A Bit of Optimism

for those of you who have ever read my book Together Is Better, spoiler alert because we've always kept it a secret so it's a little surprise for people who buy it, but the book is scented.

And you developed that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism.

Yes, it is the smell of you.

The smell of me, the smell of my personality.

For those of you who have ever read my book Together Is Better, spoiler alert because we've always kept it a secret. So it's a little surprise for people who buy it, but the book is scented and you developed that scent for me, which is the smell of optimism.

And for those of you who have ever read my book Together Is Better, spoiler alert because we've always kept it a secret so it's a little surprise for people who buy it but the book is scented and you developed that scent for me which is the smell of optimism.

Yes it is the smell of you.

The smell of me, the smell of my personality.

When I was writing Leaders Eat Last, I became very interested in... I read a whole bunch of parenting stuff. And one of the things I remember reading is that... I think they talked about values, but our values don't come from our parents.

OK, flash forward. Second book deal. Leaders Eat Last. OK, I started booking flights to nowhere. Gonna repeat the whole system. And what I'd failed to recognize is that I'd been on the speaking circuit for so long that getting on planes is like... It's exhausting.

And I remember I booked my first flight for my first writing trip. I was going to the airport. I had my laptop. I was sitting in the back of a taxi. And I was literally, my heart was pounding and I was having dread. Dread. And I told the taxi driver, turn around. And I turned the cab around and went back home and missed my flight.

But the problem was now how am I going to write a book? And so each book that I've written, I've actually had to reinvent the creative process that would work. Because the system that worked for the prior book never worked for the next book.

And according to Rabbi Brouse what we need to remember is that when grief and heartbreak show up in our lives our instant can be to withdraw inwards but when life is at its most painful that's our greatest reminder that we need other people and that we cannot heal alone.

She's led faith events at the White House across multiple administrations, founded her own congregation and has a new book, The Amen Effect, which is all about rekindling the human connections we so desperately crave.

And she started to engage this guy who's sitting across from her and like, you know, light chit chat and she mentions that her daughter just got married and then she says, do you have any kids? And he said, my son is 32. My daughter's 26. And my other daughter was 28. And then he gets up and goes like and walks away to the other side of the studio.

And he said he's been grappling for two years with the question of how someone who was that vital in the morning could need to die by the evening.

And so I think that this is exactly right. Like we don't want to encounter each other's pain for all kinds of reasons.

I wrote a book called War.

And he said, we're thinking about having you at TED as if I'd been crowned. He didn't commit to giving me a speaking side. He said, we're thinking about it. And I said, well, first off, thanks. That's exciting. And he said, what's your vision for a talk?

He said, if you were to do a talk, what would it be? He didn't even offer me the slot yet. And I said, I think that the thing that people aren't talking enough about is I believe that almost every economic policy is nothing but a thinly veiled transfer of wealth from the entrance of the incumbents and more loosely from young to old.

And he said, okay, so how would you brand it? I'm like, well, I've been thinking about this. I think there's a war on the young.

And my understanding is that the original concept of the stock market was that the average working person could share in the wealth of a nation. And what's happened in the past, I guess, 30, 40 years is that the middle class is leaving the stock market and it's become the playground literally of the top 1% or maybe slightly bigger. At least it's that small percentage that are benefiting most at the expense.

And then we see, and you know, I rail against this kind of stuff, you know, where companies announce mass layoffs because they missed their projections. They're profitable, just as not as profitable as they promised the street. And so you get to lose your job and this all benefits the stock market.

Viktor Frankl who wrote Man's Search For Meaning.

And he remarked that some had the will to live and some didn't.

And that's what he realized was we cannot control the world around us but we can control our reaction to the world.

I read this beautiful book called Breathe by James Nestor and he recommended it.

When I hear your story about, it reminds me of Stephen Covey. Was this book written like 30 years ago? Seven Habits? I don't even remember.

I have a better question that Dr. Bruce Perry talks about in his book with Oprah Winfrey is What Happened to You?

One chapter of that book that I imagine became The Perfect Storm. It was a chapter that was going to be on commercial fishing.

It's a story he tells in his new book In My Time of Dying and a topic we get into in this conversation.

And so that my book In My Time of Dying about this process was an attempt to answer, to do what she told me to do, to think about it as something sacred and also to explain in rational terms what the hell I saw as I was dying.

In the Torah, in the book of Genesis, the first thing that's not good is a person being alone.

I mean, that book is one of the best books of all time.

Unreasonable Hospitality, I agree. One of the best books of all time.

It was Atlas of the Heart. I think it was Dare to Lead. I said, I think this is my own definition of narcissism.

I think it was in Dare to Lead that I said, to me, narcissism is the shame-based fear of being ordinary.

She has gone on to write a book, American Mother, about her experience and also start the Foley Foundation to help advance the need for others to be able to find the moral courage to do difficult things.