Courage with Guy Raz | A Bit of Optimism (Podcast): Episode 9

I've known Guy Raz for a very long time. We actually went to college together. So we've known each other since we were teenagers. And he remains to this day one of the most inspiring people I've ever met. His ability to see through a situation and understand the complexities of how things work and how people work continues to amaze me. And so it was incredibly fun for me to have one of the most popular podcasters in history come as a guest on my podcast. What a lot of people don't know about Guy is that he used to be a war correspondent. He has been in harm's way multiple times. Plus, he's also talked to many entrepreneurs about what it takes to start a business. So he understands this concept of courage from many different angles. So that's what we talked about. Courage, how to find it, where it comes from, and what to do with it. This is a bit of optimism.

The thing that I wanted to talk to you about is courage.

Yeah.

And the reason is because most people know you for your podcasts and especially for how I built this, where you talk to people who have the courage to do extraordinary things in business. But what I think a lot of people don't know about you is that you used to be a war correspondent.

Yeah.

And you used to embed with the military in some of the most dangerous situations that were happening in the world. And I thought you're unbelievably well qualified to talk about courage. There are, I think, different types of courage. We are living in a day and age, I think, right now, where people are finding courage, where people need to find courage. The courage to stand up, the courage to challenge the status quo, the courage to speak one's truth, the courage to demand change. The courage to ask for help. The courage to have difficult conversations.

You know, it's interesting. This topic of courage is something I've thought about a lot over the course of my life. And I think the reason why, Simon, is because I have never thought of myself as a courageous person. And I don't say that to be falsely modest in any way. For me, courage was always a pursuit. It was always something I wish I had more of. And it's funny, I used to talk to my wife about this a lot. And I remember one time she said to me, how can you not see yourself as courageous? You know, you've been to Iraq and Afghanistan and covered the Balkan wars and Israel, Palestine, and been to incredibly violent places where there was gunfire all around you. And to me, it's strange because Going to do those things. I spent, you know, six months in Iraq in 2003, and then many months in 0405-0607 and several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. And most of those trips were not embedded with the military. You know, you were kind of freewheeling. And I remember the first time I went to Afghanistan was a week and a half after Daniel Pearl was murdered. And I was 26 maybe, and I was the NPR Berlin correspondent, and I was sent to go to Afghanistan and I had to fly to Islamabad, to Pakistan, where NPR had like a house there, like a staging house. I remember it was four in the morning and I was leaving the house. And arriving into the house was the outgoing NPR correspondent who had just come out of Afghanistan. His name is Michael Sullivan. And it was the first time I met him. I was so nervous, you know, but I was trying to be brave. And I said, oh, how is it there? How does it seem? He just looks at me, goes, watch your ass, kid. I was like, okay. And he said, I knew Danny Pearl really well. And I get into a car, I go to Kabul. And, you know, I was scared to do those things, but it didn't immobilize me with, like, I could do it because it was part of my job. You know, part of my job was to be a foreign correspondent and to bear witness. I was a reporter. The hardest thing for me to do in life has been to have difficult conversations with people, to confront people. I don't relish confrontation. I always prefer harmony over confrontation. I've always been afraid of tense situations with other people for fear of the way I would react. So that's the kind of courage that, to me, is much more challenging. It's a much higher level of courage because it's the courage to examine, not to examine yourself, but to be prepared in a difficult conversation for the relationship with the person to be worse afterwards, you know, And I have always had a hard time with that. I just don't like it. I've never liked it. For me, harmony has always been like the thing that I pursue, I think, sometimes to my detriment. Because if you're only pursuing harmony, you're kind of sometimes papering over bigger questions and issues that go unresolved anyway. A long winded way of saying, I have always struggled with this idea of courage.

What's so interesting, I think about courage a lot too, and I've always believed that courage is external, that you and I have both had the honor of meeting people who have risked their lives to Save the lives of others who thought that they would probably die in doing so and through some miracle didn't. And when I've asked them, why did you do it? No one ordered you to do it. No one would have faulted you if you didn't do it. You've got a family, you've got kids. Why did you do it? They ordered almost all say exactly the same thing, which is because they would have done it for me. And none of them think of themselves as courageous. They think that's what anyone would do, so that's what I would do and they would do it for me. Or that there's a mission, there's a higher calling. Which you talked about. I was a reporter. I was there to bear witness.

Yes.

And I always joke around that we don't have the courage to jump out of a plane unless we have a parachute on our back. It's the external thing, it's the parachute that gave us the courage to go. And having a sense of purpose, a cause to wake up for in the morning, we are able to, to find the courage that other people may perceive as courage.

Yeah.

But for us it's simply following the path that we've chosen to put ourselves on.

It's exactly right.

But when it's having a difficult conversation. It's not our job to have difficult conversations.

Yeah.

So now I understand why you call it courage. Because now I have to go deep inside where before it was a path I was on or the belief that someone was there for me. It was, it was a social contract.

Yeah. You know, it's a really interesting point because when I, and I guess we should mention, we go way back. We went to college together.

We went to college together. We each other too many years to count. Yeah.

Yeah. When I graduated college, I wanted to be a reporter so, so much. And I know this is like now a kind of a trope and a well worn trope that people say. But I really truly am an introvert in the classic sense that I. And I think you are too a little bit. Which is completely. Even though we do public jobs, we do public speeches, I speak in front of thousands of do events and, and have this job. I, I really, when it's over, I, I just need to collapse into. In a dark room and go to sleep. It's really hard for me. I love it, I appreciate it so much. But it's doesn't come naturally to me. So I, I was never the kind of person that would walk into a party. I think like you too. And be the center of the party. Like, oh, there's Simon, there's Guy. Let's gather. Like, I'm not the guy at the Irish bar telling the. The stories. And, you know, Jimmy Fallon is one of those people. He is just a natural at it. It's incredible. So I was never the kind of person who could just walk up to somebody. Even now, I have a very difficult time going up to people, just saying, hi, I'm Guy. How are you? Let's make conversation. Because I can't connect the dots to continue the conversation. There's some wall I hit. I just. I start talking to them and I. Even when I try, I get to. And. And then. And then it's. I hit a wall. I can't keep a conversation going. And there are lots of people who have the opposite ability. Right. Who have this talent. Here's the thing. To be a reporter, you have to be prepared to go up to anybody and ask them any question. And I think the reason why I was attracted to becoming a reporter was because the minute you put a microphone, because there's a radio reporter from the beginning or a notepad, I could go up to anybody and if they say, you know, go, bugger off. Or, you know, whatever it is, they might say to you. To me, it's fine. In my personal capacity, if I walked up to somebody in a social situation and they just said, look, I'm just not interested in talking to you. I would be so personally hurt and embarrassed that I wouldn't know how to respond. But somehow, as a professional, going up to somebody with a microphone in my hand or a notepad, it's no problem. All of a sudden, at age 22, 23, when I started professionally reporting, it opened up this whole world to me. I think it's why I was attracted to it, because it was a way for me to actually do something that I really wanted to do, which was to interact with people, which was to find out about their stories, which was to talk to them and get to know them. But I couldn't do it in my personal capacity.

It's so interesting. My life is very, very similar. I didn't know that I was an introvert because I'm not socially. Well, I am socially awkward sometimes, but I have a big personality. And so others mistook me. And I mistook myself for being an extrovert because I have a big personality. But I love Susan Cain's definition of introversion versus extroversion, which is. It's about energy.

Yeah.

Which is an introvert. Wakes up in the morning with five coins. And every social interaction they have, they spend a coin. At the end of the day, they're depleted. Where an extrovert wakes up in the morning with no coins, in every social interaction they have, they get a coin. At the end, they feel rich. And when I spend time with my friends who are extroverts, we go to a party and they are like, as soon as we leave, they want to go out more. You know, when I leave a party, first of all, I always leave early. I always leave early and I just want to. I just want to go home and do nothing.

Yeah.

But I'm just like you, which is if I have to talk to someone about. I mean, about anything, if I need to find something out about who they are, what makes them tick, how does that go? I can start a conversation, keep it going. I have insatiable curiosity. I ask good questions, I ask pointed questions. But in a social interaction where I have no pursuit, I go up to a person, they may introduce themselves and I don't know what to say.

Yeah.

And I'm so self conscious about it as well, because I'll just stand there and smile and nod and like, beg and hope that they say something.

Yeah.

Because otherwise I'm just going to be like, okay, well, very nice to meet you, and walk away going. They think I'm an idiot. But this idea of pursuit, which is when I have pursuit, I'm able to call upon and very naturally, I might add, it still might exhaust me, but I don't. There's no internal dialogue, there's no strain.

Yeah.

So this goes back to the first challenge that you raised, which is you don't perceive the things that you did going into a war zone as courageous, even though the rest of us. Absolutely would. I concur with your wife. That is, you know, for the rest of us it is courage.

But.

But for you, because there was a pursuit. And so it goes back to the question you raised before, which is the thing that you find very difficult. And I think the thing that a lot of us find very difficult is how to start a very difficult conversation knowing, and I like the way you put it, that at the end of this conversation, it could be worse.

Yeah.

Or if it's professional, it might be someone losing their job.

Yeah.

Or it might be someone feeling bad. Or it might be pointing to someone out. Something that they don't want to know about themselves, but they really need to know this about themselves and the relationship could collapse.

Yep.

And so how does one do that. Like, what is the pursuit? Like, how do we have pursuit so that that becomes something that human beings are better equipped to do?

It's a really hard question to answer because I think most of us are wired to avoid, or I think to avoid conflict. I think so. I don't know if all. I don't know if that's true, but I think so.

I mean, that's a different personality types. We either want people to like us or we want to make sure people feel okay. I want to make sure you're okay.

Yeah.

I think few are the people who don't care about how I feel, and I don't care about how you feel. So I'm just gonna do it.

Yeah. I mean, as I get older, it gets a little bit easier. But I have probably spent too much time in my life worrying about what people think of me and really wanting to be liked by people. And I think in part because, like most people, we are usually our own worst critics. We're usually the hardest on ourselves.

Yeah. I'm really compelled by this idea that to find, quote, unquote, courage, that there has to be a pursuit because that makes whatever struggle you are about to go through worth it. Right. Like, the need to bear witness is more important than me running away to safety or anything else that we do where we're uncomfortable, although we may not feel uncomfortable in the time. And this idea that our ability to have difficult conversations, to find the courage for confrontation is actually the pursuit is not the thing that we're talking about, but it's about self examination and personal growth. That if I am in the pursuit of self examination, then in order to be on that journey, I have to have these conversations. Because at the end of the day, none of us live in a bubble. We're social animals.

Yeah.

And whether we like it or not, introversion and extroversion aside, we have to interact with other human beings. We have no choice. And success in life is a successful interaction with other human beings. And that doesn't mean everything's happy. That means successful interaction is knowing how to navigate complication and tension as well. Successful marriages are not absent tension, just the successful marriages. The couple are willing to meet it head on and go through it.

Yeah.

But again, the pursuit is, I think, self examination. I need to grow.

Yeah. And I think that it's like we all live in our own movie. Right. And we're all constantly, like, seeing that movie from a very distinctive perspective.

Our own perspective.

Our own perspective. That is usually wrong.

Yeah.

Right. Like, even the Story we tell ourselves about who we are is a version of who we are, but it's very different from someone else's version. I'll give you an example. I have this impression, and I think part of it is just intentionally like suppressed memories of really hating high school. And recently a high school friend of mine got in touch with me because, you know, here's my show and found out I live in the Bay Area and got in touch with me. And she was a good friend of mine in high school and we lost touch. After high school. She went to UCLA and now she's a psychiatrist. And we were on the phone and I said, I just, I really hated high school. I just, I have really bad memories of it. It's just being lonely. And it was a big high school, which was a 3,000 person high school. I was the editor in chief of the high school paper. But my memory is of being just, you know, another kid in the crowd. And she's like, really? You hate high school? She's like, you had so many friends, everyone liked you. And I was like, whoa, what are you talking about? And then she told me this story that I didn't even remember until she told me. She said you were. And I'm telling you the story because I promise you, my own story of me in high school was as kind of a standoffish, aloof kid who was kind of too cool for school. I never went to football games. I didn't go to the senior prom. I didn't participate because probably because I wanted to participate. But my response to it was, those things are stupid and I'm not going to take part. So I had this perception of kind of being like a negative person. And she said, I remember one time, our senior of high school, do you remember? She said, we just took the day off. We just skipped school and we went skiing. We went to mountain high outside of la. And I said, yeah, I think I remember. She said, and do you remember? I could barely ski and we went down like one hill and I was just doing snowplow all the way down and you got down, and when I finally reached the bottom, you were waiting there for me with a cup of hot, hot chocolate. And I did not remember. This is a friend of mine. I didn't remember it at all. She said, you were so nice. You were just such a nice person in high school. And I was stunned. I was like, tell me more. I need to know this. These memories are totally locked away, you know, and so that's also part of the challenge that we face as humans, that we have these narratives that are so real, they are the truth to us, you know, Like, I think about this with my kids, Simon. My kids, who you've met, I love them so much. But sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, my kids set me off. And I love them. And I, you know, and I do a children's show, so I'm like, there are lots of kids who listen to me. I on the show and know me and my character on the show. But, like, I'm also a dad. And so, like, I can get really, really mad at my kids when they do stupid things or they do something that, you know, they could just set me off. Right. Whining, whatever. Whatever it is.

Right.

And sometimes I will. I work hard on trying to control it, and I count to 10. And thankfully, my wife and I are on the same page. And, you know, but I can just lose it sometimes. I can get really mad. And I have this fear that one day the narrative that they will have is like, daddy used to yell, or daddy used to get really angry is instead of, like, the hours and hours of time that I spent, like, playing with them or, like, throwing pitches or working on their hitting or throwing footballs with them. Like, I. Thankfully, I get to work from home, so I see the kids outside the school hours. I see them every day and really do to try to engage with them. But I still thought, like, God, one day I'm gonna have a conversation with my kids, and they're gonna be like, yeah, dad, you were just, you know, that's who you were. And I'll be like, what? What are you talking about?

But isn't that part of sort of the magic and frustration of life?

Which is.

My friend George Flynn calls them moments of truth. There are these fleeting moments, sometimes minor little things that have massive impact in the lives of others that we don't even remember that we did good and bad. I might.

Yes. Yes.

You know that time that you walked past me in the hall and waved and said hi to me? I've never forgotten that. You're like, yeah, okay. You know, and you gave me the courage to do something because. And you're like, yeah, well, you taught me how to be a good person because you were standing at the bottom of the hill with a cup of hot chocolate. And we don't realize, good and bad, the power that we can have in the life of another human being.

Yeah.

And so I guess the pursuit is then you try and be a good person all the time. But even getting Angry is like that one time that you told me, you know, you told me off, and I. I'm really grateful that you did because nobody else would have. I mean, like, we have no idea how it's gonna be perceived.

Yeah. And.

And one of the things that I find so interesting, even you telling me about your own narrative of yourself, because it's rare that we get to have conversations with people where we've actually known each other a million years. And we interacted in college together because we were both involved in student government. And I remember you. It's so funny that you say that you were afraid of confrontation, because I remember you standing out in a crowd. I remember few other people. Guy that I interacted with in student government. And I remember you specifically as having absolute courage to speak out and speak in hard words for the things that you believed were right. And you were very outspoken and uncompromising in doing the right thing. And so I remember you as having more courage than everybody else to have difficult conversations and have confrontations.

It's interesting. It's possible that that's true, that, you know, especially in college, I was able to articulate ideas with less fear than I can do as an adult. Like, if today, I mean, I can sit on a stage, right, and be interviewed or talk to a crowd of people, but I'm prepared for that conversation. And it's usually a fairly friendly crowd. Right. Like, that's. People are coming to see you. But if I was in, like, let's say, the Oxford Union. You drop me in the Oxford Union right now, and the forum is open to anybody to speak or like a TED conference, and you just hand me a microphone in that audience. I don't think I could do it. I think it would be really hard for me to stand up and just extemporaneously say something, because this is the courage part. I think this comes back to the idea of courage. Where I think I lack courage to this day is I'm still vulnerable to the fear of judgment by outsiders. You know, even at this point in my life, in my mid-40s, parent, you know, two children, grown man, successful career, I still do want to be judged positively by people. And I think that's really what I struggle with, especially when it comes to this idea of courage. I don't have the courage to say, screw it, I don't care. You know, I'm just gonna say it. I don't care what people think about it. I really do care about what people think.

I think that's half true. And of course, I'm overlaying my own experience as you're speaking.

Yeah.

And I am the same. I don't think that I have courage to speak out the same way other people do because I want to make sure them the message is right.

Yeah.

But then again, I know that I have this reputation for saying very uncomfortable things to people in meetings or on stages.

Yeah.

And so I'm trying, as you're speaking, I'm trying to reconcile these two things. And it goes back to pursuit, which is.