Every Moment's A Choice - Interview with Isaac Lidsky

You know, I was certain that this diagnosis was in. In a sense, sort of a death sentence. Right. I was going to be the end of achievement for me, the end of independence. I was just convinced that I was going to live a very unremarkable, small and sad life. Thoughts think themselves, right? They just. Thoughts just pop into our heads, often without rhyme or reason. And, you know, it's up to us to take that beat, to observe the thought and. And then sort of decide what. What you want to do with that thought. If anything, there's sort of four words. Choose to be happy.

Hi, guys. My name is Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. Today I have a special guest. Isaac Litzke is on with us. Isaac, do you want to say hello?

Hi, everybody. How you doing?

So Isaac has been started in childhood television, playing the character weasel on NBC's Saved by the the New Class. He graduated math and computer science from Harvard and then added a degree in magna cum laude in law. Magna cum laude from the same university. He's clerked for Supreme Court justices Sandra Day o' Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He spouted an Internet startup and a nonprofit and runs a big construction company, services, based in Florida. Isaac married Dorothy to love his Life. And it's 2010 of September. She gave birth to their triplets and help pronounce what the names of me, Lily Louise.

Lily Louise, Phineas and Thaddeus, who are now nine and a half. And they have a younger sister, Clementine, who's four.

Wow. And collectively we call them the Kidskies.

So the triplets collectively are the Tripskis, and all four of them are the Kidskis. It's all very cute.

Beautiful. So in 2016, you set out to share others your empowering message with the book Eyes Wide Open, which is what led me to you. And perhaps the most striking and inspiring thing is how you were diagnosed with retinitis. If it pronounced from pronouncing pigmentosa.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. A rare degenerative disease of the retina. And that from age 12 to 25, you slowly started to lose your sight. And I mean, and the reason I'll kind of go into what inspired me to have you on the show is because I was just telling Isaac that when I was reading this book, it's so relevant to what people are experiencing today. We have time finally for ourselves because of the slowing down in the economy, and some people don't know what to do with it, but I feel like it's a great opportunity to kind of look inward and really realize, like, what is controlling our lives. This way we could become aware of that and move forward. So, Isaac, what inspired you to write this book? To put literally your entire life on paper?

So, you know, sort of two things. First and foremost, you know, this blinding disease that I have, which, you know, as you said, led to sort of the progressive deterioration of my sight from about age 12 to 25. You know, obviously it was. It was terrifying and very difficult. And, you know, to this day, you know, it poses all sorts of challenges and obstacles and pains, yet at the same time, there were all sorts of insights that I gained along the way. In a sense, you know, you could say I lost my sight, but I gained a vision, which I call living and leading eyes wide open. And that vision really has me immeasurable joy and fulfillment and success in my life. And so I really have long felt compelled to want to share that vision, explain it for others. And so then the second thing I'd say is, you know, then the birth of the triplets. You know, really, once. You know, once we were sort of over the triage of having triplets and, gee, I guess they were 4 or 5 when I wrote the book. There's nothing like having kids to feel a compulsion to sort of distill, clarify, and sort of perfect, in a sense, your vision of life, what's important to you, how you want to live. And really, in an effort to sort of take a snapshot of those things, because obviously they evolve over time. But I really. The sort of final motivation to write the book really was thinking that someday my children will hopefully read it. And I want them to know kind of what that experience was like for me, losing my sight and what I gained from it. And so, yes, I wrote the book, I guess, in 2016, and it was published in 2017.

And I read the. I remember distinctively the reading the part about the birth of your kids. And I was literally. I couldn't put that down. And at some point, I was even almost like, in tears as I was reading it. And so you have. You're probably. You have such a good way of describing and giving analogies that it's a gift. It truly is a gift. And I want to kind of, when I think of today, I mean, I think so many people, when they think of blindness or losing their ability to see, like, a lot of people would come up with this story in their mind that, oh, my God, my life is over. But my. Like, what I think is that so many people right now are living blindly. They, you know, work. They're controlled by the thoughts in their head and they can't see clearly. They can't see what, you know, what the forces are. Or maybe they're not even aware of those voices and how they control in their head. I wanted to kind of like track your journey as you took it. Like when you were first told about this disease and how, like, what was your mindset when you first went through and how did it change as you slowly accepted it and realized that, you know what, this is not the end.

So. Sure. Thank you. So, yeah, when I was 13 and diagnosed with the disease, you know, as you said, I mean, I had, you know, up to that point, lived, you know, life of a sighted person. I was a teenager. You know, I thought I was invincible and perfect at the time was also. I was a childhood actor. And so I had this sort of exciting, you know, fun career with budding. And, you know, I was, as you suggest, I was, you know, I was certain that this diagnosis was in. In a sense, sort of a death sentence. Right. I was going to be the end of achievement for me, the end of independence. I was just convinced that, you know, with blindness, I was going to live a very unremarkable, small and sad life, which. Which, you know, I felt I would likely live alone. I didn't. Didn't think anyone was going to love or respect me or want to marry me and on and on and on. All these horrible things that I just. That I just knew to be true in my mind. And then in a remarkable way, really, the disease itself, the sort of progression of the disease kind of helped to sort of open my eyes even as I was going blind. Sort of helped to sort of disease was sort of the cure, in a sense, because. So I lost my sight, like I said, progressively. And in a sort of bizarre way, if you picture like a Jumbotron screen with, you know, a million light bulbs, and then imagine that you're sort of watching my life on that movie, on that screen as sort of like a movie. And then imagine that the bulbs just start sort of randomly breaking over time. Sort of in the metaphor here, those bulbs would be the photoreceptor cells, the retina, which is, you know, where sort of what went wrong in my eyes anyway. If you can imagine, you know, as those bulbs break, you know, at first you might not notice, then it might be a nuisance. Certain parts of the screen will look just sort of randomly, statistically. Some of them. Some parts of the screen might be more Challenging than others. And of course, you know, things. Since things sort of move around on our retinas or the images they project move around in our retinas, you know, you would have sort of things coming into sort of not really focus, but sort of coming into the conceptual understanding and leaving again. And so it was this very bizarre, painful experience. Objects would appear and morph and disappear and, you know, sort of conscious awareness of facts. Whether, you know, someone described a picture, for example, maybe then I could suddenly make sense of it. Whereas before it was kind of undecipherable and things like that. And so as frustrating and painful and frightening, frankly terrifying as that was, it also was a blessing in a sense because I got a sort of direct experience. I got to quite literally see for myself how sight, this wonderful, these things influence what you see. And so in a sense, you know, sight is this personal, virtual, subjective reality that's sort of based. Fundamentally based on who you are and the totality of your experiences. And yet this is the key point. We experience it. We experience that reality as this external, objective truth, right? We literally create our own realities and then believe it to be true. And it was, it was striking for me to see that as this sort of illusion of sight broke down, it's sort of. I got to peek behind the curtain at the wizard. And then sort of the next step for me, the real insight was to understand, to come to appreciate that really sight is just one way of countless ways that we. That we do this, that we create the world we inhabit, that we, you know, that we are responsible for our own reality in our mind. You know, in truth, I submit that's kind of a defining characteristic of human experience. We create the realities we experience. And sort of one of the early aha moments was, was this. All these things that I quote, unquote, knew about blindness. I realized that I really knew nothing about going blind or being blind. And in fact, these were manifestations of my fear. These were awful dark imaginings that I was assuming to be true and taking for granted. And in a very. This is what's the most pernicious thing about our fears. They sort of manifest these, as I said, dark imaginings. We make us assume the worst. And if we're not careful, if we don't realize, if we can't see through it, they become self fulfilling. I truly believe, I fundamentally believe if I had not learned to really pick apart and see through my fears and work through them, I would have lived that life that those fears foretold, that would have become My reality. So I'm rambling, I'm going on and on, but that was basically the genesis of this, of this realization, these insights in my life.

And I, so ironically, I was having, I was. Went for a walk yesterday with my younger brother and I don't really get that much time to kind of spend with him and like talk about life, talk about what we're experiencing, you know, outside of just the regular brother to brother interactions that we have. And he was sharing me like some of his, some of his feelings and I was going back and forth and because, because some. So many people have these thoughts of being worthy and thinking of, well, what validates their worthiness. Like you saying you thought it was going to be once you lost your eyesight, that that was going to be it. No woman would ever find value or you were going to be alone. And I was trying to explain my brother too, because I'd been on this quest for personal development and understanding that, you know, you can't identify with when you have thoughts. You can't identify the thoughts and that the mere fact of observing the thought means that there's separation between the observer and the busy mind. And I liked what you said about just saying, you know, being able to take your fears and then break them down on paper because I wanted so if you could let the person out, like, how would they know? First of all, when they, how do they identify when it's an actual fear? And then what is the process? If they want to put it down and make sense of it, what is the process that you would suggest doing so to make them come away with awareness of what action to take next?

So first off, I couldn't agree more. It's a very Buddhist idea, I guess, contemplative science. This notion that being aware of awareness, paying attention to that which you are paying attention to is really the miracle of human consciousness. And I think sort of all, all progress begins there. Truly and sort of somewhat relatedly, we have this feeling, I think, that we're totally responsible for, beholden to. Should rely upon, you know, the sort of, the thoughts that pop into our minds. And in truth. And again, these aren't my ideas. A lot of thinkers and scientists and philosophers and religious leaders have spoken about this a lot more compellingly than I can. But you know, the idea is that when you get down to it, when you, when you look at it critically, thoughts think themselves right? They just, thoughts just pop into our heads, often without rhyme or reason. And, you know, it's up to us. As I always Try to tell my kids to take that beat, to observe the thought, you know, turn it around in your mind and then sort of decide what, what you want to do with that thought, if anything. And so that's, I think, as relevant with our fears as it is with any sort of other aspect of human existence. And so, and then to drill down a little further. So, you know, these, when, when, when, when you, when you have these sort of dark imaginings, these thoughts, these fears that pop into your mind associated with, by the way, there's a good indication of it being a fear on the sort of physical side of the body. Right. These thoughts are often linked with elevated heart rate or sweating or just feeling out of breath. You know, there's sort of profound linkages between sort of cognition and thoughts and sort of just the physical state of the body. But in any event, when you, when you, when you find yourself thinking scary thoughts, to me, one of the things that's helpful is to then take a step back and try to be really precise in distinguishing between that which you really know, that. That which is sort of a core truth for you, that which you can, upon some inspection, you know, put on the other end of the spectrum and say, oh, you know, wow, there's, you know, there's no basis for that fact. Or, you know, that's just sort of a. A hypothesis at best. And I submit. So those are two of the three buckets. I'll take a pause to say, unfortunately, most of the action is in the third bucket, at least for me. There aren't too many things that would qualify as those sort of core truths or those sort of easily dismissed sort of ideas. So that leaves most of the action in the third bucket, which is that which we think we know but don't know that we know. And that's where we tend to do a tremendous amount of harm to ourselves. I think that's the domain. All these assumptions that we make, our biases, these rules that we think we've perceived from society or from those around their loved ones or colleagues, friends, you know, that's. Those are the things that we just kind of think we know. And, you know, when you peel back, you know, some layers, there's little truth to them or at least we can choose to know other things. So, you know, I have in mind all the awful things we tell ourselves about how. Who we should be and how we should look and how we should act and why we're not good enough, why we're too much of this or not enough of the other. Thing, you know, so much of that, you know, doesn't survive the barest scrutiny. Right. It just falls apart the second you really start to think critically about it. And yet when you're not aware of it, you're slave to it. It literally governs your life.

I, it's, it's when you, these thoughts swirl in your head, like, I've gotten in the habit and I don't do it always, I'll admit that. But now I'm starting to write it down, inscribe it in the book. Because a lot of the time, as long as these thoughts are swirling in your head, they're gonna sit there without you ever questioning them. But the moment you put them on paper and you look at them, you're like, what the heck was I, what was I thinking? Like, this doesn't, it doesn't make sense how I could ever adopt this belief. But yet until you put it on paper, it's similar to like, you know, when people have to write down their to do list for the day. As long as it in your head, it might seem like a thousand items. When you put on paper, it's like, oh, there's three items and not a whole lot.

Absolutely.

And this reminds me of like. So was what you're referring to the buckets, was that part of the three ring circus?

So, no, not exactly. You know, that's funny. As a father of triplets, I guess I like trichotomies or whatever, I like to break things into three ways. But, but, but no. It's funny you say about writing things down. I think it's huge. You know, you asked me why I wrote the book. You know, in part, I didn't, I didn't realize this as clearly. I didn't realize, sort of going into it, the extent to which writing the book really would serve me first and foremost, because putting, like you said, putting something down on paper, committing to get it right for yourself, to where what you're saying, the way you're saying it, the emphasis, the implications, you fully buy in. That's a great process to sort of hold yourself accountable for the, for the world. You're making up for yourself a similar thing. If you're so blessed to have, you know, a friend or a partner, a spouse, you know, whatever, someone that you can share with. Often it's amazing, just literally externalizing, saying out loud to another human being some of these things that can torment you in your mind, it literally can just almost immediately rob them of their power, of their significance. Even one, hopefully you get the feedback and understanding, empathy, etc. But even before that step, like literally just saying it out loud and having to hear yourself say it, you know, I find can often like sort of the magic is gone. And so my wife Dorothy, who's just a miraculous woman on many levels, I will with, with some frequency, you know, still to these days. And that's something I want to stress for folks. I, you know, I wrote this book, but the book for me is more a practice, it's a discipline. It's something I ideas I try to put to work every day to sort of maintain the control of my route. Nothing's easy, right? It's not like you, you flip a switch and now all of a sudden everything's easy. Anyway, I will, I will often, you know, say to Dorothy, hey, I have this like crazy idea that I keep bugging myself with or you know, I have this sort of thing that I've been telling myself that I just, I know is not true, but you know, it's just, it's kind of driving me nuts and you know, I'll tell her and you know, more often than not, like the response is like, yep, right. That's crazy. Why would you say that to yourself, oh yeah, that's, you know, that's enough. And it's helpful. And like I said, even just saying it out loud, regardless of response is helpful.

I mean, I find that so beautiful one, in making sure that you have, you know, when you choose that partner, that your life partner that they are, there's someone that you guys could build one another up and you're supportive because it's so important to understand like the impact, you know, in solitude we question our worth. But when we, when we're around others who lift us up, you know, we, the rising tide lifts, lifts all. So we lift everyone. And the identity, the power of identity. And so I, when I was reading the. The Three Ring Circus, I was reading number the second and it got me to look inward and I was looking at how I was, how I held myself in front of others and this person that I had to be. And once I became aware of it, then all of a sudden like whenever, like I felt like, oh, I didn't. It was usually like a people pleasing aspect of me and whenever I saw this aspect wanting to creep its way out, saying, oh, well, you know what? I don't really mind if, if this person orders this food that I don't want and then like, wait a minute, no, I got to speak my. If it's something as small as that I have to speak my truth. And I found myself speaking up and using my voice in parts that I hadn't. And it was just so empowering. So the power of identity. Yeah, then. Thank you. The power of identity. And not just the identity we have for ourselves, but the identity that we project onto other people. Because when I was reading about what you said, what classifies someone as disabled, I was. My mind, like literally the top of my mind blew off. And correct me, I'm paraphrasing about. About the perceiver. Something to do with the perceiver seeing.

Yeah.

How to.

These ideas are. These ideas, you know, aren't originally mine, but, you know, they're nonetheless, I think, compelling and important why I wrote about the book. But, you know, so. So the idea, this is sort of the modern societal perceptions of disability have, you know, evolved, have progressed, have, you know, sort of improved over, over time. Although obviously there's still a lot of work to be done. But sort of the, the enlightened view on disability is that really disability is something that sort of involves the interplay between some physical limitation or mental limitation. But it's not alone. It's only when placed in the context of environment and the attitudes of others that disability arises. And so the example that I give in the book, it's like a made up example. But if you imagine a world in which people with wheelchairs are venerated, are deemed overly wise and powerful and bestowed important positions in society, et cetera, et cetera, then needing to use a wheelchair isn't a disability. It's a great thing. And, you know, in such a world, there would be curb cuts at every corner and hallways that were wide enough to accommodate, you know, wheelchairs. And people would be enlightened and wouldn't, you know, make awful assumptions and belittling comments and things like that, and real observation and on and on and on. You get it. So the idea is that it's really the sort of the physical environments and architecture and the sort of mental attitude, the sort of the attitudes of those around us, of our society that mix with some sort of physical or mental limitation in order to create a disability. And, you know, in that chapter of the book, I argue, and here this is because I guess my argument that one of the things that I love about the sort of elegance of that construct for sort of envisioning disability, for trying to conceptualize disability is, you know, when you think about it, that's true for every human being. Whether you want to label, you know, a disability with a lowercase d or disability with a capital D. Each and every one of us, each and every one of us has some limitation or some, you know, skill, you know, relative to it, to average, some inherent benefit relative to average on any number of, an infinite number of attributes, personality, physical, emotional, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, we all go about our lives, you know, confronting, you know, others who make assumptions about us, who, you know, use a sort of shortcut bias or just sort of their own basis of experience to, in order to judge us, to relate to us, to deal with us. And so I don't think that again that these concepts, you start talking about disability and people want to kind of roll their eyes. Oh, you're talking about blind people or people with wheelchairs or people with substantial mental disabilities. And this doesn't really apply to me or my life. And I don't think that's true at all. I think in a real sense, each and every one of us is disabled. And each and every one of us self delusion is culpable in disabling some role, known or unknown, intentional or unintentional, big or small, in that, you know, in that dynamic I described, where it's really the, you know, the attitudes and behaviors of those around us that turn limitations into disabilities.

When I, when I read that part of the book, actually I was out somewhere, somewhere in downtown of my hometown, Stanford, and I encountered. There was a blind woman going in, coming through the sidewalk, going to the door. And my first thought was one of like, oh, let me help because she might be disabled. Then I remembered your words in the book. I was like, oh, it made me stop. And I stopped. I was, all right, well, you know, let me offer to hold the door. Just, you know, if she needs, if she needs help. Not, you know, as more of the gesture. The, the, the what I put into the gesture changed, you know, like the thoughts that went into the gesture change versus. And it's similar to, and I say we all live, I would agree that we all live disabled. I mean, because you look at what you've done in your professional career and in your, in your, in your personal career, and yet so many people have done a fraction because we're living with a disabled mind. And I found myself also looking at that and looking at being aware of the limitations. Like not just like I put on myself, but the limitations I put on others. Like you might look at someone from. It's like a stereotype. You look at, you know, someone maybe from a ethnic group or religious group, and all sudden we start putting them in a box. And then when you realize that you don't. That's it. What if it. That doesn't necessarily have to be true. And then once you wouldn't, you, like, take this and you see that that's one of the reasons I love traveling so much, is because it forces you. Traveling. You might be in an area where you're the only American traveling. And now sudden. Now who's the outcast? You know, now who's that?

Yeah, yeah, you know, it. We have evolved a cognitive apparatus that is highly based on prediction and for good reason. And often. I mean, it often serves us very well, right? We. We are the brain, you know, arguably the most complex machine, you know, in the known universe, just miraculously builds up a web of previous experience reasons from that experience makes, you know, instant predictions, assumptions, et cetera. And that's, you know, that's how. That's how we're able to function, how we're able to cope. But it also can do us, you know, great harm if we're not aware of it in the way we relate to others and judge others, and frankly, in the way we treat. We treat ourselves. But one of my favorite sort of examples of this idea is. And, you know, there's all sorts of visual illusions. You can go online and search for them. And it's amazing the ways that you can sort of trick the visual system into very competently making predictions that are also very wrong. But sort of a simpler example is that many, if not most people have experiences that moment when you sort of spot a friend across the room and you walk over, you tap him on the shoulder, and it turns out it's a complete stranger. Right? Right. And there's that sort of odd moment of like, oh, my God, you're. You're not who I thought you were. Right. And it's easily dismissed as something rather insignificant, but I submit it's profound. And I ask people in that moment, before realization dawned, what, you know, what happened? You know, you thought you saw your friend. And almost the answer is, yeah, I thought I saw my friend. And that's just not true. You knew you saw your friend. There was no thinking about it. Right. The reality that you manufactured for yourself was one in which your friend was there, period. Just like those things I quote, unquote, knew about going blind. I knew. I didn't think, oh, my life's gonna be awful. I just. I knew it. Right? You don't. You don't think about it. And so. And. And so you create this reality on the basis of the best evidence you think you have, and you believe it. You don't even know that you're creating it, that you're its author. Right. You think you're the reader when you're the author, and then you confront a complete stranger. And in an instant you can assimilate, you can accommodate the fact that you were wrong, well, you know, some stranger and move on. I mean, if we have the capacity, that is an innate capacity, we do that, you know, without thought, without effort, man. There's hope for an ability to do similar things with our disabilities, with the way we treat ourselves and others, with, you know, with our, you know, decisions, conscious or unconscious, about who we want to be and how we want to live our lives and how we want to spend our time. And so that's. That's sort of a miracle, I think.

Yeah, and I love the, the quote that you started the book with. Worse than being blind is having sight but no vision by Helen Keller.

Yes. And it's funny.

Yeah, no, please go.

It's funny because you'll notice that the W in worse is, you know, capitalizing it's in brackets, right. To suggest that in the original it was a lowercase W. And the reason why is because it's the original Helen Keller quote in full. Is the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. And I remember reading that quote and simultaneously being like, I love it and I hate it. And upon further reflection, I realized that it was both dead on and completely wrong. Dead on because worse than having worse than being blind is having sight but no vision. No doubt, but it's the only thing part that to my mind is one of those fallacious constructs. Who knows, it would be easy for me to walk around and say, hey, God, my blindness. The only thing worse than, you know, being blind has got to be the second worst thing there is or the third worst, one of the worst. But the reality of human experience is, who knows? Everybody has their own struggles and challenges. Everyone endures their own sort of self torture in ways big and small. And we just, we never know. And we can, we can endeavor to relate to each other, we can endeavor to empathize, we can endeavor to understand. But, you know, each of us is his or her own universe, truly. And I think just even this sort of exercise of trying to say what's worse or better or comparing or whatever, it's just the wrong perspective. So, yeah, worse than being blind is having sight, but worse than being blind is Having sight but no vision but not the only. Like, there may be a lot things, a lot of things that are far worse.

See, when I read that quote, I thought of as having a vision as there being no blindness, because when you have that vision because you. You know intrinsically what is, what is possible. And, you know, so then, like, the very essence of what someone might conceive blindness to be is therefore a race because the vision is there.

And.

And that is what. Go ahead.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And you know, part of why I loved that part of the quote, that sort of the subset of the full sentence, you know, is. You're exactly right. I mean, so to me, you know, vision is suggest a life that is in some ways deliberate purpose, that has meaning, you know, intentional, you know, that is at least aware of the choices that we make, the role we play in creating our realities, and endeavors to sort of take more rather than less responsibility, do it sort of better. And, you know, sight doesn't give you any of those things at all, but vision does. So, you know, that's kind of, I guess, the primary sentiment that comes to my mind.

You had said, like, when you think about reality is objective and starts with us. By changing what we see, we change what we believe. By changing what we see, we create a new reality of what's possible. So when you think of the vision, I love the. You did. You took like the financial. So I was a major in finance in college, and so it was funny. And I never appreciated. I never. I'm not a finance person. I did it just because I was competing with peers and I didn't know what else to major in. But when I read theirs, I had a new appreciation for financial and financial accounting like the income statement, balance sheet, cash flows. I wanted you to, if you could, touch upon. How does one evaluate their lives to see. Okay, you know what I need to. How do they create a more empowering vision and really evaluate what's going on to, you know, to change it and if they need to change it to something more empowering, something bigger, something better.

Yeah. So. So, you know, it's funny, that chapter I wrestled with, I liked it.

I liked it a lot.

Whether or not. Whether or not to write it. And then I wrestled with whether or not to include it in the book. And. And so here's the deal on that chapter. I happen to think that accounting, and particularly those three sort of financial analyses and the way they're intimately intertwined and relate to each other, to me, it's just Sort of profoundly elegant and beautiful.

It happens in threes.

Yeah, it happens in threes. I always love that too. You're exactly right. And you can apply it most often applied in the business context. But I remember thinking, you know, conceptually it's an elegant way to conceive of sort of assessing value, assessing performance. And so why couldn't you do it looking at your own life, use it as a lens of your own life. And so, you know, for people who can stomach the talk of those sort of financial instruments or can sort of stomach the accounting metaphor, you know, I hope they'll find that in that chapter. But the larger point really is just that we owe ourselves some rigor. You know, we should strive for meticulousness in evaluating, you know, ourselves and where we're at. And that, and that does not mean, you know, you know, these external or societal, you know, factors of how wealthy are you or how nice is your car, your house, or by the way, which is not to say that if those things are important to you, important in your analysis, but the critical thing is important to you. And so, you know, there are these, the most fundamental basic questions I can imagine, like what do I value? What is important to me? What is my view on legacy? Do I feel that I want to live my life in a way that has sort of downstream effects and impacts when I'm gone or not at all? Do I think that that's nonsense and my life is for while I'm here or anywhere in between and on and on and on? You know, how do I take, what's my stance on the implicit bargain that we all made between our sort of physical, mental health of the organism and sort of enjoyment of life? Right? I mean, obviously if health were the only thing, then we would critical thing to think of sort of corona sort of lockdown that we're living in. But you know, you'd eat raw vegetables and meditate all day sitting on a mountaintop if, you know, the only thing of interest was, you know, your health, right? So we make trade offs. My point is all these sort of fundamental basic questions about our existence, it is so easy to just ignore them entirely. Literally, just sort of go through the motions of your day, let momentum carry you forward, let the cues of those around you, of society, of mass media, whatever, just sort of fill in, you know, fill in a view on this sketch of you that's sort of good enough and just, and just sort of, you know, just, you know, persistent rather than, you know, exist to react rather than sort of thrive and that's such a shame. I mean, above all else, I think that's just a shame.

I think the issue is that not many people know how to tap into that vision, how to create and how to get into. And it's one of the. I was actually. And everyone thinks that, like, that happiness is a linear success, whatever it may be, is this linear line where, you know, there's one point in a straight line going between when it's anything but that and I. And one of the things like I want to do in my work is to like, to shake this notion that one, that everything has to be perfect because life is not perfect. And it's the fears, the struggle, dealing all that with all that stuff that makes, when you rise above that makes those moments. And also. And I bring it back to travel because it's been one of the biggest teachers in my life that, the simplicity. Because I've seen, you know, I've seen people with absolutely nothing, like literally, you know, the food with the lowest nutrition value possible, and yet they have this big, vibrant smile because they're able to be grateful for the little bit that they have. And then you have people who have everything and yet are, you know, are miserable. And it's just like this, this, this, like it, just challenge. And I love one of the things I, When I watch your, Your speech on ted. And one of the things that we all have to be responsible for is the state in which we bring to every. Everything that our state. Well, just, just our state. And you said what you see determines how you feel, and how you feel also determines what you see. So because this might be like some new content to someone. So if you were telling someone, you know what if you had to change one thing in your life, relating it to this, this concept, how would you tell them to change this, this aspect, this way they end this loop and they're able to kind of manipulate it.

You know, there's sort of four words, choose to be happy, which, like, so easily dismissed as, oh, my God, you know, roll your eyes, choose to be happy, whatever. It's just something that, you know, hippies say or yogi say or whatever, but it's, it's true. All of life is a choice. And you can find humor in absolutely anything. If you try, which is wonderful, you can find benefit, value, upside in absolutely everything. You can, you can choose in every moment how the external circumstances you confront, how they will manifest in your personal, subjective experience of the world of life. And, you know, it's the difference between. And I'M not saying any of it is easy, but it's definitely worth doing and. Or at a minimum, it's sort of admitting to yourself that it's possible. Sort of the first step. But, you know, it's the difference between, you know, spilling something on yourself and just, you know, becoming furious and beating yourself up and yelling at someone else and like, you have ruining your day or choosing to chuckle about it and say how funny it is and, you know, what a great story it is that, you know, on this of all days, you know, you spilled your coffee or whatever. That is a choice, plain and simple. And so, you know, I'll just, you know, back to the sort of distinction between sort of reactive, living a reactive life, or proactive life or intentional life. You know, one way to start, I think, is in moments when you're not happy or you're anxious or you're frustrated or you're mad or you're depressed or you're whatever, you know. And again, I'm not saying this is easy, but really asking yourself in a loving way, not in a. Not in a judging way, not in a. Not in a sort of antagonistic way, not in a, oh, my God, you know, blaming yourself way. But you sort of ask yourself, what. What part of this am I doing? You know, what. What part of this is my choice? How are there ways that I could, you know, be confronting the same set of circumstances and have a very different, you know, impact? Because like you said before, I mean, we know for a fact, I mean, it's categorically true that it's not our external circumstances dictate the sort of internal reality we experience. Right. I mean, like you said, there are people who have everything. Billionaires. We're miserable. Miserable people live miserable lives. And the people have absolutely nothing who are happy and wise and loving and wonderful, you know, likewise, you know, we have countless examples of people who confront unimaginable circumstances that we, you know, we just could not conceive of. You know, prisoners of war who, you know, experienced torture, people, you know, who sort of survived all sorts of physical abuse, physical and mental abuse, sexual abuse, the Holocaust. An extreme example, on and on, you know, in each of those contexts are heroic people who will, you know, they have very different ways of saying it. And there's not a new. To my mind, at least, it all kind of reduces to. I chose to find meaning or purpose in this. I chose to use these circumstances to my goals, to my purposes, rather than the other way around. It is that simple.

Yeah, so much of it is literally a simple habit forming. And we forget to realize that when we are experiencing anything that we don't want negative, but yet we keep going back to is that we are getting something from it. There is an exchange, otherwise we wouldn't be, can you do it? And adversely, if we knew with 100% certainty that, you know, if we partake in this different type of habit that we would alleviate, like all these other, like, harmful, like negative feelings that we don't want to feel, we would do in a heartbeat. But it's a matter of, you know, again, it's, it's. I like the idea that it's, it's about being on the journey. It's not something that's going to come easy. And like anything else in life that's worthwhile, it takes work.

One of, absolutely.

One of the things I found, like, I loved and this was another thing that was a. One of the big takeaways for me was. And I'll. Before I go into that, I'll tell how you, how you do the meetings at your company and how you're able to manage with not being able to see the reactions and how, how do you communicate? I'll let you go on that before I talk again.

Yeah, that's another example where, you know, the instinct that I had, the fears, the anxiety, you know, you know, were telling me that, gosh, my blindness is a burden to those around me, to my leadership team, to the, you know, to my colleagues. It's a burden to them. It's a limitation on my business. And it sort of felt that way because, you know, in the early days of running this construction company services business, you know, we would have these leadership team meetings and I would, you know, there would be times where people would, you know, would react by nodding or with facial expression gestures and I would miss it and, you know, become frustrated and sort of. Then there's that sort of moment of the awkward chuckle and people like, oh, forgot you're blind. And it's like, well, yeah, it really was in the first instance a source of discomfort. And it seemed like a real thorn in my side. As matters evolved, it turned out to be, I think, really a phenomenal thing for me, for my team and for our business. Because, you know, lo and behold, and just much like you described, you know, the example you gave, saying, you know, rather than saying, oh, sure, let's order that when someone says, oh, let's, you know, you want to split the less dish. And you say, you really don't like it, but you don't want to be arguing, you know, you don't want to be selfish or what. All the things you tell yourself, oh, you know, sure, let's, let's split that it's great. And then it's that moment where you realize that's great, like why don't I just say I don't like that. Let's get something else. You're sort of in a similar vein, you know, I had at least the sort of the discipline to self discipline and sort of insist upon verbal response from people. And so was, you know, someone in the room proposes something and you say what do you guys think? You know, we agree, we don't agree. Sort of awkward, silent, sort of realized people are kind of nodding. And I said, you know what guys? We're going to go around the room and everyone going to say, you know, yes or no or may. And you know, again, this notion of, I love it, of habits forming habits are hard at the beginning and then, you know, they become habits right over time that became more natural and more consistent and sort of a pattern, of an inescapable pattern emerged which is to say that, you know, almost never was it the case that a simple around the room and you know, if there's you know, eight people in the room, eight people just say yes. Instead it was yeah, or maybe or you know, for the most part which then becomes well, okay, if it's for the most part, tell me about the other part. You know, why not entirely. Or if it's maybe, you know, let's get into it and it forced to actually have to really do the issues really, you know, be vulnerable. Heck, you know, say I don't know instead of nodding. And you know, it I think ultimately led to a team that was a lot more cohesive, that generated a lot more trust because we could be vulnerable to each other. We could really share our minds and far better performing team and hence a far better performing company because we really, you know, tended to analyze things and get down, get down in the sort of nitty gritty and walk through it as opposed to just, you know, just sort of making do with that really safe and easy and comfortable, you know. Nod.

Yeah, I love it because you'd mentioned about talking as if you were talking as a five year old or explaining something as a five year old. And when you explain something with five year, you have to be very explicit and clear. And I realize in some of my interactions it could have been with maybe a girl that was interested in me and a lot of time I felt like, oh well, you know, I don't. Without saying, like, no, I'm not interested. I'd kind of like finagle and say something different without being, saying, you know, what if it's just as friends, that's great. And it just made me think about how I can, how I have been conversing was just kind of being very vague in certain regards and then realizing, you know what, no, if this is what it is, I just have to be clear, put it on the table. And then this way they're, they can't read into it and think something differently because I, you know, I left that space for an alternative meeting to come out of it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's funny, the sort of stick in that chapter of the book is that I think when you really get down to it, we tend to talk like lawyers and listen like five year old, right? Meaning we, we, we speak like lawyers. Garden managing your tation, your perception. What does this person think? What do they think that I think that they think, you know, and so we're guarded and we're, you know, like you said, instead of just saying, you know what, I'm flattered and I have a friend, love time with you, but you know, beyond that, you know, the way I feel, instead it's some knock on anything that you think is doing the other person a service by, you know, being subtle or polite or less hurtful. On the flip side, we tend to listen like steroids. I mean, hearing what someone is saying, all you are mentally thinking about what you're going to say next is not listening to someone, right? Hearing what you want to hear is not listening to someone. These are things five year olds do, right? Hearing someone else's words from your perspective as opposed to from theirs, which is what a five year old is limited to, is not listening to someone. And so, you know, sort of the way I look at it is what we really should do is exactly, is the exact opposite, right? We should listen like lawyers, meticulously making an effort to sort of judge context, you know, perspective, nuance, trying to push sort of fact from, from surmise really, you know, listen consciously and actively and we should talk like 5 year olds. If the goal is to meaning, then you got to go to the sort of, you know, least common denominator or whatever, you know, you gotta, you gotta do, sit to where what you're transmitting is meaning void of all the wrappings that make it mean maybe one thing to you and something entirely different to somebody else. But a lot of that, like I said, you know, it relates directly to this leadership team experience with the, you know, sort of all of us sort of being forced to speak up. It's about the sort of the perception of vulnerability, the sort of fear of looking bad or being judged more harshly than your peers. A lot of it's patient management, which countless studies show, by the way, that we sort of grossly overestimate. I was just reading a paper on SSRN the other day. You know, they talk about, you know, the sort of sense questions like asking people a sensitive question, what are your thoughts on abortion? That's a pretty sensitive question. Or, you know, things along those lines, certain questions about their family, about their beliefs, etc. The asker. The asker sort of projects onto the respondent all sorts of negative emotions and feelings and responses 1 and 2 and 2 critically, an assumption that the respondent will think less of the asker. It will diminish the perception of the asker in the eyes of the respondent. And that's almost like, just like a, a very strong instinct or impulse or, you know, quote unquote, something we know, we think we know. And in fact, the respondent is the exact opposite. Like, it's the asker's own anxieties that are being projected onto the respondent. And you know, more often than not, it's not a bother to respond and it does not, you know, the cause to respond to. View the asker any worse and think about that. And it's such a shame because it's precisely those types of questions at level of connection and meaning, you know, which requires some vulnerability but ultimately leads to, you know, again, meaning it leads to depth. It's why we're here.

And before I go to the last question, I love to, I think for me, like the relationship with my father, I love the stories. The stories you were telling were like, like mind blowing. Like, I couldn't stop reading them. And so tell me, tell me about like you were the relationship and how you were talking about like the going to the Super Bowls. I mean, my mind was blown when I was reading this. It seemed cool. It seemed really cool. But tell me about like your relationship and how, like how your relationship was with your father and because I know for me that was kind of been one of the struggles because growing up we. I put my father, and I mean, I love my father, he's the most important person in my life and I appreciate him more now than I ever did because before I used to put him on this superhero status that I was growing As I grew older, I realized, you know, like, I was not fighting. I don't want to say finding flaws, because, I mean, the realization is that we're all just doing the best we can, and there's no bunch of book on how to raise a child. But then when I really started appreciating what my father created and, you know, how he raised all my siblings and I to be so close, and, I mean, I really, really had the appreciation, love for him. And I wanted to ask you just about, like, your relationship and how that grew over the years.

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's nothing unique in my story. You know, it's sort of the way, you know, we as children evolutionarily, right. You know, we're wired to do this as children. You know, we make heroes of our parents. We assume they're all knowing and all powerful. Often we want to be like them. And, you know, and then it's a classic part of growing up, right, to realize, oh, you know, my parents are human beings, like. Like every other human being, you know, but so in my case, my dad, you know, was larger than life. You know, they say in the book there's sort of a, you know, almost like a. Like a Peter Pan version. No, I'm sorry, not Peter Pan. A Robin Hood. A Robin Hood version of, you know, very aggressive, bulldog, sort of street lawyer. His clients were Cuban. Cuban immigrants. Like both of my parents in Hialeah, Florida, for the most part, the littlest of little guys. And he would, seemingly without worry or without doubt, take on big corporations, et cetera, et cetera.

I remember the elevator scene. That was one of my favorite moments. When you talk about your father in the elevator where the other trial.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is my point. Filed a class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster, which, as the theory of the case then he sort of roped in every. Basically every venue. The Ticketmaster would sell tickets through, you know, four or whatever, and then. And then it even got into. So now it's also every, you know, professional sports team that sort of plays in those venue and. And a lot of musical groups. It was crazy. But it turned out to be a very large case, essentially, for scalping. And the elevator story I mentioned, which I'll share with folks listening, is we were at this hearing in federal court in New York, and my dad and I get in the elevator. I was younger. I think I was. I don't even remember how old that was, but. And there's the general. I can keep it as a general. The guy who's you know, ultimately in charge of the scores of lawyers from different firms and all across the country. And the guy who's kind of like the head general on behalf of Ticketmaster. And he, he looks at my dad and he says, little boys, something like, you know, carlos, we're going to bail you. You know, where you have no idea where you're getting yourself into. And, you know, I was Ken smoking and I was. My heart skipped a beat. My dad laughed. Not a, you know, bravado, putting on air, but genuinely struck him as hilarious. It really made most preposterous this sort of, you know, warrior to warrior threat. And my dad said to the guy, are you kidding me? I was expecting like a fruit basket from you checked into our hotel. Your birth is going to make millions of dollars on this case, essentially. What do you care? You know, don't pretend, you know, for what I'm saying that this is done crusader principle or whatever for you. Like, you're a highly higher gun, an hourly rank, and it's going to make a fortune in this case. And I love that. But, yeah, you know, so early on, you know, I just. My dad also, you know, didn't really love to bend rules and, you know, break words and was. It was an aggressive guy. You know, don't be very confident. There was only looking his way. And as a kid, had a lot of experiences with him growing up where, you know, I sort of idolized him. And part of it for me was I'm not no one. You know, my parents didn't tell me it had to be like. But just the way I understood the world was, you know, as often happens to kids, this is what it needs to be a husband and a father and a provider, you know, and, you know, I think, you know, looking back, none of this was clear at the time, but, you know, looking back, you know, as I sort of went in my tween years and teen years and sort of thereafter, I think I came to sort of understand more the sort of the nuance, the fact that when you kind of play fast and loose and win often that means there's someone who's losing. And maybe that person, you know, wasn't playing it fast and loose. They were shooting at straight. Maybe, you know, they didn't deserve to lose. And I also started to realize maybe I don't want. I don't have this in me. I don't want to have this in me or, you know, I don't look at the world the same way. I think I kind of resented it and Also, you know, a lot of the things that seemed in our relationship to be about me or about us, you know, it started to feel like really were more about him. And so I kind of resented that. And again, I think this is the natural evolution of, you know, in a lot of ways, children sort of sort of break from their parents. But, you know, in my case, my dad and I, we had a tough go of it. We went from a very, you know, larger than life character with a son who kind of idolized him and was sort of always in tow to, you know, in certain ways, I kind of felt like he sort of forsaked that bond and other things, like I said, you know, led us to sort of be estranged somewhat for years. And then this returns full circle, at least for me. You know, when I. When I began to see more clearly, oh, wait, the same sort of fallibility in my father, the same, you know, failure to live up to these heroic ideals or heroic purport. I'm confronting them in my shelf, and we all do. And there's a line in my book that I love. I feel very deeply. Fathers are best judged by fathers. And so really, I became a father myself. A lot of the narrative about my father changed. And so now I've come with sort of respect as a man, not a hero. No one's perfect. Also not a villain. But, you know, a man who largest is best loves his children, wants best for them. And so, you know, that's kind of a coming of age to know, I guess.

Yeah. No, I agree with that 100%. 100%. I'm not a father yet, but I look at everything he's done and that made me appreciate, you know, just. Yeah. I think that the problem is that most people just don't stop to appreciate and ask, you know, what can I appreciate that and see what, you know, what, you know, what they go through to. I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm not accounting some people, their relationship might be a little bit more. Might not be as, you know, they're just different relationships. But. So this is a question I ask everybody, and it's like the closing question. And the reason why I ask is because I say, what would you do if you had one year to live? Is like, that is the start of it is because when we put that kind of limitation on life and we say we're just focusing on the span of a year and a year, is it we start to think about or what is really, what are the things that are important? What are the Experiences want to have. What are all the things that we put off to some later point that may not ever come now we're suddenly in the forefront and we're looking at them right in the eye. And so the question is, if you had a year to live, what would. The first would. We'll break down the first is what would. What's the message that you would want to get out to the rest of the world and you had one year to do it.

I think it would be, you know, the message that I been trying to share for the last. What it's four or five years is, which really is empowerment. A message that in every moment you're choosing who you are and how you want to live your life and an encouragement for folks to adopt the vision to make those choices with purpose, deliberation and meaning. I wrote a book on it, I guess you could say.

Yeah, and what would you want to experience in the next year?

That's a really interesting question. And it. First thing that came to my mind and just an interesting thing on perspective and on choosing the context and the story you get to wrap around the circumstances is up to you. I, like many people, I assume I know what you're reading. Like many people in the sort of feeling of oh my gosh, with stay at home corona COVID 19 COVID 19 days that we're living in. I have cabin fever and I'm bored and you know, can't wait to get back out there. But, you know, you ask what would I do if I only had a year to live? And it's funny because in some ways I think I would want my life to look very much like it looks right now, namely, man. I'd certainly want to spend as much time as I could with my children and my wife. I would certainly want to be close to them. I want to be engaged in sort of the nuance of their daily life and I want to maximize opportunities to learn about them, learn about me, and sort of impart any wisdom or ideas and all I could. So here we are in this, in these trying times, but I firmly believe it and everything. Like I said, going blind turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened in many worlds. So cognizant of the fact that people are dying and our healthcare enduring unimaginable challenges that not need to be, although circumstances everyone finds themselves out of work and you know, worrying about putting food on the table, getting. Putting all that aside for a second, which is a lot to put aside. There is, bless mehruk you know, there is good in this opportunity that we all have to slow down and to maybe get to know ourselves a little better. And really, we get to connect more deeply with a lot more space and time and patience with, you know, with our loved ones.

Beautiful. Well, Isaac, so the book is Eyes Wide Open I one of my favorite books I've read in a very long time. And I. Which is one of the reasons why right after I finished it, I was like, I have to reach out to you, to meet you, because I wanted you to know just, like, how much the words impacted me. As I know this interview will impact others and inspire them to pick it up. But I want to thank you for, you know, for coming on. Thank you so much for sharing the personal stories and especially in the book. I mean, I feel like before I, you know, as I was reading it, I felt like I had this, like, this connection to you. Like, I knew you on a very personal level, and that only comes with being vulnerable and putting those kind of things in the book. And I applaud you for it. I am very grateful. And I see nothing but success, and you've inspired me how to move forward and live. So I want to say thank you.

Thank you. The privilege is mine, and I deeply appreciate your words and me watching. It's why I did it.

All right, my friend. Well, listen, stay safe, and hopefully we will cross paths sometime in the future. Have a beautiful rest of your week.