Heroic Chat with James Pawelski: Wisdom, Community, and World Change

Foreign. PM +1 +1 +1 great morning. First time I've gone deep in a very long time. Created a philosopher's note on Phil Stutts's new book, Lessons for Living. We're going to see if we can ship that out today. And I am here with one of my favorite people on the planet. I consider James Pawlowski to be one of the wisest, most humble, heroic expressions of all the ideas that we talk about. And James, I'll give you a longer intro in a moment, but I already got tears in my eyes, man. I'm just so happy to be here with you today. And when I think of you and feel into your presence, you embody that which I aspire to embody. And I'm just excited to be here with you and share more about your story.

It's a delight and an honor, Brian, to be here. And normally when we have our fantastic conversations, it's just you and me. So I'm really looking forward to be joined by such a great group of heroes. I'm grinning ear to ear just looking at all the heroes coming in and wish we could have a one on one with each one of you, but really looking forward to the next hour.

So we really are soul brothers because that's how I tend to start these chats. I usually like to just say hi. So let me do that real quick. Coach Lanny, great to see you. Dave, great to see you. Thanks for the text. Just saw it. Anthony, Aki, Lily, Megan, Ben, Alex, Maddie, Matthew, Kira, Barnabas, great to see you, bud. Ryan, we're now in Brazil, Portuguese and Romania Romanian. So I'm excited about all the process you've been working on and all the momentum there. Roy, great to see you. Sarah, Jay, Valerio, Kate, Stephanie, Mike and Robin on screen. 1. Wonderful to see you all. James Pawelski, if you've been following along even remotely closely, you know that James is the author of one of my all time favorite books, Happy Together, which he wrote with. And usually when we're hanging out, James, it's with Susie. So we've had someone on one chats, we've had many more where it's me, you and your wonderful bride, Susie. The two of them wrote Happy Together using the Science of Positive Psychology to build Love that lasts. This is literally one of my top three all time books. If we look at energy, work and love, I put the tools in the number one slot for energy, I put deep work in the number one slot for work and I unequivocally put Happy Together in the number one slot for Love. It's a phenomenal book integrating ancient wisdom and modern science. James is the embodiment of the integration of ancient wisdom and modern science. Part philosopher Hart, positive psychologist, a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania. If there's a cooler idea or title than that, I don't know what it would be. He runs the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program with Martin Seligman and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. James is actually the guy that led to my tattoo. 51-20-51. A question that he asked Marty forever ago that we'll talk about today. But again, absolutely love James and his work and thrilled to be here with him today to learn more about your hero's story, James. But we had talked about you kind of grounding us and connecting us to our best, most heroic selves. I would love to follow your guidance as we all connect to our best selves and get ready to have a wonderful conversation.

Awesome. Thank you, Brian. Susie says hello, by the way, so she's joining us in spirit as well. Well, I would just like to invite us to begin with a moment of connecting with ourselves and with each other. So if you're comfortable, you can just let all the air out of your lungs, take a deep breath in and continue to breathe deeply at a pace that feels right for you. And closing the eyes if you would like to. Embodying your heroic self, inviting the inner Daimon to join this meeting. I'm just so grateful that we get to connect. We come from all around the world and this medium, this technology, allows us to join together. I invite you to feel the gratitude and to feel the connection of all of us joining together with a similar intention today. Invite you to open your mind and your heart or something that you need to hear today. And if there are things that don't connect or don't make sense, totally fine. Hunt the good stuff. What's one thing that you'll be able to take with you and apply to your life in your heroic journey? And with that intention set, I invite you to wiggle your fingers and toes and open your eyes and come back visually into the room.

I think that must be the best guided meditation a philosopher has ever done. That was fantastic, James. Let's go. All right. Heroic chats with masters. I'm so excited to hear more about your story and share more of your story. Tell us about your heroic quests, plural, that have led you to be with us today in the context in which you're. You're kind of showing up with the roles that you play. I'd love to hear about the calls to adventure you have experienced. Perhaps some, some of your origin story, some, some decent dragon battles that may have existed as you wanted to tame them, some guides, that sort of thing.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, look, let me just kind of dive in, Brian, and, and stop me if I'm long winded because philosophers can get wound up and go for a while. But I'll try to give you, you know, some, some manageable, digestible overviews of things and, and feel free to ask further. I was, I left the country when I was two months old. I was born in the United States, but I left the country when I was 2 months old with my parents who happened to live at the time in Mexico in a little town 30 miles from the nearest paved road. There was no running water or electricity in the town. My parents had been living there for about a year. My parents were missionaries and they were educators and working with a school and a church in that little town. And so I grew up living in an adobe house and in a valley a mile high, semi arid desert surrounded by mountains. Fabulous place to grow up. And I had just terrific friends there. My favorite activity of all time, hiking in the mountains. I was just mesmerized by anything having to do with the mountains and I loved climbing in them. When I was almost eight years old, my parent, my family moved back to the United States, to inner city Dayton, Ohio, where my great grandfather about 100 years ago had started a mission church to help immigrants in an immigrant neighborhood in Dayton, Ohio. And so my grandfather was then pastoring the church and his health was failing and so my father came back to help him in that endeavor. I grew up as a very sensitive compliance child, wanting to follow, you know, wanting to do what's right. And I found that my parents view of the world had a lot of value in it obviously. And yet as I grew older, I found that it didn't fit me as well as they hoped it would. As well as I hoped it would. I had some questions and you can imagine these, this is the, you know, the why beginnings of a philosopher. So I had some questions and some questions perhaps that my parents hadn't exactly asked along the way. And so I, you know, my, my mother wanted me to follow in my father's footsteps and to become a minister instead. I became a philosopher because I had these questions that I wanted to try to understand more deeply. And so after I got my degree in mathematics, I went to graduate school to get a PhD in philosophy because I wanted to dig into trying to understand the world, trying to understand myself, trying to understand how. How I ought to live in the world. And I encountered the thoughts of many folks, but there was one in particular. Brian. I think you would technically call this a hero of mine. And you very kindly have provided me with a heroic image of him. I don't know if you guys can see that this is. Does anybody know who this is? Put in the chat. If you know who this is, you get extra Brownie points. My students all note Darwin. Good guess. Not quite. It was actually somebody who was incredibly deeply influenced by Darwin, though. And he's got a Darwin beard. We've got a lot of different guesses here. And Graham Lowe, you are exactly right, William James. So if you are ever in one of my classes, you will automatically get Brownie points. All of my students know that if I ask a question that has a puzzling or they don't know the answer to it, they should always guess William James. That's probably going to be the right answer. So William James was born in 1842. He died in 1910. He was a professor at Harvard for about 30 some years. He was deeply influenced. He was in that first generation of thinkers who were deeply influenced by Darwin. So this notion of evolution, change, progress was very powerful for him. He was a psychologist. He is known as the father of American psychology. He wrote the Principles of Psychology. Fantastic foundational work in psychology that was published in 1890. And James's work. If you had taken a course in psychology for the next 40 years, you probably would have used his work as the foundational textbook. James was also a foundational philosopher of the school of philosophy of pragmatism. So he was very interested in human problems. He was not the kind of philosopher who had his head in the clouds and was only interested in philosophical puzzles. He was interested in human issues. What is it like? What is it like to be a human being? And how can we live our lives better? And I was initially really taken with William James's work in part because he wrote a book called the Varieties of Religious Experience. I don't know if any of you. Have any of you seen that book before or read that book? Highly recommend. Okay, great. A couple of you have. That's fantastic. Wonderful book wherein Brian. He really takes religious experience seriously, but avoids what I think are two different kinds of mistakes. One is being disdainful of people's experience. Oh, yeah, well, you know, that's just. These are. Those people are nuts over there and they have this kind of experience and blah, blah, blah. But the other extreme that I think he avoids is saying just because somebody had a powerful experience, that doesn't necessarily mean that their interpretation of that experience is exactly accurate, right? And so there's that middle ground of respecting the experience that people have and trying to understand the experience of across different kinds of religious traditions around the world and trying to understand what that says about, about human beings. So for me, that was really wonderful because it meant I didn't have to reject out of hand what I had grown up, my parents, experiences in the world and so forth. Nor did I have to berate myself for not feeling like I fit in exactly the way my parents saw the world. So it gave me place to be myself. It also gave me a place. So there was a sense of awareness, of taking in and valuing other people's experience. William James also wrote a book called the Will to Believe, was actually the title essay of a book. And in there he talks about the importance of. Having the right to believe things that are in our best interest. Even if science hasn't yet determined, you know, decided the question. This isn't about fantasy or making things up, but it's about putting our lives on the line in ways what he calls our passional nature, our will, our emotions may actually go in front of the intellect if science, the intellect, has not yet been able to adjudicate the question. So I was puzzled and interested in how the same guy could write this book about religious experience and really being open to connecting to the divine or to spirituality. But on the other hand, he was really into stepping up as a human being and living into our best lives. So he was into this awareness and also agency at the same time. So he's the guy I wrote my dissertation on, eventually wrote a book about him. Some of my favorite quotations that I think will resonate with all of you. The great thing in all education, he wrote, the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. I think that's a pretty good encapsulation for so much of what you all do as heroes here, right? Making our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. Also another favorite quotation. My experience is what I agree to attend to. My experience is what I agree to attend to. There's so much going on in the world, so much going on in their own lives, so much going on in the location in which you physically are finding yourself right now. And you are attending to what I'm saying, you are attending to the communal connection that we have here. And that's what your experience is. And so the focus on attention is so important. I'll just share one other quotation from him because I think this is so important, and I think it's so heroic. The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will an education which should improve this faculty or would be the education par excellence. So I think, Brian, a heroic education is an education par excellence because one of the things that you all emphasize and focus on is our ability to manage our awareness, our ability to make choices with how we direct our attention, and then to bring our attention back over and over again to what we really want to really. What we want to focus on. So I. Let me just pause right there, Brian, before I get into positive psychology. How am I doing? How are we doing with this exploration?

Goosebumps. Continue, please.

Okay. All right. Fantastic.

I'm sitting here reveling in your articulateness, your humility, your deference, your incredible ability to frame up your life experience so beautifully. So please continue.

Well, thank you, Brian. I really appreciate that I paused because philosophers are those kinds of people who we may not be always entirely sure that other people exist. I'm pretty sure that I do exist, but I'm not entirely sure that other people exist. And so if there's too much silence, I wonder whether we've had an existential glitch or something. I've just kind of popped into another dimension. So thank you for that.

I love it. I'm noticing rapt attention among all of us here today. So seriously, unbelievably beautiful. Exactly what I was hoping for. Thank you. And I'm excited for wherever you take us next.

Awesome. Fantastic. Well, so William James was really had a huge impact on my life. And I then finished my PhD. I got a job. I got a tenure track job, which some of you who know academia know that it's, A, very difficult to finish a dissertation. B, very difficult to get a job. C, very difficult to get a job that's a tenure track job. So I had made it, but I didn't feel like it. I was like, okay, I climbed the ladder. I'm at the top. Why am I not feeling wildly happy and enthusiastic? Right? And so I began looking outside of academia for sources of wisdom, for sources of, you know, advice on how to live one's life and so forth. I'll just say one of the key sources that I found was the work of Tony Robbins. Anybody here Familiar with Tony Robbins. Yep. So this was back in 1998. I actually had some frequent flyer miles that were set to expire. And I'm like, well, what can I do with these? You know, what trip can I take? And I'm like, well, you know, let me go to one of his firewalk seminars. And. And so I did. I was not the first one to walk across the glowing hot coals. Those of you who aren't familiar with Tony Robbins, that's one of the signature events at his seminars. I wasn't the first one to walk across. Just in case this wasn't really, you know, true. Just. Just. Or. Or maybe I had some kind of DNA modification that would make my feet ro. Everybody else's were okay, but once about a third of the people had gone across the coals, I'm like, okay, this is probably something human beings can do. And so I walked across the coals. I was fine. I lived to tell the tale. And I went back to the college that I was teaching at at that point, and I was all excited about this transformative experience. And some of my colleagues thought I had probably flipped my lid, maybe joined a cult, just unsure about what all this was, you know, where all this was going. And. But what I decided was I couldn't keep teaching philosophy the same way I had been teaching it, because William James's work, and indeed the work of pragmatism in general, is about how to live one's life, not just how to think thoughts. So I was actually teaching senior seminar on pragmatism, and one of my students wrote on her exam that she was pleased to be studying pragmatism because she was. It was helping her to process her philosophical position and viewpoints. But she was also frustrated because she didn't know how to apply it. Well, I thought, what do you mean you don't know how to apply pragmatism? Pragmatism comes from the Greek word pragma, which means practice. Of course, you must know how to apply it. But the more I thought about it, of course, the more I realized she was exactly right. Pragmatism is a method just like the scientific method. You can know it intellectually, but when you get into the chemistry lab, for example, and start mixing chemicals, dangerous things can happen. So with pragmatism, pragmatism is a method of doing philosophy that takes human experience very seriously, that takes results very seriously. What are the outcomes of the beliefs that I hold, of the actions that I take? And it's very empirically oriented. So. So I thought, well, you know, I'm going to have to change the way that I teach philosophy. And so I decided to develop a course that I taught called Applied Pragmatism. It was basically a philosophy class with a lab section. So it wasn't just about what you're thinking, but it's about testing out what are the implications, what are the effects of what you're thinking.

And.

And in the process of developing that class, I invited a psychology professor to team teach it with me. And she knew about this guy named Martin Seligman and his book called Learned Optimism. Any of you here know about Learned Optimism? Okay, that. Fantastic. That is a book that also deeply changed my life. I started reading this book and I'm like, why haven't I. You know, it had been out for like eight years at that point. Why haven't I seen this before? This is fantastic. Fantastic. It's all about our thoughts and our interpretations of what happens in our lives and about our ability to change what we perceive and to change our experience. And I thought, oh, my goodness, so much of the suffering that I have experienced in my life wasn't necessary. Like, it's optional. I can think differently. I can have a different kind of life. This is fantastic. And so I found out that not only had Martin Seligman written this book, but there was also this brand new field of positive psychology that was being developed. I found out that the first public meeting on positive psychology was going to be happening. And so in the fall of 2000, I went down to Washington, D.C. for this meeting, heard Marty Seligman give his opening address, and was super excited by that. And at the end of his talk, he asked for anybody to ask questions. I raised my hand and asked a question. I'll just say this as an aside because I think it might be useful information since we're being a little more open than we often are in this context. Right. So I. I asked a question, and in the. In the process of answering the question, I basically, I started by saying, look, I'm a philosopher. I'm not a psychologist. I'm a philosopher, but I'm intrigued with what you're doing. I'd love to be a part of it. And then I went on to ask my. My question. And in the process of. Of that answer, Marty mentioned to me that he himself had studied philosophy as an undergraduate and he'd be happy to talk with me about this later. So here's my little pause in the story. When I stood up to ask my question, I was Mellifluous, articulate, clear, brilliant, stunning. In my delivery of that question, I was sure. Now it turns out, fast forward. I began working with Marty on some projects, and one of the things he said to me was, why don't we co author my talk that I gave at that night that you were there, and you can write it up, and then we'll. We'll have this as a publication. So I thought, wow, this is great. I took notes. I'm not sure they were that good. How can I write down this draft of what the man said? But I remembered that they had a video camera going of his speech. And so I wrote to the organizers of the conference, And I said, Dr. Seligman would like me to collaborate with him, please, the recording of that talk. And so they sent me the recording of the talk. And indeed, Marty's talk was fantastic. And I realized they had captured my question. Fantastic. I get to savor my brilliance and how wonderful it was and how articulate and so on and so forth. And I'm watching that, and I basically, you know, I stood up and I'm.

Like.

Well, you know. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. I wasn't the mellifluous, articulate, brilliant, you know. And in spite of that, he still answered my question and graciously met with me, with me afterwards. I say that because the lesson is you don't have to have it all figured out. What you have to do is raise your hand, you got to stand up, get your butt out of the chair, and ask the question. And that has been a huge lesson to me in my life because I tend to be one of those people. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Let me get everything all neatly sorted out before I dive in. And that's not what actually got me where I am today. Can anybody else identify with that? You kind of, like, want to have everything. Yeah. I thought there were a lot of humans on this call, Brian. So this is a natural human tendency, and it's one that we can have fun challenging a little bit. And in any case, so I got to meet Marty and Chris Peterson, who was another leader in the field of positive psychology. We really connected. They invited me to sit in on their class on positive psychology. They were teaching at the University of Pennsylvania at the time. I was teaching at a college about an hour away. And so anytime there was anything going on in Philly, I was there and connected with them. They also invited me to attend a conference that they were having the following week to develop the Values in action classification of strengths and virtues. So I could not believe my good fortune. I just go to this meeting and then all of a sudden I'm being welcomed in. All of a sudden I'm being welcomed in. Isn't that like the best as a human being? You find a community of people that you really value and respect, hypothetically, they could be called anything, but let's just call them heroic. And there's this group of people that are aligned with who you are and what you're doing. And you come in and you're welcomed in and you get to be yourself and you have something to bring. You have something unique and precious, which is your own life, your own experience, your own strengths, your own vision, purpose for how you want to live your life. And you get to come in with other people who are also bringing their authentic selves to the community and you get to grow and learn together. I mean, what could be better than that, right? Especially, especially in our times. It's so easy today for me, at least I suspect for you too, to get caught up in the headlines, in the various tragedies that are happening all around the world. And they're, I mean, it's not great. Things are happening, right? So how do we, and those are not under our control. We can't control those things. So how do we live our lives in these kinds of times? It seems to me I don't know how to live it better than to find a community of people who are like minded, who are committed to doing something positive. And this doesn't mean, unfortunately, that we can snap our fingers and make the world perfect. But what it does mean is we can blow on our hands. As Nietzsche, as Goethe said, we can blow on our hands. Get busy, do what you can do in your own environment, in your own world, because A, that will be incredibly fulfilling for you. It's a whole lot better than sitting on your butt watching the news. But two, it will be incredibly important for the community as you bring your best self in community with other people who bring their best selves. And of course it's best for the world because there is much to be done in our world today. So. Marty Seligman I wound up, as I mentioned, getting involved in different projects. I wound up going to Vanderbilt University for a couple of years. I had been invited there to work on a project on character development for Vanderbilt. And a couple years later, Marty Soligman gave me a call and he said, james, I'm going to start the Positive Psychology center and I'm going to create a Master of Applied Positive Psychology Program. I'd like you to come to Penn, help me develop this program and then direct and teach in it. And I'm like, okay, this kind of opportunity does not typically come around once in a lifetime. Right? I am definitely going to take it. I'm going to jump on it. I felt like sometimes you feel like you're on the ocean of life and you kind of cast your line into the water to see what fish you can catch. And then sometimes you start catching whales and it's like, oh my goodness, what a mind boggling opportunity and possibility. And partly part of the reason, a huge part of the reason why I am so honored to now have been in this role for nearly 20 years is that we also have been able to create a community. We have almost 700 graduates from our Master of Applied Positive Psychology program From more than 30 countries around the world. And we stay connected. We, we support each other. It's, it's a, it's an incredibly tight knit alumni community. We just had a, about a month ago, we just had our annual summit where we invite the alumni to come together and join our current students. And that feeling of coming together in very difficult times to reconnect and recommit and reinforce the importance of living our best lives even in, or perhaps especially in the context of these difficult times was so, it was heartwarming. It was also inspiring and, and, and invigorating. So let me just pause there, Brian. I've got a couple more chapters if you want, but let me just pause there to see how we're doing time wise and. Have I lost anybody? Am I still there?

One of my jokes is if I ate popcorn, I'm eating the popcorn right now. This is so good. I'm so inspired. There are a few themes I want to come back to you moving through your fear and acting when you weren't ready, which you could have just as easily stayed seated in that chair. And your entire life is different. And it's funny because it was Tony Robbins who taught me this lesson that I now call Fear Doors where he does that exercise where you imagine your life. And the way I frame it up now is the things in your life you now have that you almost didn't take that step toward that you did. And then the countless times you didn't that could have created the other opportunities. But just I saw you in that chair, literally, I was imagining your inner dialogue because I imagine there had to be some reservation of, oh, should I. Oh, I don't know, you know, and then you did it, you mustered the courage and boom, look at what happened to your life. So that really struck me. The vision also struck me. I would like to hear your story about the moonshot. I love, I love that, that frame, you know, just to bring it there. And then the community too is just so beautiful. But take us wherever you want to go. I'll make sure that we hit those themes. If you want to continue, I can come back, whatever your ideas.

Yeah, let me maybe put one or two chapters onto it and then I'll come back to the moonshot.

Perfect.

So I am a philosopher, as I mentioned to you. And so I've been a philosopher embedded among psychologists for about 20 years now. A little over 20 years. And in 2010 I got married. And so as Brian said, my wife Susie and we, we wrote this book together, happy together, but that long before that we got married, had our, on our honeymoon where we're talking and she says to me, well, James, what do you want to do with your life? You know, in a professional sense? And I'm like, that's a really great question, Susie. Thank you. Really the thing that really gets me going is when I first heard Marty Seligman talking about the positive, positive psychology in 2000, I thought, this is fantastic. And what I'm doing as a philosopher is the positive humanities thinking about arts and culture. That what I was doing and teaching the Applied Pragmatism course that was really about philosophy and the humanities and how they can help us in our lives. So I said to Susie, it's really about the positive humanities. So she's like, well, go do it. So I came back, told Marty what I wanted to do and I began teaching a course in the master's program called the Humanities and Human Flourishing, which I still teach. A few years later we got our first grant. A couple years after that we got our first big grant, two and a half million dollars from the Templeton Religion Trust to establish this enabled us to establish the new field of the positive humanity, which is how can arts and culture support our well being and our human flourishing. So much of what happens in the world with regard to music and literature and art and film and so on is used for entertainment or making investors money or getting out political messages or teaching kids. For example, when you read a novel in school, it's not about you enjoying the novel, it's about you increasing your reading comprehension. You quickly learn that when you have to write the book report afterwards. So there are all these different interests that are using arts and Culture, but that's not why we have arts and culture. We don't have music because somebody hundreds of thousands of years ago came up with an idea to make a buck. We have music because it's an expression of the human soul. We have literature because it explores how we might be as human beings. It helps us to understand ourselves, it helps us to understand each other. And if we had another two or three hours, we could really dive into your own experience about arts and culture because I would be willing to bet that there are movies and works of literature, poetry or novels, short stories, there are works of art, there's music that has really transformed your soul, that stays with you as almost soul companions, right? These artifacts of arts and culture, these are load bearing columns in the architecture of our souls. And yet again in the culture, it's oftentimes about other kinds of things. So I started the Humanities and Human Flourishing Project in the Positive Psychology center to study scientifically and in a collaborative way with researchers and practitioners how can we understand and assess and advance our experience with arts and culture to really unlock more of the well being value of our interaction with music and literature and film, et cetera. So that's what I'm doing. I'm 50% leading the master of Applied Positive Psychology program, teaching and directing and 50% doing research in this area. We now have the Oxford Handbook on of the Positive Humanities that was published last year. We have a book series with Oxford University Press with books in different disciplines. History and human flourishing, Philosophy and human flourishing, Music and Human flourishing, for example. So we're trying to shift some of these perspectives within academia, but then also within our culture so that we can unlock again, we can understand and remember and reinforce the value of our arts and culture for well being. Brian, you and I have often talked that, we've spoken about that if you had decided to go the academic route, professor of Practice probably would have been a really nice title for you. And if I had not gone the academic route, I would want to be doing what you're doing, which is really cool because we're bringing different pieces of the puzzle together and of course with everyone else who's on this call and, and, and it's fun to kind of get a sense of what that other person is living and understanding that vicariously and, and, and collaboratively. So let me just now come back to the, to the moonshot and Brian, I don't know if you have anybody in this context, but usually in the Master's program when I'm in a class and it's, it's about this time I ask for here who will help to slow time down, because I think that would be really nice. We got a lot more to say, but. No, I'm just teasing. We'll respect the time, but. So Brian wants me to tell you the story about the moonshot. And this was when one of the things that we did about 15 years ago is we started the International Positive Psychology association to create a place where people could come together, researchers and practitioners from around the world who are interested in this field of positive psychology, interested in the science of what makes individuals and communities thrive. And so we started this association, wisely or not. I volunteered to be the first executive director. It was a part time position, voluntary position. It was an amazing opportunity and has since then become way, way, way more than one person can do in a volunteer position. So I'm delighted that we now have a full time executive director. So I'm not there anymore in that capacity, although I still serve on the board and serve as an advisor. But so we, we. One of the first thing we wanted to do was to have a world Congress. And so we planned this thing. It was way more. Anybody here involved, been involved in planning a conference? Okay, a couple of you. So you know what I'm talking. I thought you go to a conference, you know, you got to register a couple weeks beforehand, maybe a month or two beforehand, you go to the conference. And that's basically what a conference is. No, no, no, no, no. Conferences, world congresses, you have to plan like years in advance, literally two years in advance. You're like looking around going, oh, in two years from now, this is what we're going to be doing. So it was a very long process. And the first one, are people going to come? How is it going to work out? It was fantastic. People enjoyed it. It was clearly an idea whose time had come. We were meeting with the executive committee and then the board before the Congress started. And I said to them, all right, the congress is planned, we're good. Now what? Now what? The field needs to have something that can galvanize us, can move us forward, can help us come together and unlock our energies in this kind of a way. And Marty thought about it for a while and he came back and he said, I think I've got it. He said, I think the moonshot for the field of positive psychology ought to be that by the year 2051, 51% of the world's population would be flourishing. Wow, what a moonshot, right? Or maybe that's an Earth shot in some kind of way or a human shot, because it's about saying, and there's a lot to do here, right? What does flourishing even mean? How can we understand, you know, integrate ancient wisdom and modern science and creative practice as you do here at Heroic. How can we bring together groups of people? How can we understand what it means in different cultures? Like all there's, you know, most of the people who are going to be alive in 2051. I think I'm right on this. Most of the people who are going to be alive in 2051 aren't alive now. So we can't just say we're going to create something that's great for. We've got to think about these new generations and how so complex, wonderfully complex, delightful project Moonshot Earthshot to be undertaken. Now one of the wonderful things, as I mentioned, about this community that we have within the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, but even more broadly now within the International Positive Psychology association. And I would invite you, if you have an interest in either, you know, in positive psychology, want to look into it more deeply, please. You can be a member of more than one community, right, Brian? So, yes, absolutely. So one of the, one of the graduates of our master's program introduced me to this guy named Ryan Johnson. She had done some work with him. She had, you know, taken I think, some, some courses with him and really liked his stuff. And I'm like, you know, well, I don't know, is this, you know what. In fact we were, I was part of an interview series that we were doing with Larry King at that time before Larry passed away. And they said, you know, we can, Brian can be one of our, one of our interviewees. And I'm like, well, tell me more about him. I want to, I want to learn. And that interview process was so energizing for me, Brian. We like hit it off from the, from the get go, right? And then I said to this, to this alum, Donna Hemmert. I'm like, you know, Brian is doing this like this 6 month coaching thing or something. There's, there's like something starting up really soon here. What do you think? Is this something that I would like? It sounds interesting. What do you. She's like, oh my goodness. Yeah, I think you would really get a lot out of it. And so I jumped in and goodness gracious, I got so much out of it. I thoroughly enjoyed in part because it was all this ancient wisdom, there was all this modern science and it was packaged in such a way That I could actually take action. So I have become a great fan. I'm delighted to have a copy of the Arete book. So I appreciate that, Brian. I had ordered my own personal copy, but my brother was here visiting a couple of weeks ago and he liked it so much, I'm like, dan, you gotta take it with you. So go for it. Just to tell you how much of a fan I am, I want to show you what is next to my heart.

No, you didn't. Look at you.

So, Brian, I am so incredibly grateful to you. First of all, for our friendship. Secondly, for the way that you are showing up in the world and living your life and serving others who can also then join with you like you're living your life in an invitational way. And so it's not just, oh, there goes Brian, you know, doing the spartan race and nobody can join. It's there goes Brian saying, come on together, let's all join in. Let's all be our best selves. So I'm all in. And I'm delighted to have had this opportunity. I can't believe almost an hour has gone by and I've talked the whole time. Sorry about that. But again, so much respect, Brian, for you, for everyone on this call. And look forward to more connections and hopefully some face to face meetings at some time in the future.

My goodness. Goosebumps. Brother, I appreciate you. And apologizing at the end of that is, as I like to joke, like Santa apologizing for delivering too many presents. That was such a beautiful, beautiful story. There are so many aspects of it that I want to highlight. Again. So the hero goes on a quest and another quest and another quest. And there's moments where I could feel you stepping forward into growth and answering that call to adventure the way that you honored your guides slash heroes. And they really are. From my vantage point, that integration of both qualities and your expression of William James, Tony Robbins and Martin Seligman. I've been reflecting more on it as I ask more friends, well, who are your favorite heroes? And I usually ask for two. And the individual is usually the exact blend of those two heroes. It's a fascinating thing. So to see you as that unbelievable embodiment of William James, the philosopher, Tony Robbins, the inspirational teacher, and Martin Seligman, the grounded, rigorous, conservative scientist like you truly are. If there was a way to mix those together and have you show up in your own beautifully idiosyncratic, iconoclastic, heroic way, It's a sacred expression of all the truths that you've been so Passionate about studying for the last X decades. So just, just a wonderful thing to witness you in this context. I appreciate you sharing stories that as you, you, you said so articulately. You don't often go into the details of. So thank you for doing that. I love the fear doors. I loved your description of the vision. And I remember the first time, and you've heard me say this, but the first time I heard that moonshot goal and, and you were humble and you didn't frame it up of your invitation to explore it, you know, and, and I remember you saying that Marty originally kind of poo poo, then came back the next morning and said, I figured it out. And you said, I figured you figured what out? The moonshine goal. That's. I mean, I think of you all day, every day. I mean, every time I look down at 51, 20, 51, I think of you, I think of you, I think of Marty, I think of all the hard work that you all have been doing and then that commitment to playing, you know, my. And our roles humbly yet heroically well. So you're literally just imprinted on my body and your work and who you are, it just means so much to me. So again, I want to celebrate you for that and for all the things that that led to that and then your sacred honoring of the community, our community, your community. The importance of community is so beautiful, you know, to find that integration of the wisdom and the community which we talk a lot about, those are the two ways to change one's life. The wisdom, like conversations like this inside out, I got an idea. I can apply it pragmatically, et cetera. But then the community, simply being in community with you, with our, our beautiful human beings with us today, it's like something happens in that interaction. So those were really the, the most salient points for me. But more than anything, just deep gratitude and appreciation for you, the inspiration and the wisdom that you've given me, all the things that we haven't talked about and, and won't talk about in terms of how you've supported us behind the scenes. Just bless you. I love you, I appreciate you and I can't wait to see you soon. We haven't even met in person yet. How is that possible? I feel like, I feel like we have many, many times, but I can't wait for that. And yeah, we could talk for hours and hours and that. That time does fly when you're having fun with friends. So thank you. Bless you. Day one. All in. Let's go.

Brian, thank you. I appreciate the gift of those reflections back. And I'll just end, if I might, with a tribute to one more person that I didn't mention, yet another mentor, John Locks, who passed away a couple of weeks ago and was a professor of more than 50 years, a philosophy professor at Vanderbilt University. Incredibly important on my life's journey. I dedicated my. My William James book to him. And when I. When I had a conversation with him, I was just a kid starting out. What did I know? He was this incredibly illustrious philosopher. And I was telling him, I'm doing these applied pragmatism. Is this like. Is this a thing? Or could it be a thing? Am I crazy? And he said to me, you know, James, tell me all about it. I want to hear the full picture. And he listened. And I shared with him what I was doing, what I was hoping for, and so forth. And he was so incredibly supportive. And I said to him, and I suspect that this will also resonate with each one of us, because I know we all have mentors and guides along the way. And I said to him, john, I'm so grateful, so grateful for what you're providing to me. And I don't just want to be a taker. How. How can I support you? How can I give back? What can I do? And he said to me, pay it forward to the community. Give back to the community. And that's what I've been trying to do every. Ever since. I can never repay the debt that I have to John Locks, to William James, to Tony Robbins, to, To. To Marty Seligman, to you, Brian, to. To the people in. We never can. And that's the beauty of it. It's. It's a. It's a. It's a way of living our lives. When we've received, then it's really important for us to find ways to give, oftentimes not the same direction. It's spreading it out into the world. So if I can just. Just gratefully acknowledge the role of John Locke and kind of dedicate this hour to his memory and invite all of you to join me in expressing appreciation for the wisdom that he was channeling to me by rededicating our efforts to. To passing along what we've received, pay it out into the community.

Beautiful. Amen. There is our bookended meditation with a practical application on the way out. James, bless you. I'm glad we're able to honor your professor. And again, your humility strikes me so profoundly, and your commitment to sacred service, you know, and I can Feel the spirit. You know, that Jesus is on my upper left and that the spirit of my upbringing, he's there to remind me of my mom's admonition to me that God gave me gifts and I must give them to the world to feel your, your arc. To go back to the very beginning of your origin story and the sacred generosity of spirit that your parents embodied being in that community, you know, your great, great, great, your great grandfather and just who you are and how you are an expression of that faith in action. You know, this is such a be way to. To kind of see the entire arc and yet to see this as just the next step in our journey. And, and yeah, well, so along those.

Lines, along those lines, Brian, I mentioned at the very beginning that my mom had wanted me to be me to become a minister. Some of my students have suggested to me that I have goosebumps.

Oh, you know what I wrote when I dropped out of law school. So I don't know if I've ever shared this with you, but the only thing, and I wish I kept this part of my journals. I'm in the middle of a maelstrom of stress and chaos and no idea what I wanted to do. Very, very dark period. None of these skills. And I wrote down to myself, I would be an evangelist if I only had a religion in which I believed. Just that heartfelt desire to the ministry. Even John Mackey, who I'm looking at one of two living heroes on my wall beside my wife and kids. He describes Whole Foods as his ministry, full stop. Of course he's on to his next project now, but that was his 35 year whatever it was, ministry. So this act of using the gifts we've been given, doing the hard work to cultivate the strength for two such that we can show up as our heroic best in a world that needs us more than ever before. This is so wonderful. I mean, this is why I created this series and you again. To embody the ideals that I aspire to embody. That integration of ancient wisdom, modern science, practical tools and just a soul force of humble service is. It's just been such a joy. So bless you. Thank you. When you're unbuttoning the shirt, I'm like, where are we going here? Has you got somewhere to run to? So I love that, that, that reveal. That was fantastic. I love you, brother. Can't wait to see you soon. Send my love to Susie and Liam.

Love you, Brian. Love you all. Will do. Thank you. And onward and upward.

All right, see you soon. Bye. My goodness. Everyone, send James some love, please. As we soak in James's love, James's humility, James's heroic service, and our opportunity to pay it forward for his guidance. All the guidance we've received in our lives, Zach, if you can, please help us connect with one another, that would be fantastic. Are you good to go there? You need help? I'll unmute you, or ask you to unmute you. Let me flex my tech skills here today. This is great. Good work. Here's we. We're heading into breakout rooms, you said? Yep. Yeah, let's do that. Alrighty. Rooms are now open. So the guidance that we like to give here is think of one idea, James. Let it out perfectly. James, we always bookend these with. What's one idea that you got from our discussion today that you think could have the most positive impact in your life if you took it from theory to practice? If you can share that with those with whom you're connecting, perhaps share where you're from and your soul. Four score. And all that good stuff. And enjoy the community that will be created in these smaller contexts. And with that, have a great rest of the day and a great weekend. I will see you all tomorrow. Weekend Edition from a chess tournament. Until then, Happy Friday.