How to Embody Grace | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxPaloAlto

When I die, I want you to say that I helped you make a difference. I helped you dent the universe, make the world a better place, change the world, every phrase that Steve Jobs ever used. And I've been dedicating myself to this process for about five years. As a podcaster, I've interviewed remarkable people and I gained a lot of information and inspiration from them. And what I figured out is that there's three stages in life. Actually, I happen to love tricolons, so. So I'm going to use a tricolon right now. So the tricolons of life. One tricolon is life progresses from growth to grit to grace. Another way of looking at it is that in the first third of your life, you're underpaid. In the second third of your life, you're overpaid. And in the final third of your life, you should be paying back. And I'm talking about today, the final third in life, the life. Really, I think just the culmination of life, which is grace and graciousness. So I'm going to talk to you today about how to embody grace. And I'm going to use a top 10 format for this tricolon. Frankly, honestly, I believe that you can explain all of life with a tricolon, a top 10 format, or a two by two matrix. That's all you ever need. That's all you ever need. And I'm going to use two of those three today. Okay? First is the top 10. So the first thing I learned from all these people, these 200 people, and they were people who were truly remarkable. Not rich, not famous. Remarkable people like Jane Goodall, Stacey Abrams, Vivek Murthy, Angela Duckworth, Katie Milkman, Bob Cialdini, Christy Yamaguchi, Roy Yamaguchi, and oh, they so influenced my life. Step number one is culture, blessings. And all these remarkable people. Over and over again they said, guy, we're towards the end of our lives too. It's all about counting your blessings. Let me tell you a little bizarre personal story. Violating all HIPAA regulations. I am deaf. I lost my hearing about two years ago. And so the only reason I can hear at all is I have a cochlear implant. It's kind of my direct line to God. I don't even need any kind of sound waves anymore. And you know what, people, when they find out that I'm deaf and I'm a podcaster, God, that must be so difficult, so challenging. I feel so sorry for you. How do you do that as a pod? And you Know what? I count my blessings. I have lived a charmed life. Yes, I'm deaf, but you know What? I'm on wife 1.0. I have four children. I'm very close to my children. I get to surf all the time. I count my blessings. And so I think step one in this process of embodying grace is look back at your life. Look back as an optimist. Look at life as half full. Count your blessings. I'm a very happy deaf person. There are much worse things to have than deafness. Trust me, nobody ever died from being deaf. Number one is count your blessings. Number two, you've got to change how you keep score. Don't get me wrong, okay? I kept score in the most materialistic ways. I kept score by how much money you made, what Apple stock options were worth, what kind of car, what kind of house. I used to do all that, but now I've changed how I keep score. I keep score because I want to be remembered in a way, as I said when I die, that I empowered you, that I helped you make a difference. I want people to say, guy empowered me with his writing, his speaking, his podcasting, his investing, his advising. That's what he did. That's how I'm keeping score. That's one way. Second way is what kind of kids did I help raise? Because I think kids reflect what you've done in life. So damn those kids, they better come out good. They're going to be a reflection on me. And when I say good, I don't mean oh, because they went to an Ivy League school. I could care less about that. I don't want them to go to school with all those plagiarists anyway. So I change how I keep score. It's about the impact that I've had. How much did I help you make a difference? Number three. Number three is that as I've met more and more people in my life, especially in Silicon Valley, I think you can pick up this attitude like, ah, you know, I'm this hot shit CEO, cxo, cmo, cto. I got all these options, you know, I live in Atherton on a two acre house, all that kind of stuff. But what I figured out is you need to value almost everybody you meet. And I will admit that there are times, you know, when you feel superior to somebody and all that. And what I figured out is almost everybody that you meet can do something better than you. Now, it may be making tacos, it may be surfing, it may be taking pictures, it may being sound. It May be being a TED host, it may be writing, it may be poetry, but everybody can do something better than you. So don't be so smug because that person has something that can blow you away. Value all people. Number four. When I was in high school, my father, he stressed on me this concept of noblesse oblige, which means this obligation of the nobility to help other people in the world, to help society. I have to admit that I recoil at the word noblesse because it implies a certain nobility that you. You're born with this. You're born with this wealth and power and fame and capability that, you know, if you're Prince Harry or, I don't know, Meghan Markle, you know, you're noble and you have this obligation. And I think that's elitist. I think that's fundamentally wrong. And so my term for this instead of noblesse oblige is success oblige. And I think that when you are successful, you have got to be obligated to help society. It is an obligation. You need to fulfill that obligation. It's not something that it's nice to do. It's not something that you're being wonderful to do it. It's an obligation. It is a moral obligation to help people. You have an obligation to help people make the world a better place. Number five. Number five is one of the best ways you can keep score, is by helping others succeed. Listen, when I was in the sixth grade, an elementary school teacher and I grew up in a very poor part of Hawaii, she convinced my parents to take me out of the public school system in Hawaii and put me in a private school. This private school, it's called Iolani. It's the school that Barack Obama couldn't get into. This private school prepared me to apply for college. And I tell you honestly, I don't know why I applied to Stanford. There is no doubt in my mind I would not get into Stanford today because I haven't started a foundation. I don't have a consultant. Nobody helped me write the essay. I didn't pay somebody half a million dollars to Photoshop me into the tennis team. I didn't do any of those things. But you know that teacher, she convinced my parents to put me in a private school. My parents agreed with her and they made the sacrifice to put me in that private school. I got into Stanford. At Stanford, I met a guy named Mike Boich. Mike Boich, years later, hired me to be Apple's second software evangelist. I am living proof that nepotism can work out and I'll tell you something. So now I look back and I say, you know what? As Steve Jobs said in his commencement, you can only connect the dots looking backwards. So I connect the dots. 6th grade teacher tells my parents to put me in a private school. I get into the private school. I get into Stanford. I meet Mike Boich. Mike Boich hires me into Apple. This is not because I have qualifications. I had a psych degree because that's the easiest major at Stanford, okay? And I never took a computer class in my life. So I get into the Macintosh division. I do well as a software evangelist. Fast forward 20 some odd years and Ronit reaches out to me out of the blue in an email and says, I have Jane Goodall coming to TEDx Palo Alto. I need somebody to interview her on stage. Now, I didn't know Rooney. It wasn't like we were BFFs. Ronit knew of me. She didn't know me. And she reached out and I looked at that email. I said, are you freaking kidding me? You want me to interview Jane Goodall? Sign me up. Cancel everything else. I will be there. So I became friends with Jane Goodall, very good friends. And then years later, when I started my podcast, I thought, who would be the best person to start your podcast with? Can it get any better than Jane Goodall? So she was guest number one. And let me tell you something. The way many people make a decision whether to get on a podcast or not is who else has been on it, okay? And when you can tell people, oh, would you like to be on my podcast? And they say, who else is being honest? Ah, I don't know. Jane Goodall. Have you heard of her? Everybody says, yes, trust me. So the point is, help others succeed. That teacher helped me succeed. When you are successful, you walk through a door. Your obligation is to keep that door open. Even better, it's to make the door bigger. Expand what people call what, well, in a negative sense, the Overton window. Make it an Overton platform. Overton Patio. Okay? Help others succeed. Number six. Number six is life is about raising the tide, because the rising tide floats all boats. Life is not a zero sum game. If the people who are in front of me in this presentation, if they help make AI succeed, the rising tide of AI will make many companies succeed. It's not just about making perplexity succeed. First of all, they have to overcome what I consider the world's stupidest name for a company, Perplexity. So it's not about perplexity. It's also like Bard and Gemini, right? It's all these LLMs. You make the rising tide, and all boats will float. And the falling tide will take all boats down, too. So think about this. Raise the tide. Life is not a zero sum game. Number seven. Number seven is to punch up. Punching down is absolutely despicable. Punching down means you go to SFO and you rip on the flight attendant. You rip on the person checking you in, you rip on the luggage handler, you rip on the waiter, you rip on the waitress, because you're punching down. If you're a presidential candidate in South Carolina, you make fun of a New York Times reporter because of his neurological differences, right? That's punching down. You're a billionaire. You're a presidential candidate. You're making fun of a New York Times reporter because he has neurological difference. What the hell is wrong with you? That's punching down. What you should do is punch up, take on this, take on these people. Don't be afraid. You know what? I figured out that when you punch up, there are a lot of people watching you punch up, and they're cheering you on. Punch up. You cannot go wrong. Punching up. Number eight. Number eight is when you encounter people that you cannot understand. Like, why don't you believe in vaccination? Why did you believe the election was stolen? Why do you believe all this kind of stuff? And it can cut either way, okay? But instead of asking, what do you believe? Or why do you believe vaccinations work or don't work? Ask people, how did you come to believe this? Because the how shows what they went through to arrive at that place. So if you encounter somebody who is dead set against vaccination, ask them, how did you come to that conclusion? And if they say, my grandfather was in the US army, they did an experiment on him where they gave him this drug. They wanted to see the effect of it. It was a vaccination test, and that vaccination killed him. So now I'm against vaccination. I have to say that is a reasonable line of thinking. And when you hear that kind of story, maybe you will understand how people have come to differ with you. It's not because they're stupid. It's not because they're ignorant. It's not because they've been misled. Ask them why they came to the conclusion. It's terrific. For empathy and insight, Number nine is to learn how to apologize. What a skill apology is. And I'll give you the key to apology. The most important thing when you apologize is the words, I'm sorry must Pass through your lips. That's it. Not, oh, I didn't intend to do this. Oh, are you offended? Oh. Oh. Did it hurt you? You know, not all those qualifications. Just say, I am sorry. I am sorry that the security of my company enabled somebody else to get all your passwords and names right. I am sorry. It's not that. I never intended it. It's not that somebody else did something worse. I am sorry. That's the key. I am sorry. Learn how to apologize. It is a skill. Number 10 is to ignore the small stuff. Ignore the small stuff. I'll tell you a story. My wife and I were living with our son on Union street in San Francisco towards the Presidio at the end. That is a very nice part of San Francisco. So one day, I'm out in front of. I crack up. Even when I think about this story, I'm in front of our house and I'm cutting the bougainvillea, okay? I'm cutting the hedge. This older white woman comes up to me and says, do you do lawns, too? And I'm telling you, like, I just jumped on it. I said, oh, I'm Japanese American, so you think I'm the yardman, right? She goes, no, no, no. It's just you're doing such a great job. I want to know if you do lawns, okay? So right there, there's social profiling, which is bad enough, but that's not the punchline. The punchline is, two weeks later, my father comes from Hawaii. I'm Sansei, third generation. He's Nisei. He served in the U.S. army. You know, all that good stuff, right? More American than American. And I said to him, dad, let me tell you a story. This haole woman came up to me and asked me as a yard man, because I was cutting a hedge, and I thought he was gonna go off on her, right? How dare she question you? You went to Stanford. You worked for Apple. You knew Steve Jobs. You've written books. How dare she ask you if you're the yardman, right? Okay, Guess what he says to me. Son, Japanese guy cutting bougainvillea Bush in front of a house on Union Street. Statistically, most likely, you were the yardman. So he said, son, son, get over it. Get over it. Take the high road. Give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she just wanted to know if you're a yardman. She wasn't making some kind of racial judgment. And you've got to sudden learn how to ignore the small stuff. If you take something like that to heart, and it gets in your head and rattles around in your mind. It's going to ruin your life. You're not going to be graceful and gracious. Ignore the small stuff. Now I have one more thing. It stops at zero. It doesn't go negative. That's good. Are we in a rush? Is there like a bar mitzvah here next or something? All right, so, okay, one last story. This is a surfing story. So for those of you who are familiar with surfing, I don't have to explain this too much, but for those of you not familiar with surfing, surfing is about 90%. You're sitting in the water and you're watching the ocean and you're looking for that perfect wave. That wave is the right speed and right height and right direction, and it's clean and it's well formed and life is good surfing. Many people think it's about making the right decision. How do I make the right decision? How do I know which way to go for? How do I know all this? Make the right decision, then it's easy. I'm going to now show you a little video of somebody who was intent on looking out, making the right decision, but she made the wrong decision. And maybe the decision was even made for her. And I'll show you what happens. She's turning. Uh oh. What am I trying to show you? I'm showing that so much of us, we spend so much of our life trying to make the right decision. What's the right wave? What's the right direction? What's the right strength of paddling? What should we do to make the right choice? I think that people who are gracial, graceful and gracious, what they do is they make a decision, and then what they do is they focus on making the decision right, not making the right decision anymore. Make whatever decision right. And that's the last way to embody grace. Thank you very much. Thank you.