, just because the humans like to get good at things. So there's a bunch of intrinsic motivations. And we were talking to Bob Weldinger. I know you had Bob Weldinger. I know you had Bob Weldinger for a while. And Bob, tell us that there's some neuroscience

around. If you only stimulate external motivation and you don't live into or stimulate any internal motivations, you actually lose those circuits. And you lose your ability to be creative, you lose your, you lose your desire for mastery to get better. And so one of the, one of the big messages in the book is, hey, we got to, you know, we got to work with both sides of our brain here. And then we got to work with our intrinsic motivations. A lot to keep those alive,

curiosity being the gateway and curiosity, plus wonder. The things that you can't understand,

but they're amazing, curiosity, plus mystery equals wonder. So we have an exercise to sort of

silly, put on your wonder glasses. And actually have a pair of goofy glasses. But like, go out in the world and instead of just seeing what's there, or even just being curious about how I'm going to have that grass grows, take the Miller and remiller approach of like, if I really get into it, a world of of of wonder mystery excitement will unfold. And my curiosity will be stimulated. And that will lead to more wonder, more curiosity. It's kind of a,

it's kind of a flywheel. But I talk about, you know, your brain is kind of, two, works in two worlds, the transaction world and the flow world. Dr. Lisa Miller, Columbia calls it the Awaken to Brain and the Achieving Brain. But, you know, transactions we do it every day, we get stuff done. And flow, which used to be just thought of as peak experiences, actually available

“all the time, I think of it like a aquifer under, you know, under the surface. And you can drill”

down and get into flow in almost any circumstance. And that's where, meaning is, meaning is not in transactions. Getting transactions done is nice. It feels good for a while. Even impact feels good for a little while. But then, you know, what have you done for me lately, but you're in fact lately, you know, hey, great numbers, you know, on the last five podcasts, what have you done for me lately, right? And so the impact is transactional. And meaning is not transactional.

It's down in the world of flow, in the world of intrinsic motivations. It's in the world of emotions, really. And we're under educated there. Sure, I mean, we live in a highly transactional world, all of the incentives of modern life are driving us towards a more and more, you know, transaction based experience. And when those transactional relationships or career paths, et cetera, don't deliver on fulfillment and satisfaction and all of that, you know, then we're in this sort of

arrival, fallacy crisis. And then we descend into what are the Brooks calls, like the

strivers dilemma, convinced that it's always, you know, at the top of the next peak or around the

bend. And we live our lives, you know, kind of on this hamster wheel of dissatisfaction, you know. And meaning is available to us all along, you know, if we would just, you know, avert our gaze and kind of look over here. But to your point about, like, flow, it is this thing that we think about, like, oh, this is something that you can harness for these peak performances, whether you're an athlete or you're, you know, some kind of creative person. But you distinguish that from what

you call, like, simple flow, which is what you were getting at, right? So talk a little bit about that and, like, how people can access that and why that, you know, what the connection between that is and the meaning that we're lacking. Well, the point you're making about, you know, the transactional, we, so we posted it in the book. We, we observed in people's complaint, you know, I'm trying to make a difference. And so in the transactional world, the primary form of meaning

making that's offered is, did you make an impact? Did you change the world? Did you hit the

“mark? Did you hit the mark? Did you hit the quarterly number? Did you, you know, did you do the thing?”

And most of the time, you can't control outcomes, even if you do it right. So oftentimes, having an impact fails, even when it does succeed, it's a thing and it has a short half life. So people can be saying, how do I have my more, more meaningful life? And they're just looking

we said, well, you know, well, there's really only one actual cosmos and world. Your consciousness

“can only handle so much at a time and we're leaning into this consciousness, this achieving”

brand of those transactions. So we talk about these other forms of meaning. Impact is five, just just one form. Don't put all your eggs in that basket, you know, which go into these relationship things, these flow things, these wonder things. And so in flow, we said, well, flow is that the original book is flow, the psychology of optimal experience. Great. So I'm in an apex of experience. I'm deeply engaged in a task, what's it like? You know, I'm so in the

thing, I'm totally in the zone, what we refer to as apex flow. But all it really means is, I'm so engaged that I'm fully experiencing the moment that I'm in, for a lot. So the traditional

definition of flow is I need a task, the requirements of which right on the edge of my capability.

So what I've really done is I have outsourced to the complexity of my task. The ability for me

“to fully experience something because I'm going to go do something that's so demanding,”

it will take all of my attention and now suddenly I'm fully engaged. And so I'm so in the moment, I'm not worried about other things. I'm Alexander, making the climb, you know, I'm doing this thing. And we're saying, wait, you can choose your way into flow. So a simple flow is, you know, oh, I'm just going to chop onions. That's so boring. I better be, you know, doing my steps to get in my 10,000 while chopping, kind of chop while doing steps and having a podcast on at the same

time. Great. As opposed to no, just choose to totally be chopping onions and enjoy the feel of it, enjoy the texture of the knife going through the food. Notice the smells, your body can smell things. Be fully present at the moment. That's a choice. And we said the flow world is the place where flow experiences come from. So we just came up with an idea, hey, there's two worlds, not just one. There's the transactional world and the flow world. You're mostly missing the flow

world. That's where flow is had in the present moment. Let's go over there some more. So the biggest idea we have about flow is it's there all the time. You could have it in lots of forms, in Lisa Miller's world of the awakened mind. Yep. Yep. I'm concerned about these ideas coming across as as very high brown. I want to drill down into some real world examples because I'm imagining the person who's listening to us are watching it and going, yeah, yeah, that's great.

You know, the awakened brain and like chopping it, he's like, you don't understand my life. Like, I'm just trying to make it through the day. I'm deeply unhappy, but I'm stuck. There's no possible way that I can leave this job. I've got, you know, two kids at home and a mortgage and, you know, car payment, et cetera. I think this is the situation with like just so many people if not most people. They are living a life that lacks meaning and fulfillment and a sense of satisfaction, but they're

doesn't really seem to be an off ramp or an accessible means to reframe how they're living to engender these experiences. And they are, they're maxed out. They're maxed out all their time. Like, did I hear with all this? Like, yeah, I just, you know, I need something else to do really like this. And then when I get home, I just, I just want 30 minutes of Netflix to turn my brain

“off before I go to bed and like, that's the only way that I can't handle anything more than that.”

But these are the people that need the most help. Right. Look, there are 21 or depending how you count 23 exercises and possible worksheets in the books. We give you stuff to do. The whole idea is this should be implementable right away. One of the exercises is flip the switch. Flip the switch from the transactional world to the flow world. All that means is drop into the present moment even for two or three seconds. We give an example of sitting in a staff.

I'm sitting here at the podcast table with a ritual. So what am I thinking about? How's this going in? Am I talking as much as Bill and will they like this? And, you know, on all transactions, I'm supposed to like, okay, stop, what's going on? Here's this lovely guy, Ritrol, and he's wanting to talk to us. And this is a new, these are new studios. This has only been in here a year. Like, I'm thinking, and what conversations are coming here? What is going to get set across

this table? How is that going to impact some people's lives? Okay, I can think about that in about

us. It takes about 20 seconds to say that. It takes half a second to think that. I can just flip this

switch. What's going on right now? Two, three, notice. Flip back. What did you say? You know, flip back to the conversation. If you start doing that, you give the rest of your psyche, rest of your soul, if you will. A chance. So maybe you don't want to do Netflix instead. But if you're watching Netflix, are you zoning out or are you actually really enjoying it? Like, her voice is beautiful.

There is a more aliveness in every life waiting to be had. And that's why we really, it's not

about cramming. It's not about learning five more ways to hack your meaning. It's about getting more out of what you've got right in front of you. And maybe spending a little time on where is your attention right now? You know, and I have fallen to this. I'll sit there. You know, just before I go to sleep and scroll through 100 reels or 100 short videos on YouTube. And then

“I was part of your becoming. Yes, part of my becoming. Am I supposed to say, what are you watching?”

And I'll go, I don't know. What was the last video? I don't know. So catch yourself. Sometimes sometimes letting someone else steal your attention. Just catch yourself and see if you can come back to the moment. And yeah, and have an input to switch. Or, you know, at the end, you know,

the simplest exercise from positive psychology is the gratefulness exercise. At the end of the day,

right down three things you're grateful for. Why don't one thing you're grateful for it? Because because what you're trying to do is develop some processes which rewire the brain towards paying attention to right-brain stuff instead of just left-brain stuff, transactional, closed-up instead of just transactional stuff. You know, the old right-brain left-brain model Lisa updated it with achieving and awakened. It's the same thing. You want to, you want to be

in your all of your brain most of the time. And we're so over-indexed in the transaction stuff.

“You know, I teach design a Stanford. Young engineers, I hear the teaching about a design.”

They're used to having an answer in the back of the book. There's no answer in the back of the book in design. And they're high on a chelph of them. You got in, you got in because you got to 800's on your, you know, math and English. You didn't get to 800's on your creativity exam, right? So you're under-practiced in creativity, in curiosity. But you're going to learn it. We know the brain's plastic, you're going to learn this stuff quickly. And what you find when you flip to switch,

or you do what we call the sudden savoring exercise, or you do any exercise or like five minutes, that you have an experience in your brain where you say, oh, that was kind of pleasant. That wasn't hard to do. And there's a, there's a time-siky thing you've got to watch out for. So if I change five minutes of your week, it could have a 25% impact on your psychic ROI. He mentioned savoring. He said, so I'm going to double that on this. You do the gratefulness exercise. You maybe

do it once a week. And then we'll say, okay, we have a thing called the seventh-day savoring. Again, five minutes. Once a week, you know, just before just before dinner on Sunday or whatever, it might be your Sabbath practice. You take one of those things you were grateful for this week, and you returned to it. And you didn't just go, oh, that was, that was really great. You know, you really, you know, when, when when Rich came into the office, you know, we were talking to the

crew and Rich came in and he was really welcoming and we were standing in the hallway having this really lovely chat. You know, that was great. I was grateful for the way Rich received us. Then I kind of go, okay, that's just recognizing, then re-enter it and savor it. Like, like, you know, play the GoPro camera screen of that moment again, and then freeze frame it, and then here's Rich Roll. There's this really successful podcast of this guy. There's really

developed a life seriously. And he wants to spend time with this. And can I, can I savor that and receive the fullness of it? Because life in a real time, you can't begin to get the fullness of life out of life in real time. So go back and do it again. Frankly, if you do the seventh day, say every once a week for a while, five minutes a week, three minutes a week, you know, you start liking that. You could learn how to do sudden savoring. Can I savor in real time?

That's a pretty cool skill. These are all highly accessible ways to live differently.

Never in a million years did I imagine that the world would start waking up to what I

“realized back in 1998, which is that life is infinitely better without alcohol in it.”

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rhythm that actually feels sustainable for where I'm at right now today, and whoop. This wearable health and fitness coach that you see right here on my wrist every time you see

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whoop helps me stay grounded in what my body needs right now, not what my ego wants it to do,

“or what I used to be able to do. And I think that's really what adding more life to your”

year's needs, making decisions today that allow you to show up more fully tomorrow. Go to join.woo.com/roll for one month free of work. I can't help but think about how everything you're sharing overlaps with 12-step recovery programs, if you guys thought about it, like in addition to this being all about the present, so much of what you're talking about overlaps in the venn diagram of the 12-step.

It's like you do your inventory, which is kind of a form of coherence, like are your actions lining up with your values? Are you doing what you said you're going to do that kind of thing?

A formal gratitude practice, an essential aspect of being part of this community is being

service oriented, like making it about something more than yourself, how are you transcending your ego through your daily actions? Sure. And really being rigorous in your kind of

“self-honesty and inventory of your behavior and your decisions?”

Yeah, so I mean, aren't you guys 12-step? Yeah. While balding was pretty sure Archika is impetus, Archika is impetus, right? Yeah, it's all of these traditions. The reason of everything. It's like this is ancient wisdom. No, the wisdom traditions share a lot of common and we spend too much time about what we disagree

about. If you look at, by the way, if so, buddy, mine's Scotty McClendon, the former chaplain of

Stanford, says, "If you look at all the spiritual, you've got the Christian spiritual man, the Judaic and the Sikhs, you know, and the Buddhists, and the freelance spiritualist." And he said, "The people of the bottom love to argue about everything." He says, "All the guys at the top, the mystics were sitting up there, kind of who really get it, they'll get along fine." All the mystics understand each other. And so, does our stuff sound familiar to these other

wisdom traditions? Uh-huh, because the truth stuff's true. Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know that much about the 12-step process, but it's, again, what we're trying to come up with are really simple things you can design. How do you become a moment designer, right? If we say, "Hey, most of these trauma habits, the most of the experience of, yeah, most of the experience of meaning will be in a moment, how do I design moments that are meaningful?" How do I recognize the

“ones that I just showed up for me and how do I actually design something so that they work out fine?”

So, you know, like, to, for example, I think in the book, because again, you can experience total beauty, but you can make a cake for your grandson's birthday and you can see his face light up when he buzz out the candle and then he puts his hand right in it and grabs a piece of, you know, evicing and just like, "Well, that was cool." Yeah, I can set that up and just let it happen. The one difference though is that if you're making a cake or you're building an iPod or you're

designing some product or widget, right, there's a limited number of variables. Right, and, you know, the key variable that's lacking in that is the variable of, you know, human emotion. Yeah, like fear and insecurity and, you know, like a bespoke set of life circumstances that have created neural pathways and reactive patterns. I mean, essentially, so much of this boils down to the human

you know, reading the books and knowing all the information, just not being able to like translate that

“into a new behavioral pattern. But it's also optimistic that those behavioral patterns,”

curiosity, your mastery and things are built in to that same human who's got, like, say, a bespoke set of neural pathways, maybe took them down to something that doesn't make any sense anymore. But, um, but I'm totally optimistic that if you just start trying a few things, you can start to unlock some of that stuff, get unsanely reframe. It's not about impact impact is in the transaction world. I need to find meaning somewhere else. The impact's fine. I still want to do good job

at work, but I got, but if I'm looking there, I'm looking in the wrong place. So some reframes to give you all slightly different, you know, like, every stage you want out of the box thinking,

well, move the box. You know, I'm looking over here. This isn't working with the box over here.

There's more possibilities here. And if we, and so I'm optimistic that even in a pretty groved set of dysfunctional beliefs, dysfunctional patterns, there's still a curious person in there,

“still an optimistic person in there. Fear kills curiosity, right? I'm not going to be curious”

about new stuff because I'm terrified of changing anything. But, you know, small steps, what, what Albert Benderer called guided mastery, what David Kelly called creative confidence in his book. It's like small steps of learning to be take a few risks, be a little more creative. Have your curiosity, ask some new questions, try a few things. Those small steps will overcome a phobia, will overcome the fear. And, and it doesn't, and it's not a, you know, a lifelong practice. It's

six weeks. You know, you mentioned we, we kind of sound like some other things. Well, you know, in the 75 ring circus called the human experience, the meaning tense, pretty big tent. And there's a whole bunch of, there's a, there's a dog act, there's some clowns in there, there's some dancing animals, there's a whole lot of stuff going on in the meaning room. And we, we just walked in there. But again, word design guys, I mean, Bill's a Nietzsche-loving atheist, you know, I'm a Jesus loving Thesis,

“I mean, we got some pretty different worldviews here. I'll say again, if you get the human part right,”

you can't go wrong. That's our, that's our baseline. And all we're trying to do is offer tools that we're for human beings. So, we're not trying to be in a religion, we're not trying to be a new psychology, we're guys with freeing, reframed ideas to make your situation more manageable, and tools to get you unstuck and move out. So, this is entirely compatible with any world, there is no world view that this is incompatible with. And we say at the end of the book, you know,

we call the set of mindsets, the designer's way, you know, which is a little presumptuous, but

and then we say your homework now is to figure out your way. And of course, you're never going to,

there's no getting it done, and there's no getting it right. You know, you know, I'll, I made a mistake again to them. I'm, I'm so hopeless. Of course you are, you know, I mean, but you know, if you're, if you're a becoming, you're going to give your, and you look back in your friendships. So, if you really can accept your humanity, then it starts getting, and you start living generally into it, not to get it done, because you know, getting it done, thank God there's

no getting it done, literally on her death. That's my, my dear wife Claudia, daughter cancer five years ago, and I like being a love so much I'm doing, I'm going to get married again. But nonetheless, she really elect her brain. And she watched her mother lose her brain before she does. She said, "I'm not going there." So because California is an end of life state, we had the drugs for her to enter a life before she lost her brain for brain started to really go. And on the

Tuesday before the Friday she had not, I said, "Are we going?" She said, "No, I've decided. I want to stick it out. There might be one more lesson and I don't want to miss it." And the last thing she said, she sat up at bed and she opened her eyes and she stared at me and she goes, "Oh, it's so interesting." Close your eyes and fell back, last thing she said. So if you play the game well, it's interesting all the way to the end. Don't try to solve it,

just live it. Embracing the mystery as opposed to trying to solve it. Celebrating it. This is now. This is as good as it gets, making a little progress on a huge question. His fabulous. I am, in fact, an existential atheist and every morning I get up and I say, "I live in the best of all possible worlds because this is it. This is the best of all possible worlds." I get it after life, but he's stuck. And this is all I guess. And everything I do

today I choose to do, which is about choices that makes you human. But we were in a restaurant long time ago and David and I were talking about, you know, atheism and Jesus. And he said, "Okay, I got it." We both believe in mystery. We believe in the thing that cannot be demystified.

But it's true. I mean, the reason we're talking about the compatible is,

“I mean, I am also an artist and when I'm standing in front of a campus or I'm painting or I have”

a kind of an idea, I'm designing. There's a moment where I'm not in this world. You know, Rick Ruben, the record producer wrote the book on the Creative Act, he talks about, you know, we just channel this stuff from, you know, he would call flow creativity and we're just channeling this stuff. But I have these experiences, absolutely like the painting is happening in front of me and I'm just moving my hand. Yeah. And so there, that there is mystery. But that is self-transcendence.

It is self-transcendence. It is becoming antenna or a vehicle for, you know, something higher. Just something again. And it seems to be something that humans evolved to have the capability to do.

You know, I mean, from prophets to Sears to shamans to whatever. There's always been people in

a culture who saw something that everybody else didn't see. And those experiences are available

“to all of us at any time if we can be present and get out of our own way. Those experiences,”

I want to make sure the listener doesn't think by those that pronouns are referring to these apex, either psychedelic or mystical, mountain-top experiences or when built totally drops into flow, but in front of a canvas. And I call Bill the flow master because he's really worked on being good at dropping into flow for years now. While those experiences, those experiences are great. What I hope we mean by and those experiences are available to all of us. That experience

of having a deeper engagement and participation in the present moment and feeling my aliveness and my humanity more than when I'm just worried about the outcome. That is available to everybody else. It's a process. There's tension in every moment between that type of experience and pivoting back to our default of like thinking about like how everything's going and our neurosis and so what does that mean? Take the trash out. Just in the example of the podcast

that you were talking about earlier, it's like I know that the best version of this conversation depends upon the extent to which I can be present for it because if I'm totally dialed into you guys, I don't need this stuff here. I'll let my curiosity find the next line of inquiry and it will be great, but I'm too insecure for that. So I have to surround myself with all of this stuff you know and I'm thinking what's the next question? I'm going to have a brain fart you know

and sometimes I might self that that is what this experience demands when it actually isn't. I wanted to go back to this idea of reframes. You mentioned Joseph Campbell earlier. One of the things that serves us and also trips us up and gets in our way is our story. I spent a lot of time thinking about story like we all walk around with this story you know who we are, what we're capable of, what's going to work you know and you know like everything it works for us

and it doesn't work for us but we're very locked in on this and the idea of challenging that story let alone deconstructing it like these stories are all fantasies like even the best story. I mean it's all nonsense. None of these stories are true yet we're so indelibly attached to them and it seems to me and I'm curious what you guys think but so much of what you're talking about is available when we can kind of release our clutch a little bit and start thinking about not even

necessarily forming a new story but just holding our story more loosely and being more curious about it and and developing like the the willingness to challenge it. Yeah I mean you know we are the story

we tell ourselves one of the first exercises in the design life classes I say hey tell me the story

you grew up with you know telling you what your parents you know what's what you what you learn from your parents and you know you get the common story of you know work hard get good grades go to good school get a good job and I go how's that working for you and it will be clowning and not really so we are the story we tell ourselves but we can like say hold that more lightly and and maybe lean into the opportunity to change that story because if we are the story we tell ourselves

let's change the story to be the one I want to I want to live maybe I don't want to accept my parents notion of success anymore that's not that's not going to work for me or maybe I'm in the mid-career and it isn't turned out to be what I thought and I can beat myself up for that or I can say and now I'm perfectly positioned to figure out what I want to do next

“so we're narrative animals storytelling is part of the DNA of humans I think”

I would say it's like keep you know keep asking yourself what part of this story is working

doesn't work anymore and and the the striving mindset that sort of I got to be the best at

“everything I remember one of the very first workshops who did a long time ago was a big workshop”

with a bunch of Stanford alumps and there was a woman who raised her hand and said what what's to do she's well I'm I'm really senior lawyer and a big lot for me in New York but I hate it I mean what would happen she was well you know I'm just Stanford because it was the hardest school and then my parents were both lawyers so they said be a lawyer so I said okay I got into Yale because that was the school my parents went to and then I went to New York I got in the biggest

lot for my good I was a youngest woman partner first you know for senior partner I run the

management thing and I hate my life yeah I got hasn't I got hasn't in hand I got a place out in the island you know I got two test list kids of private schools because it's a terrible life right and because she didn't choose any of it she loved little reward systems reward punishment at no point did she feel like she had permission to actually ask herself like what do I want and what's meaningful to me will not let us run these escalators yeah you know that is hard this

shoes yeah deeply embedded and and you know and I said look this is just a quick workshop I'm not meaning to you know you don't need to have an existential crisis here and you know in the 90 minute rubber chicken talk but look at it this way you're you know it's a sunk cost right

and you got lots of resources you know you make a six weeks and I'm six million dollars you know

based 20 million dollars what I said great bank that for two years and you know and then start moving towards the thing that's more authentic for you but give yourself permission to one not beat yourself up for choices you made that felt okay at the time and too look at look at what you've got available to you to go to go forward and you're going to say all we really doing office hours is good permission yeah together we've probably had a couple thousand office hour

conversations and mostly it's giving permission you know not to hate golf and you know join the circus but we're reminding people they do have the right to exercise the agency over their own lives that they that they want and you know I'm a big fan of story I mean the fifth mindset is create your

“world which is acknowledging that life is a story we tell ourselves yeah it is so pick that story really”

carefully what's the one you're in now and that's not in you know dried in ink it's evolving over time hold it lightly for heaven's if I'm a becoming of course I'm holding a lightly you know we say we I don't know you're one true purpose but we could give you some tips on how to live purpose fully on the way toward the things that's ever changing and so I like in my own story um you know my father died when I was nine we learned later of suicide that's a gift that keeps on giving

I've worked that through with lots of counselors you know I figured out like I've retroactively figured out my coping systems and what my reactions are and what the good things and the bad things that came out of that were you know and how that affects my marriage life you know and I really know my story well I mean I've worked this thing really really really hard I'm turning 73 in a couple of weeks that happened 64 years ago I've got this thing covered so now my wife dies and now I'm in a relationship

my wife Claudia dies and now I'm in relationship with fresh who is a different animal entirely but who I love dearly and is evoking completely different things out of me and I am learning so much about that coping system that I thought I fully understood that goes back to my origin story by virtue of simply being in the presence of a different soul with the different kind of

“reflectivity I'm over and over again I say oh that's what Claudia was talking about the woman”

who died like she kept telling me the stuff like no no that's not it you know and like oh that's what she

meant so I'm rewriting my story you never know your story you're just working on it but it does help

you having a story gives you some guidance gives you a where do I go from here you know you're not done like oh I got it I got it yeah but like I'm getting it so there's your story there's the story of senior partner at the way she law firm and that but there's the story of the you know struggling to make it through the day person sure what about the senior in high school who's looking at the prospect of applying to college and thinking well what's the point in that like there is

a veneer of nihilism I think in Gen Z they look out onto the world and they're like what's the point of any of this as a parent of you know an 18 year old like I I see this and I'm around young people a lot what do you make of that and how do you communicate your message to that person or that generation that's struggling in that particular way right well I would say first of all their skepticism which translates into disengagement is well-founded because what they're really

they're not even accessible to me in the same way so how could you guys right like they're thinking oh

like this is like a jump like one of those jobs that you're you older people are complaining about that looks pretty good like I like to have a house but I don't see any path to that and you know the world's gonna fall apart by the time that I don't want one of these crappy jobs that you keep

“complaining about so this is 70% of Americans are disengaged it work yeah so that's what I'm looking”

for too I'm gonna work hard go to college get job and then be disengaged for you guys all like it is thanks for your reasons yeah when you when you guys won the games you told me to play you didn't look all that happy and by the way we can't play anymore so other matters are great idea good job you're doing you're doing

empathy step one of design really well but now let's redefine the problem don't just say oh I'm screwed

I don't want to play I can't play you're accepting that the way we all describe the world to you is accurate so if you do radical acceptance okay AI is coming yep we're gonna have to adapt to that you have to live in a post AI world for sure there may be a different economic reality I even you know kids my kids at age who are and my kids are all live 30s 40s you know are not buying houses because it doesn't make sense um and so we're gonna live a different kind of a way so then inside the concept this the

particularity called the moment in history in which I find myself if I radically accept those things

“but I believe on the human becoming and I can live more fully into my aliveness within this framework”

where can I do that how do I do that what would be interesting to me let's find ways to thrive in this context and get over the fact that the way they all said it was isn't the way it is anymore it's just not true so what is true and let's go be human beings in the world in which you're gonna live in some sort of upside-down way it's almost an accelerated way of giving that person even greater permission well if it's all like this you might as well go directly into the thing that you're you know

where your curiosity we're living in a whole family we've been saying we've seen this down to this shift in the student profile in the last 10 years but you've been saying just in the last one or two it's turning around yeah very much so I'm I will radically predict that in five years the number one major Stanford is poetry because why take any class why take any con classroom CS class we can't get a job the number one major poetry in creative writing for the few people still getting the liberal

education but but I would you know that sort of disaffected 18 you know particularly the mail

“18 this affected 18 year old it'd be like okay yeah radically except things are changing I think this”

is why the creator economy is booming and it's so interesting to them it's like well if the goal was to like you know make a bunch of money or at least get enough money so I'm secure but these other paths don't look so good maybe I'll just do my own thing and that's going to be an explosion of creativity and engagement or the things not everybody will be successful but that that impetus to say hey wait a minute you're right I got to redefine the world maybe on my own terms or maybe

with a community of people who I really want to hang out with one of my students one of my top students you know left school went to work for some big design terms for a while they went no I don't think so but some land and you know up in San Juan Islands and it's running an organic farm and he's had on all the process I just want internships there because who wouldn't want to work this summer out of farm and he's using you know design techniques to create a completely different

sort of farm economy but now there's so many there's so one of the classes I want to do is designing your creative life it's not because there's so many more options for how do you find your way in this new world where things are changing wherever there's going to be chaos there's going to be dislocation and there's going to be opportunity and I think I'm seeing sort of of the students who are still engaged or are trying ready to engage I'm seeing a renaissance in

sort of creativity entrepreneurship engagement and particularly in the arts you know by the way

in the the research that we always quote from Bill Damon on passion only 80% only 20% of people

have a and thenifiable passion 80% don't in that 20% it's all highly skewed towards creatives yeah I've always wanted to be a writer of poet a singer a dancer or something and what do we tell those kids oh you can't get a job doing that so what I'm going to tell those kids is that's probably the only job you can get because the McKenzie thing will disappear the banker thing will disappear all these other things will disappear and so there is a there's another element to this

the kid who won't get out of the room just plays video games all day I do a bunch of work in

graduate from college and instead of the picture where they're all throwing up their hats they're

“literally lying on the ground lying on the stairs and you know in in the most you know”

nihilistic way to saying there's nothing in the society for us not the Chinese probably true there's a lot of stuff in society for these kids and whether the other college or not is in this kind of an open question whether colleges will even survive you know most of them the AI wave I don't know but no I would say now more than ever I mean the friction between my idea and the market is almost zero you know a long time ago when I graduated you had to

learn drafting and there's a lot of hard hard to make something I can I can I can I can talk to my

phone and 3D print something sure in in 20 minutes if you got an idea it's never been easier

to put that idea inside your story and become the person who does that thing and whether that thing is college or college and something else I just found out I was talking to one of the physical professors who's running a class for creators we have the number one Vietnamese influencer at Stanford never met him he's like a sophomore and I don't know what a Vietnamese influencer is but he's really big and Vietnam he's from Vietnam and he's pulling in a million dollars a month

whatever he's doing that's wild and he's a college student right so and he's still choosing to go to college you know that I mean you know I think the other thing is we we have an exercise where we talk about what's college for and and you know college is in addition to career readiness college is really for the life of the mind like learning how learning works and then reading widely the great books from all traditions and understanding that you know we're not just here

as a civilization that was born yesterday I mean it goes back you read Socrates, read Plato read Chongsa and you know I'm not so but I think I think the life of the mind the kind of perfecting myself those years between 1820 something or 1920 something those are important years of becoming yeah the person you will be you know dealing with for the rest of your life and

“as we hurdle you know off this AI cliff the only thing that we have is our consciousness and our”

unique expression of humanity and I think that becomes a premium I mean even in the best case situation where AI comes in and optimizes everything and takes away all these jobs but don't worry about it because there's going to be universal basic income and there's just going to be massive prosperity I mean this will auger in the the greatest crisis of meaning in the history of the species like okay well what are we supposed to do now you know we've been thoroughly

distracted and we won't be anymore you know this this rose colored view on like how great it's going to be like I just don't see any set of circumstances in which that is going to be how this is going to unfold but the center of all of this is meaning like how are we going to find meaning amidst the birth of this new form of this new life form you know that we are

“apparently the sex organs of you know I think in terms of where do the where's the post AI future”

land and how does it like you know this would be like saying a gymnast going off the hype

bar making a move for the very first time in sticking the landing in Olympic perfection on day one

you know it's this is my third or fourth massive technological revolution in the past 50 years it is orders of magnitude bigger I've finally been convinced that AI isn't just one more cool thing it's a massive different thing that being said every transition is is a mess you know and while transitions and disruptions create new opportunities for new people frankly usually the people hurt by the disruption or not the ones who get the benefits of the upside on the other side

so there will be losses there will be sacrifices there will be suffering how long it will take whether or not we'll get stuck in a bad corner and we'll end up with a massively AI enabled oligarchy I don't know but regardless of how well or how poorly we get through this you're going to need to know who you are you're going to need access to tools that will remind you you are worth it and you're going to need some people around you that you can do that with and don't count on

Jeff Bezos and y'all and must provide you with your basic income because they're going to take all the money and build a bigger yacht it's looking pretty clear yeah that's they're not going to that's the route that we're on yeah but you guys are still optimistic guys right there at Stanford in the you know heart of Silicon Valley around all of these you know the next generation of the people

surviving this sure okay I've been teaching since since the 80s since you were in school and there have been waves of times when the students were just interested in like how do I get a job and then I've been ways of times when they were a little more socially interested you know we had to protest a couple the last year we were to protest around the Palestinian and the Gaza thing and so I see a lot more student activism lately that just kind of had disappeared in the 90s

and early 2000s and I see a lot more you know students will say I want to start to start up but I want to do something meaningful that has impacted I want to just start another food delivery company or a version of a social media thing so they're they're pretty aware and they have all these new tools where they can build almost anything instantly and they're pretty aware of the the negative impact that technologies like smartphones and things have had on on their generation so

“I think they're smart they're aware they've got great tools and they really want to do something”

that has value to it which ultimately will rest on their their values they're they're

meaning making ideas and so yeah it'll be a bumpy it'll be a bumpy ride down I don't know where it's going to go I doubt that we're going to be moving in some blissful future where we don't have to work and we just you know hang around the park all day I don't see anything the other thing is but but I think it's a problem or maybe that will force us to be more intentional about our formative community it'll put my stress on building communities we care about you know I've been looking

at different kinds of communities and one of the communities I don't understand but I see it all around my student is the gaming community people get together put the headsets on and they've got their thing and they got their team and they got their game that's that's a community where people love to play together and not even just to win but just to play together um sports isn't a

“I don't I'm terrible at predicting anything but if you want to predict what to invest in invest in”

women's basketball teams professional teams invest in the second league for the for the baseball teams whatever you know the farm teams invest in things where people have to go to the stadium to be part of the community that watches everything where people are gathered yeah restaurants or you know in this increasingly secularized world that we live in where we've lost all these third spaces and you know after school programs etc and we're in this you know how to

desert of disconnection like there has to be a you know a counter response to that at some point like we're we're hardwired to be together and it doesn't matter how amazing this technology is

that is always going to be the case and so these are things that art you know can't they I can't

engineer out like people getting together to sit down and have a conversation over them again you know

“you have to decide what you think it means to be a person you know a vector fronkel after coming”

out of the holocaust you know develops a new school of meaning making and psychology and concludes there are three ways you can experience the meaningful life through love through achievement or through suffering and before him Freud said leave him on Darbide and Levin work those are the two key things to make a human life worthwhile and he added suffering because sometimes you're in a situation completely beyond your control where the only freedom you have is how do you bear suffering

well so if I accept that I'm up becoming you know I accept that you know there are forces over which I have no control and I recognize oh if I'm just thinking transactional Lee oh I can't change politics so I can't change AI I guess it doesn't matter I'm impotent I'm I'm powerless I'm gonna lay flat I'm thinking transactional Lee now I'm not saying radically accepting some of these difficulties is easy but it may be necessary so one of the organizations I work with I live in

Santa Cruz you know on the moderate day that's the north end of the Salinas Valley which is agricultural so I work with a group called digital nest and digital nest is a really fabulous job of helping brown kids crack in a high tech because there's a big color barrier in high tech they do a really good job now that means overwhelmingly they work with brown people who ice are very interested in right now and they're getting rated right in the left so there's

this whole community in this whole subterfue I can't even tell you the details because it's all secret about how these organizations and how the families that they serve are helping one another avoid getting picked off the street it's a very generative loving human making experience in the face of a really horrible constraining lifestyle ruining reality so if you accept this is what's going on how can I participate so if I'm a person who recognizes I don't control everything

then I'm not first and foremost a producer I am first and foremost a participant so regardless of

making way you can participate in the situation which you find yourself that's the particularity you're in or frankly you're stuck with so when the plotters of the escape that frankle was going

to participate and finally pull it off and they're ready to go a colleague runs into the barrack

that he's in where he's tending to a patient because he's an MD as well as a psychiatrist and says

“we're going you have to go now and he's sitting by the bed of this inmate and he and it looks”

at the other guy and he says no I'll stay and he just chooses I'm sure all my patients and I will die here but suffering well with them that's life making for me um where choices to make now one really quick thing the notion of radical acceptance has nothing to do with endorsement accepting that this is really important accepting the situation is out of control and people are rating you know not okay slowly pulling folks from you know from Selena's off the street for

no good reason you can accept that's the reality what can we do about it how can we make this

community safer but there's nothing about that this is endorsement right so yeah people people often

think oh well if you accept something then you have to agree with it's okay no I don't it's nothing about that I have to agree with it nothing about it that I think is okay there's a lot of things going on in the world I really don't think is okay okay and then the question is if that's the reality I'm in what's available what can I do what can I do that's useful can I do that I you know it's numbered I can sign a petition you can work with this group to help these kids you know get

a good job you know I can write a letter so one of my students who's going to be deported can get a visa whatever you can do do the thing you can do many people the Buddha would say the distance between the way things are and how you want them to be that's suffering yeah of course and you can't solve a problem that you're not accepting you know and it's fullness right so it's like can't solve a problem you're not willing to have it's you're not endorsing it you're putting

yourself in a position to deal with it anonymously and not reactive right again this can sound like oh everybody's got to be some kind of an evangelist or you know a savior it's like a guru look people are busy hard lives that the the person you talked about was me and my forties with three kids and the job and my wife working in blah blah blah and where the heck well I have time to you know get on the get on you know write a sign and go down to the Tesla dealership and protest

right I mean you'll notice all those people protesting it looked like they're retired yeah I think time so we're not saying you know the pick your battles carefully pick the things that are meaningful

“for you and pick the things where you think you can move the needle I think there's an important”

piece packed into that which is that the western mine is going to default to this idea that the the the means to the meaning that I lack is through a deeper investment in my own self obsession

whereas the solution is actually disabusing yourself of that self obsession and getting into a

contributory like service oriented kind of approach to life right like like oh I'm lacking meaning so I'm going to optimize my life and I'm going to like construct this thing and it's all about me and I've got my blinders and here's my thing and I'm doing this whereas if you just like let the blinders go and you walk into a room thinking well how can I make this room better for being in it rather than looking for like what am I going to get out of this situation

that seems to me to be the real means to you know kind of accessing this meaning be I mean psychology is known for a while now if you're experiencing anxiety or depression

“best thing you can do is go help somebody else if you want to feel better go help somebody else”

so what's going on there well you know and again wisdom traditions of care deeply about service for a long time you know and the canaan able story you know after you know the brother kills his brother it says you know what am I who am I my brother's keeper and one of the comments of that is that you know the answer was so obviously yes that God didn't even answer the question you know like everybody knows yes you're your brother's keeper we're in this together we now know psychologically

that consciousness is in fact collective we say all the time in these small groups that we help people talk to each other meaningfully in it's almost impossible to hear yourself by yourself so you know we're big fans of Dan Seekle's work on in the mindset institute where he's talking a lot about collective consciousness and that we're much more away than an eye so no matter where you are in the midst of all this thing if you start living your life in

such a way that is participating with others your chance of experiencing self-transcendancy and it gets more meaningful goes way up so absolutely it's not just about you know we don't

works we're who I am and what I'm doing are in alignment and what I believe are in alignment

but by the time we talk to anybody they pick up a book they walk into our class they even sign up for office hours I've already found myself in front of a teachable person so anybody who's listening to this is open minded enough to probably have some pretty good values your values are probably going to take you to a good place and that good place is probably going to fall for somebody ever than you too you can't transmit something you haven't got obviously you

have to walk this talk in your own lives right you know you can't have office hours and you know go on podcasts and write books about this unless you're actually doing this so how does it work in your own lives and what are the challenges that you guys face you're like well I wrote about this I really have to do this I really don't want to know how to do this yeah resisting this yeah well a long time before even started the class and David had come over and said hey let's do this

“thing I said okay great so we went over to Zots you remember Zots a big on trend back when it was”

still kind of favorite places a dusty old place it's not I they really like dolled it up didn't yeah they didn't ruin it some of them spotted and they made it much fancier but anyway so we were sitting there with a picture beer and a warm dusty picking table and I said okay one thing about this is well one thing I said is you got to leave the Jesus stuff out of the

classroom he agreed to that the second thing was you know we're asking people to do these exercises

so we have to do them and we we have to actually do them ourselves just to understand what it feels like to wrestle with three oddities or to feels like what it's trying to figure out your balance dashboard better and particularly with this book it was the the possibility of the imposter syndrome loom to large I spent with the Sam Harris wake-up app I spent a whole like nine months trying to develop my mindfulness practice complete failure so I'm terrible at mindfulness

if people out there are good at it I'm sure it's a great value I couldn't figure it out and I listen to all the Sam Harris stuff I listen to you know calm I try to mall headspace can't do it I have other ways of finding myself in my own thoughts you know you know in something that isn't just you know repeating transactions most of the other stuff you know we do I just finished just finished we're rewriting all of my my compass my work-view world view and life view and I found it had changed since

you know since a year or two ago when I blasted it it the lab I have a rotating set of fellows who come in and teach with us and then they leave and every time they come in we do a new set of a heavy let's all write our values down so we know what the culture is all about and so

“I I actually have a chance to do most of these exercises every couple of years and I think that keeps”

me honest right and the rest and the rest of the stuff I learned I learned from my students confronting me with something that that either didn't make sense or seemed seemed hypocritical to them and I'm been there for 37 years to a lovely woman named Cynthia and she keeps me very honest yeah she she's just read the book and she's just goes I got some questions you don't do this yeah when we talk you don't seem present you know it's like okay I can work on that I can work on that

yeah there's a great line in a John Fogrety song that I'm rather fond of in the refrain this is I ain't no hypocrite except mostly every day and boy you do this kind of work you hand out stuff recommending how people live their lives I mean you are asking for it yeah so I'm up against my own stuff all the time and I would say it wouldn't thing in particular right now so where am I learning my way into my own book and one of the simple little exercises is change your vowel

go from got to to get to you want to flip the switch look at you to do a list I've got to get this

“thing down so what's the best thing an item on your to-do list can be over with a line through it”

oh that's great it's gone now oh that part of my life is over it's gone for like wait you know oh oh I got to talk to which you all to the oh I get to talk to which you all today so I kind of flip from got to to get to which is from over to participant is a complete shift in mindset and truth me told even though I'm pushing 73 and I've been teaching this kind of stuff for years and over 20 years ago I got a advanced seminary degree in contemplative spirituality I suck at this

stuff I mean I am I am goal oriented deadline driven a transactionalist production minded guy so really trying to move what I call from role getting your pack made to soul just being pressed through the moment there's a bigger shift than I want my number one goal this year is to live into get to not go to am I experiencing things as a get to not a got to and I catch myself missing it constantly so the growth angle is still pretty steep yeah it's a tricky thing I mean you

talk about like the the the Odyssey years right like yeah for that first cohort the younger

descending too far down the transactional lifestyle kind of approach and then there's mind loosely

“yeah and just everything becomes about that we get indoctrinated and that like you know just by being”

alive in this world in this developed world and then in these older years it becomes about meaning making you know we've kind of ridden that wave and and it's that tension with our you know kind of striver disposition like you know who I am my identity is is this construct that's contingent upon these things that I'm doing in the world like my position at my job or you know my salary or whatever it is and and I see the suffering that is created when when the person can't

let go of that and they start to miss you know the the the gifts of that phase of life because they remain so fixated on you know continuing to tell that story it's a real challenge I call it the the role to soil impact challenge and this really comes up particularly in these DCI fellas the distinguished career institute people the 35 to 45 fellow is a year that comes from the year with us I happen to know one particular cohort really well because it's the one in which the woman

I'm not gonna marry as a member of so I get to be now it's all making sense yeah I find after

20 years of teaching at Sanford I finally got something out of it other than barely enough money to

pay for the parking and so I'm hanging out with this cohort and a year and a half after they quote graduated from spending this year thinking deeply about their futures we all get together for pizza and beer one of the alumni members houses this is the people still in the northern California area and as a conversation goes around the circle of 20 some people and the question simply so how's it going there's a year and a half after they've finished thinking deeply about

their lives and 18 of the 20 people told some kind of a long it was two and a half hours to get around that circle eight minutes per person 18 of the 20 stories were essentially I'm having a real hard time letting her go I don't want to live the way I used to live I'm done with it I'm not gonna go back and run the law from anywhere I'm not gonna whatever it is but boy I'm I got a lot of muscle memory on living that way I got a lot of muscle memory on

I am the person who did that sort of thing and I thought boy this this is a struggle now the good news is another year and a half later so three years after they're graduated they got together again at somebody's beach house went around the same circle as the same

“question and almost everybody said I think I'm getting the hang of this now so it may take a little”

time yeah but you know you're a person you can grow have you guys connected with chip

calmly yes just model because that's his podcast he's a great guy yeah I mean he's amazing

and he obviously his work is just all about that yeah I don't know he's coming in the model yeah like the crystalist it's not a crisis but you know how do you use your what's it called synthesized was like the brain changes are they're talking about this too like yeah oh you really good at like the strength yeah data processing right more of a synthesized the second curve where you can make all these connections and you have this wisdom you

have a fluid and fluid intelligence and leaning into the wisdom yeah and and being this modern elder this mentor yeah for the next generation which requires you know a confrontation with your ego in order to get there but this is really the path to meaning when you reach that stage of life yeah the shift I've seen in students by the way is that it used to be very much what my parents expected me to do was was one of the stories I would hear and do I have

permission to do something else yes you do but now what I hear is the parents are like they do whatever you want it's fine the students the pressures coming from their peers the pressures coming from their peers I don't know if this is the social media or something it's like I got to look a certain way I got to act a certain way and I got to get the right job and it's not coming

“so much from the grownups because I think they don't think the grownups you know have the right”

answer and so it's it's it's really in that circle and then I'm wonder you know when you because I've asked you some work with some people folks who are retiring you know I was the senior vice president of everything I retired and I'm on the morning I'm just some guy in the line at Starbucks chatting up people because I have nothing to do and nobody cares that I was once the senior vice president so that loss of identity around jobs doesn't doesn't just happen at

that point right I mean all along you've been been begging your value to the title to the role to like you said to the role that I had and now I need to move to this other place of

challenge isn't that an interesting journey to be on and and and and if you're lucky enough to have

the resources to do that why would you miss it why would you you know like like the CEOs who go back after two years and be a CEO again because they're screwing up my company I got to go back and fix it it's like what are you doing man it's not just the egoistic person like

“oh my big VP and I are totally important and it's not that archetype only frankly you just”

you've been doing this way of living for 40 years 50 years that's a lot of many of us are just a bunch of momentum and he's overwhelmingly transactions so I've built on our both in formative communities of guy's groups minus 51 years old builds a 35 years old and so I'm the eldest but only a couple of months in my group and so we're all entering our 70s and two years ago the year I was turning 70s we need to talk about this we need to talk about becoming elders

so we had a two year long conversation I was carefully curated with some core questions and the questions included how much is enough and enough what's in so much money as it was how much is enough contribution I mean can't can you slow down saving the world and start trying to travel a little bit before your wife dies again you know is that okay and and then probably the other

most important so how much is enough was a very important question and the second most important

“question is and what do you let and go so yeah I think for those later in life there is absolutely”

some letting go and it's very freeing or you hang out to too long and then the life rips that out your hands on that's worse yeah yeah I really like this idea of the formative communities and then having this formal question you know and and holding yourself accountable to answering it to other people you know that you're checking in with I think that's like a huge piece in all of this myself you know I've turned 60 this year I don't want to it's it's it's almost as if like oh

well you know I'll figure that out when I you know when I walk out the door on my final day you know it's like no I want to think about this now what am I doing now how am I trying making this a like a multi year transition so it isn't like an overnight like wait what happened like I thought I was gonna you know like it's not like oh you buy the RV or you play golf or you know it's like I'm I'm in 10 upon remaining engaged right and things that interest me

and that I'm curious about some of which you know may or may not be professional but it's not going to look like it looks like right now and how can I acclimate to that idea now so it's not some kind of ego you know devastating blow later Cliff transitions are hard we're doing a just a the only live booktuck we did at a local you know Kepler so booktuck and middle part and somebody and that then somebody said what's your next book gonna be and Dave was like we're

not doing another book so he hates writing and he's really working hard on moving from a task driven human you don't know anybody who's as good as Dave at getting things done he is really good at it from that to a soul driven human who's just kind of in the moment and uh I'm so I'm pretty sure this is the last book because I took me two years to talk him into each of the books and and I'm gonna happen this time because he's gonna be on a different journey but um you

know as you said you it doesn't happen overnight you prepare yourself for this right if you're thinking if you're looking ahead you like and and a really interesting question is what are my willing to leave behind in terms of my identity my position you know everybody knows me or what whatever it is um what are my willing to leave behind in order to make space for what's coming

“and being in radical acceptance of what's coming like I think we you know our our culture is such”

that we just well you know on some level we all are convincing ourselves that we're not gonna actually die that's right and this is not serving us the number of billionaires who are trying to live forever is an example of the sort of narcissism don't get me started in our culture but I have fully accepted there is a lot less runway in front of me than there was behind we do an exercising class at the last class we call it the 25th reunion we say hey imagine

you're trying to realize I'm imagining now 47 and you're back for your word Stanford for your unit 25th year and we're gonna get up and talk about stuff and we got him to three different conversations and the last time we did this I realized when I went for the 25th year I'll be 95 94 oh shit I'll probably be dead and then I actually I I told my co-instructor I need to

leave the room for a second I walked out and I tried to deal with it now my reframe is no no I bought

this new exoskeleton now I'm great you know I'm running around it's fantastic but yeah when you built by one of your students yeah but when you when you actually start you know accepting that

and go oh how interesting I didn't know yeah I think the radical acceptance it liberates you

and gives you permission to engage with those years more intentionally I mean I've heard you tell the story of like the woman who came to you who I don't know she was like 52 or something like that I was like I'm thinking about coming to medical school yeah yeah I mean that's a perfect example of maybe just tell the story like how you forecast out like all right well how long do you think you're gonna live and let's reverse and yeah this is just you know what what's crazy what's not

how do you think about things so I give a talk and this 54 year old woman comes up and says you know can ask you a question so sure well I'm thinking about going to medical school well I was wanted to do that

“and I think I have the time but all my friends are saying I'm too old and I'm crazy and it's stupid”

you know and I said well look what's just run I mean so very quickly you know how old people in

your gene pool live well you know if you've looked around my family you know probably make it to 90 you know maybe 95 I said okay now if you're active person how long do you want to be working well probably 80 at least and I said okay so okay so we've got 26 years okay now so let's say takes a year for you to get ready to apply to medical school because you're out of practice find takes a year to get in that's two takes four years to go through medical school to get to MD

to become an intern okay then six by the way we have to internship you go into residency you're doing medicine most medicine is done by residents you're now a full-fledged doctor I've got a nephew who's resident doing medicine all day long so you know in six years you're doing medicine you finish your specialty another three four five depending which one you want to get so you know now I'm 11 years in you're now 65 you got 15 more years between then when you're

going to retire from being an doctor to do the work you're doing by the way if we take a quick look back at the last 15 years of your life would you say you're a largely wasting your time

“no I think those years kind of matter to me that's what we're talking about here so are you crazy”

I don't think so just decide how you want to choose to think about this yeah that's an incredible

reframe you know the idea that you know you would entertain going to med school in your mid 50s I mean my sister got a seed and then when you you articulated that way you're like oh well yeah we're not yeah this is who you know I mean my sister got her PhD in her early 60s she've been doing a PhD's job is running a graduate school for many many years with a master's degree and finally decided to get the degree she should have had the woman in front of her getting

stalled with her PhD was 83 wow there are no rules there are just perceptions it's up to you so this answers the question like is it ever too late no like like okay I just signed up to do a motorcycle tour with my brother-in-law in Morocco I ride a BMW GS250 which weighs a little over 600 pounds I can still barely pick it up if I drop it I kind of have a rule if you can't pick it up as you didn't ride it I'm not sure I'm riding that bike and I'm 85s maybe a smaller bike

so it might be some things that go away but you know the rules are a lot more funjable than they'll let you to believe I'm kind of hoping he's not riding in motorcycle when he's 85 but because I love him dearly and I don't want I don't have to I might be bad at it it was a very fun interesting character like the devout man and the atheist the painter and the extrovert

“Santa Cruz it's interesting it all it all works but I think you know just as we kind of bring this”

to a conclusion it's not too late and it's also not indulgent to you know consider a life of meaning I think for a lot of people it's like well that's just you know how nice for you like what an extravagance like I'm just gonna keep doing my thing or you know I got enough meaning you know I'm chasing them whatever and that's that's just fine but this notion of not only giving you know everybody permission like no you you deserve to have a life of meaning it's available to you

the life you're already it's not too late and you can find it within you know it's like this is not about like something that you can you know build into your life on a moment a moment basis free of charge and you will feel feel you feel better you're your your your curiosity will kind of peak kind of certain start start activating again and you'll find you'll find yourself in the world in a very different sort of mindset you know I went to school and back when dinosaurs

were from the campus long before you and but I found this thing called design which was really cool

all together and we'll make things to people want and that's been a lot of fun and it and it's an

“inherently curious thing to do like hey can you come up with a better one of these hey can you”

come up with a better one of these is like yeah maybe let's try it so once you get in that mindset the design is mindset and you realize oh there are no rules nobody made up any rules there's no rules for what microphones need to look like no rules for what my life needs to look like there's some things that probably there's been constraints there's some constraints and there's some things that you know probably shouldn't do that if you know it might not work might be too risky

but I bet I could try stuff right and I bet there's more out there than I thought and if I just start with these designage mindsets of wonder curiosity availability that's even happens

let's give it a try yeah I mean you sure it look you exist you deserve to be here

you're a human being you deserve the entire human experience good chance if you're like a lot of modern people you're cutting some of that short lately which probably mostly isn't your fault it's the systemic habit that society and largely capitalism have invited you into so we're just saying here's an invitation you can encounter more of the fully human experience and the life you already have you deserve it go get it and if you do

you actually start becoming more yourself you become more whole and then it gets even better more of yourself yes well put and for the person who who is being newly introduced to these ideas who stock who's trying to find their way forward who's curiosity is peat by you know

just a discussion of the possibility of meaning like what is a practice or a first thing

that that person can do to begin this journey well I'll do I'll do wonder glasses okay yeah the cut there's an exercise called put on your wonder glasses very simple you walk it you walk outside nature's a great place to do this walk outside and you see a plan to retreat you go okay my transactional glasses are on that's a tree I have an app I pull it out I can tell you what kind

“that's a that's a Monterey pine fine you need to trim it and then it bunches up with the tree then”

and then go alright now put on your curiosity glasses oh Monterey pine what a Monterey pine is doing is that in California this is a Monterey that's interesting and and who put that there and why did it grow there that's so that's the kind of curiosity lens it's very interesting and put on your wonder glasses the final thing is a wonder glasses like look at that tree that tree started from you know something it was nothing I'll bet the biomass of that tree weighs

2,000 pounds how the hell did that happen and why is the Monterey pine needle so different from the tree next to it that's a different tree and isn't it wonderful that I live in a place where like this or nature is all around me we haven't torn it all down yet I think a lot of the beach so put on your wonder glasses go from transaction to curious to wonder and see what happens take five minutes I'm going to because you mentioned this is maybe a

person who doesn't know anything maybe they're feeling a little bit stuck you know their situations they can't do a lot about so I can talk about coherency settings so you got to do a little bit of homework the compass exercise which means just simply writing down what's my story

“what do I believe about the work world what do I believe about the universe you know where”

my really coming from and then with that in mind you now have an idea of who it is that you are and whatever you're doing particularly in the workplace is constraining is that maybe there are opportunities when you get to act yourself out authentically so we call it coherency sighting catching yourself in the act of acting just like you maybe that particular action didn't create a result yet but hey the mask came off for a moment I was acting just like ritual for

five whole minutes at that particular moment in the staff meeting or what have you a great example so we give this talk at this bookstore a couple of weeks ago you know and one of the people who was there was Denise they're niece manager so a woman who used who volunteered to work with us for a couple of years a couple of years ago and she walked up and just said I'm just I really love the book and you know I just have to thank you guys again those years I got to work with you or some of the

best years of my and I really care about giving people an opportunity to do what gives them a liveness and we gave Denise a chance to experience some a liveness that she's carried on since that that encounter was about 30 seconds that's a moment of coherency for me so I caught myself in the act of acting just like the day of evidence I'm trying to be and then patches off of the back a little bit and it's me making to find yourself I was experienced to be in yourself I

and being you it's called a coherency set and no matter how sucky that job may be there are some

“moments when you're executing it in an authentic way and you deserve it firm yourself for doing that”

I help glad is you know clear the thing on the copier she's freaking out she had a thing shed to do for a boss I helped to clear the copier got it working took five minutes of my time

right she's super happy she's gonna take the copier store they need to go I'm a you know

I'm the kind of person who notices when somebody else is be some help that's all simple

“we're so reluctant to be earnest but that kind of earnestness is the connective tissue you know”

and that simple gesture you know of her expressing the meaning that she experienced with you guys

then became a meaningful moment for both of you like that works in that way that's a beautiful story

that's really if you're available to you we we make the offer and everything is that's that's all right just make the offer for all of your students you get office hours for life come back anytime out of care ten years twenty years later come back and they think it's a great offer and most of them have been interested with it I've taught twenty years ago yeah but we do it because they come back and they tell us a story and and that's the payoff

like yeah what what have you been doing for the last ten years well we did this and this and this you know but I remember this one thing from class where you could reframe a problem and I've been doing that it really works oh thank you thank you very much somebody was listening the book is great you guys are providing a much needed public service right now like I said

“at the outset you really are meeting the moment you know I think there is a craving and a need”

and a desire to understand how to win gender our lives with meaning and you're providing this road map and this you know this way forward the solution so thank you for coming and sharing with me today appreciate it well thank you and you you didn't need any of these notes you were totally one day all like all like leave them in the out you know like it's just the safety net you know to me you guys made it easy and and you forced me to be more present like I had to like you know

talking about like walking the talk about okay can I just be here cheers thanks a lot peace thank you guys