51: Die Empty — With Todd Henry

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am so excited to have Todd Henry here with us today. Todd is an author, speaker, podcaster and he focuses on creativity, productivity and passion for work and helps people generate fulfillment and brilliant ideas. He is the author of three books with a fourth on the way, Accidental Creative, Die Empty and Louder Than Words. And I'm really excited to dig into Die Empty today because, Todd, I have to tell you, I've had it on my shelf just for the inspiration of looking at the title alone. It's made a huge impact. So thank you for being here, Jenny.

It is such a joy to get to talk with you. Thanks for having me on.

Yes, you say in Die Empty you cannot pursue greatness and comfort at the same time. And you ask this fundamental question. How do you set in motion a course of action that will allow you to unleash your best, most valuable work while you still can? Tell me what it means to Die Empty. Tell us all.

So about a decade. Wow. It was a little over a decade ago now. I was in a meeting and somebody asked an out of the blue question in the meeting. It was kind of a critical time for the organization that I was a part of. And he said, what do you think is the most valuable land in the world? We all start throwing out guesses and oil fields of the Middle East. My friend was from South Africa, so gold mines of South Africa, throwing out all these guesses and they were all wrong. And he said, no, I think you're all wrong. He said, I think the most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. And we were like, the graveyard? That's a weird response, right? He said, because in the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, all of the untaken risks, all of the unexecuted ideas, all of the businesses that were never built. And people said, yeah, I'll get around to that tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll do that tomorrow. I'm going to take action on that idea or that dream. And. And they never did it. And they pushed it into the future till one day, all of that value was buried with them in the ground. That's why it's the most valuable land in the world. That day I went back to my office, and this really struck me in a profound way. I went back to my office, I wrote two words on an index card, put them in my notebook, put them on the wall of my office. And the two words were die Empty. Because I wanted to know that when I reach the end of my life, I'm not taking my best work to the grave. But instead I'm doing everything I can on a daily basis to empty myself of whatever good stuff is inside. I mean, by the way, work doesn't just mean our job. I mean, that's one of the most physical manifestations. But any place we add value in our life is work. And I want to make sure that those ideas, those aspirations, those hopes aren't locked up inside of me. But I'm trying my best to get that out into the world every day so that someday, in the hopefully distant future, when they lay me in the ground, I'm not taking my best work to the grave. But I can die empty of regret, but full of satisfaction for a life well lived. And so that's really kind of, I think, what the philosophy is that drove the writing of the book, Die Empty. And really, it's kind of been a life philosophy for me and try to instill it in my kids as well.

It's so interesting because it is a very powerful call to action. We hear carpe diem and seize the day and things like that. But Die Empty is very immediate. I think you joke in the book that we have 100% mortality rate. This is happening for all of us. And you also shared the challenge of writing a book about death. I thought that was very interesting, that it was kind of a conundrum that you faced about whether to adopt this, as you call it, as some kind of motivational slogan, given that there's die in the title.

Right, yeah. You know, and it's. It is. I guess the book is not about death. Right. It's actually about life. But it's about recognizing that, listen, we get one shot. I mean, really we get one shot at this and it's, you know, I can't remember, is it Mary Oliver who said, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Right. What are you going to do with your life and are you doing it today? I think that's an important question for all of us because I think we all live under this illusion that, oh, we've always got more time, we've always got tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow or next week or whatever. That is why many of us never get around to the things that we deeply care about or the dreams that we have. We don't even take small steps because we think, well, I'll always have tomorrow to do it. The reality is we're not promised. We're not even promised today, let alone tomorrow.

If we want to avoid deep, deep regret in our lives, the only remedy is decisive action and steady progress on the things that matter to us.

So let's assume that. Anyone listening to the Pivot podcast, I call them high net growth individuals. Nobody's listening to a career or business podcast if they don't care about learning and growing. So already they've kind of made that distinction for themselves. But why then does it happen if, let's say, high net growth pivoters want to die empty, they get that it's important. They get we're not guaranteed anything. And yet why do we go through phases where we aren't living that way creatively? What would you say? You published this book in 2013, so I'm also curious what you've noticed since, as people come up to you in speeches and things like that.

Yeah, well, you know, nobody sets a goal for mediocrity, right? Nobody wakes up thinking, I can't wait to crank out a steaming pile of crap today. Nobody does that. But it happens, right? We slip into these habits. There are some very fundamental ways that our brains are wired, certain biological realities about us. And we crave comfort as humans, and we crave predictability, and we crave normalcy. We crave to feel like we fit in, like we're part of the norm. And all of those things work counter in many ways to us actually doing the things that matter to us or the things that might be uncomfortable, taking an uncomfortable risk, pushing ourselves outside of normalcy and risking ridicule and risking personal physical discomfort or mental discomfort, psychological discomfort, as we're pursuing these things. We risk that when we try, when we strive. And it's much easier just to settle into the fold. And so I think for many of us, I think we compromise not because we don't care about those things that we aspire to, but because, frankly, we are biologically and psychologically wired to crave normalcy. We're wired to crave being a part of what everybody else is doing. And over time, that just leads to repetition and mediocrity and assumptiveness and ruts. It's so easy to just live day after day after day in the same groove, in the same rut, without even realizing that's what's happening to you and to settle into mediocrity. And that word, mediocrity is really interesting to me because if you kind of parse it into its original form, it comes from the words medias, meaning middle, and ochreous, meaning rugged mountain. So to be mediocre literally means to stop halfway up a rugged mountain to get halfway to your objective and say, nah, close enough. And I think that's what many of us do. We get close enough, we get halfway there and we say, eh, just settle in, it's fine, I've got enough right? I'm enough up the mountain that I feel okay about my effort and I'll just kind of settle in. And again, nobody aims for that. And also the other thing is, I think mediocrity is a sliding scale, Jenny. I mean, I think you could be going to work delivering on your expectations. Everybody around you can look at you and say, hey, you're doing fine, you're delivering. But deep down you know that you're settling in. Deep down you know that you're not really delivering your best, or you're not even pursuing your best. You're not challenging yourself. You're not sharpening your curiosity, you're not pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You're allowing fear to paralyze you. Some of these forces that can come against us, and we know that nobody else can see it, but we know it. And so I think mediocrity is a sliding scale in that way.

It's such a great point. And I found it interesting that you talk about how successful can also lead to fear and resistance and mediocrity. Because I get a lot of people who come to me and they're mid career, they're very successful outwardly or on paper. As I say in pivot, that, yeah, their success is what got them to this pivot point. Not any sort of failure or lack of skill or talent, but there's a feeling on the inside that they're ready for more. And yet I think once A person has been successful and, let's say, made it to a certain level in the corporate climb or in their career. And. And then it's almost even scarier to take a risk from that point.

It is because people think, oh, well, once it's easy for those people, the people who are successful, the people who have a little bit of history behind them, and everybody looks at them and says, oh, well, that person's competent and they're successful. I think in some ways it becomes harder for people once they have a little bit of success because then they have something to protect. They sort of have to guard how other people view them, and they're maybe a little more hesitant to take a risk because there's so much at stake. I wrote about, in my latest book, Louder Than Words, I wrote about the phases of growth that we go through in our lives and our careers. We develop our voice, we go through this kind of discovery phase where we start something new, we're trying something new, maybe we're new in our career. Then we go through emulation phase. And emulation phase is when we look around and we find other people who are already successfully doing what we're doing, and we try to emulate them as a way to build our skills. We see this in the marketplace when you maybe latch onto a mentor or a manager, and that's how you learn the basics. You develop your chops, and you build your platform for doing your work. Then divergence phase is the next phase. That's when we start finding our own voice and taking risks and developing our own style and trying new things and contributing unique value to the marketplace. But at some point, we all hit this place of crisis or stasis, where we're not really getting the same results as we were getting on our efforts. And it seems like we're kind of stuck, and nobody else sees it. Everybody else looks at us and says, wow, look what you're doing. This is amazing. But we know that we're not growing anymore. I think many people get to that place where they've contributed some value and they're known for a thing, but they feel stuck. They're not growing, they're not developing their skills. So the two places that I find people get stuck, Jenny, the most are in emulation phase, where they say, you know what? I can create enough value just by copying everybody around me. It's sort of a cover band in the marketplace. I can just replicate what everybody else is doing. I don't really need to find my voice or find my own unique Expression or my own unique value, I can just make it. It's safer to do that because you don't get rewarded necessarily for doing that in a big way, but you also don't get punished if you're just doing what's expected, then. The second place people get stuck is in that crisis phase where they've done something unique, they've contributed unique value, but now stuck because they're still doing the same thing they've always done, and they feel like they're just emulating a past form of themselves. The only way to move beyond that is to go back to the beginning, to learn a new skill, to try something new, find someone else to emulate, develop a new form of expression or a new platform. But it's hard to do that once you've achieved some success, because you feel like you have a name to protect or a brand to protect. You don't want to look foolish. You're afraid of failing, even in small ways, because you're afraid of what that's going to say about who you are. Maybe you've adopted a little bit too much of your identity from your work. How you see yourself is identical to the work that you do or.

How other people view you in the marketplace. But whatever it is, you're afraid to take a new risk because you're afraid of failure. I think in many ways, it becomes more difficult to take risks once you've had some success, because it does feel like you have to protect what you've done.

It's interesting because I'm in the middle of this now, too, which is that there is also fear if. If I inherently have to pivot. You know, as creatives, we produce a work, it's out there, and then there is a pivot required. You can't just keep doing the same work. Or, I mean, maybe someone can, but for a lot of us, we are going to want to do things different and keep learning and growing. And there's this question of, will people come with me? And maybe not everyone will. That's the reality of it. And I'm curious, do you think that creatives inherently have to go through the crisis state? Does it have to get to that point? Or is there a way to be more continuous in the flow, this. Let's call it the die empty flow, where it doesn't get to the point of crisis or stasis?

So I don't think it's necessary that you camp out there, but I think everyone hits a point where they realize, okay, this isn't working for me anymore. Something is broken. I need something new. And I think for some people, the moment they start to feel, it's kind of like if you start feeling a little bit of pain in your back and you realize, okay, I might be overdoing it a little bit, and you stop and you try something El. Right. When you're exercising. I should have put that at the beginning. When you're exercising, if you feel a little pain in your back. Right.

But some people wait until that little bit of pain becomes like a screaming pain, and by that point it's too late. And I think that's what it's like. When we hit crisis phase, we start to feel discontent. We start to feel like we're not really contributing unique value. We're not growing anymore. We're getting results, and everybody's happy with us, but we recognize that we are personally not growing anymore. I think. I think the people who continue up the curve with minimal pain are those who recognize that early and are willing to try new things, to exercise their curiosity to develop new skills and continue up the curve. I think those who kind of sit and wait because they're afraid, I think they experience more pain later because they sit in that anguish, that realization that I'm kind of phoning it in for a little bit too long. And honestly, they start to die a little bit when that happens. They start to lose their productive passion. They start to atrophy a bit. And so I think the sooner we recognize that, okay, it's time to make a move and we act on it, even in small ways, I think the better off we're going to be.

That reminds me of what we were talking about before we hit record, that we were talking about writing next books. And you said you write to figure out what the book is about. And I would think that people listening probably don't realize how incomplete a book is even when you pitch the proposal or start writing the draft, that there's still so much shaping that goes on just by doing the work. So it strikes me that partly by rolling up your sleeves again, that staves off some of the really intense crisis buildup that you were just describing.

Yeah, I think, frankly, one of the only ways to accomplish anything is to jump into it, and you have to have a lay of the land. You have to understand, really, the outcome that you're trying to achieve. But how you get there, I think is very malleable. And so when I start writing a book, I obviously have a foundation of research that done, and I have a lot of interviews And a lot of data, but all the patterns aren't there necessarily. And one of the biggest roles of the author is to take a lot of complex things and to try to turn them into something meaningful to people, but not in a way that is overly simplistic, but in a way that makes them digestible to people and actionable to people Also, as you know, the biggest role, I think, of a writer is to write what is true, not what you wish was true. And I think the most powerful books are the ones that tell the truth, not the truth that we all wish was there. And so at least if you want to be helpful to people. And so really the biggest part of writing a book is searching for that truth. What is the baseline of truth here? How can I make this as simple as I can make it without making it simplistic or overly simplifying it? Because I forget who said it. But the old adage of seek simplicity but distrust it, I think that there's a lot of wisdom there. I think that things are always a little bit complex when you really get to the bottom of what is true. But I think they're not as complex as we often make them to be. So the role of the writer, I think, is to figure out where is the baseline of simplicity here that is helpful to people but isn't oversimplifying to the point where it's going to distract them or it's not going to be helpful in their journey.

I really love that. And especially you talk about this in louder than words, finding one's authentic voice. And I will say that the thing people come up to me for after they've read the book or at a speaking engagement, maybe it's the method. You know, in some ways, though, this is very practical and helpful, but they'll specifically mention stories where I just share the truth. How challenging someone was. Someone recently said, thank you so much for your speech today. You gave me the feeling that entrepreneurship is hard, but I can do it, you know? And I was like, then I conveyed something right, because I don't want to be the person sitting up on stage saying, oh, this is so easy. And I have it all figured out. I'm just willing to be honest about what my challenges are and how I work through them and hope that that's helpful for people, too. And I think what. There's so much fear, at least when I think of die empty, I think some of the fear is, what if I speak my truth? Or what if it doesn't connect? Or it's kind of scary to reveal vulnerabilities and fears. But that's the thing that connects us most.

It is, and it will be. It will be scary, and it won't connect with everyone. And that's not the point, right? The point isn't that you're liked by everyone, and the point isn't that you do something that everybody celebrates. I mean, frankly, just to be really candid, I have met many excellent people in roles that other people look at and think, well, that's not an important role. I mean, think of the typical sort of custodian role or bus driver or something like that, where people are like, okay, this is societally speaking, which is wrong. But societally speaking, we wouldn't look at those roles as important jobs. I've met many excellent, excellent people in those roles. And I have sat down with mediocre CEOs of companies, people who are phoning it in. You look at them from the outside and you think, okay, this person is very important and successful, but they're phoning it in. And they are not bringing their best value, and they're not spending themselves on behalf of other people, and they're not trying to pour value into other people around them. And they've settled into mediocrity regardless of what their bank account says or regardless of what other people might say about them in the marketplace. And so our only job every day as creative people, which we all are, we all have the capacity to create value in the world and to change the world around us. Our only job every day is to bring who we are to what we do and to ensure that we're not allowing our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions, the things that are inside of us, the value we have to create, to atrophy, because we're failing to put it in motion. Now, listen, we won't get to do everything right. None of us get to. I hope I die with more hopes, dreams, ambitions than I had the day before. I hope that happens, right? Because none of us get to do everything we want to do. But I don't want to go to my grave knowing that there were things I could have acted on and I didn't because of fear, because of comfort, because I was aimless. I hadn't defined my battles because I didn't understand what I was really trying to do, because I allow busy boredom to take over my life, which so many of us do. So that's what I'm saying is I don't want those forces to cause me to settle into mediocrity simply by default. But instead I'm designing my life so I'm getting the most value that I can out into the world while I have the opportunity.

So that brings up a question that I have, which is the time frame that we are considering our die empty ness and our goals. Because sometimes I think if we think about and you talk about the last day fallacy, so we can come back to that. But if we think every day I have to die empty, it can feel like a lot of pressure. Okay, maybe for a three year span I'm going to die empty every three years I'm going add to empty out like a big creative project. But what have you found to be most helpful that honors the natural ebbs and flows of a creative person's life and process versus this, like make them as you know, I hate the phrase I'll sleep when I'm dead. It's like I need a lot of sleep. And so I think sometimes people might even as much as they want to die empty, there are some weeks or months where we're just in of the void, in a lull. And like, no, it doesn't feel like you're dying empty in those moments. So how do you manage the whole flow of it?

Yeah, there's a phrase I came across in writing this book. I think it's karoshi, which is a Japanese phrase for death from overwork. Right. Literally working yourself to death. And that is not at all, I'm going to be very clear about. It is not what this concept is about.

And I try to be really clear about that in the book. Because if you're doing that, you are not going to. You're not going to be bringing the best of yourself to the people around you, to your family or to your friends or to your co workers or to the barista at Starbucks. This is not about workaholism. It's not about guilt and it's not about shame and it's not about, oh, I'm not doing enough. I think a lot of people adopt this mindset, especially people in the marketplace, to justify workaholism. Well, I've got to get it all out. I've got to get this. And that is not at all what this is about. And so I think we have to be really careful to drive those lines and recognize that, hey, my body of work, the delta that exists, delta being the mathematical symbol for change, the change that exists on this earth because I sucked air. Is it representative of the sum of who I am? Is it representative of the sum of My greatest accomplishments of me bringing the best of who I am to the world or the sum of my greatest compromises. And that body of work is not just my job. That body of work is how I treat my family. How I develop myself is a big part of it. How I use my opportunities to serve other people and how I use the opportunities in front of me to leverage them to change the lives of other people around me or to change the world around me, all of those things are part of my body of work. They're all a result of how I spend my focus, my assets, my time and my energy on a daily basis. It's not about am I getting everything done? Can I work? It's not about working yourself to death. Instead, it's about ensuring that you're approaching your life with meaning, with purpose and with a clear understanding of what it is you're about and what you're trying to do.

That's so, so important to say that I love that you clarified and yeah, and I think what I love you talk about one ingredient is asking what problems need to be solved and that one of the key skills we're all going to need in the future is becoming better question askers in the first place. Just finding the problems, not to mention then going about solving them them. And just so we don't leave people hanging, because I want to share this from the last day fallacy, I think it's so great you basically encourage people not to ask what would you do if it was your last day on Earth? Because it's likely very different than what we would do in an average workday or week. But instead, imagine that you'll have a guest accompanying you throughout your day tomorrow. I find that very interesting.

Yeah, that's right. Well, yeah, because listen, if I'm going to live as if it's my last day, I'm going to eat donuts all day, I'm going to probably go skydiving, I'm going to spend everything in my bank account. I mean, it's not sustainable to say live as if it's your last day. Because we would do all kinds of things on our last day that would not necessarily be healthy or viable, healthy for us or the people around us. And so while I applaud the sentiment behind that, which is don't take today for granted and I think that's a good sentiment to have.

I think in the book I proposed, imagine somebody's going to walk around with you today and they're going to write a biography of your life. Based on what they observe today about how you approach your relationships, how you approach your work, how you structure your time, how you sleep, all of those things. If your biography is going to be written based upon somebody following you around and observing you today, how would you change your behavior in order to accommodate that person following you around? And I find that that is a more valuable way to think about spending your time meaningfully than the sort of last day fallacy of you only live once and spend it all today kind of thing.

I would even extend it to maybe someone's following you for a week or a month, and therefore it's okay if tomorrow isn't even a 10 out of 10, but you have, what would you do in this kind of average span of time?

Absolutely no question. But for me, the idea is today, how am I choosing to treat the people around me today, how diligent am I choosing to be about whatever's in front of me, the work that's in front of me? Am I really bringing myself to what's in front of me? Including, am I bringing myself to my relationships? Because that's part of my body of work, is how I treat other people. Am I taking care of my body? Am I developing myself? Am I taking care of my mind? Am I sharpening my curiosity? Am I feeding this amazing tool that is between my ears? Steven Sample from USC called it. Am I communing with great minds on a daily basis and sharpening my mental capacity? All of these things are part of our body of work. It's not just our job, it's all of these things. And so for me, it's helpful to think about how would I be approaching those things if I knew that somebody was going to be observing me, writing down their observations and writing my biography based upon what they saw?

What about what do you think is the killer app, or let's say the antidote? If someone is in a place of stagnation or mediocrity or they're not so thrilled with how they're going to be spending that day, that someone's shadow, shadowing them? Because you wrote this a couple years ago now. So do any of the principles stand out of being particularly meaningful linchpin antidotes to the mediocrity feeling?

Yeah, I mean, I think that when you start to slip into a place where you feel like I am behaving in the rote way, that my work is rote, that I'm in danger of slipping into stasis, mediocrity, fossilization, and this is, listen this is kind of. It's going to sound like trite advice, because a lot of the best advice is common advice. And the reason it's common advice is because we have to hear it over and over again. Because nobody acts on it. Right? So we have to keep saying it because nobody does it. But I think it's important that you take a strategic risk every day with your work, that you push yourself in some way to do something that is a little bit uncomfortable for you, that forces you to have to see the world in a new way, that forces you to have to. To exercise muscles that you don't exercise on a regular basis. I'm not talking about big, stupid risks. It's what we tend to think of when we think of, for example, entrepreneurship. People say, well, okay, well, then I have to go start a business or I have to completely blow up my career and just make a career change tomorrow.

That is not advised for anyone. I would say that. But rather than do that, start taking small strategic risks and start exploring a little bit. Nobody sits down and starts a business. Nobody sits down. Nobody writes a book. You write 500 words. That's what you do. And then that 500 becomes 1000, becomes 1500, becomes 2000. Pretty soon you've got a substantial body of work in front of you. That's how it happens. Same with a business. Nobody just sits down and starts a business. It's the result of a lot of little calculated risks on a daily basis that eventually add up to something more substantial. My encouragement to people would be make sure that on a daily basis you are taking some kind of strategic risk with your work. It could be relational risk. Maybe you reach out to someone that seems a little bit beyond who you should be reaching out to. Maybe it's a risk with your work. Maybe you take a little bit of a risk with your art today that you normally wouldn't take. Or maybe you try a new method that maybe you normally wouldn't, or you try to develop a new skill that scares you a little bit. But whatever it is, try to take a strategic risk on a daily basis, because I find that that's the antidote to stasis for many people.

What are some of your strategic risks at the moment?

I'm taking a lot of risks with this new book. I'm really trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone because a big chunk of what I do is I write books. And then I spend a lot of time with companies, sharing the ideas with companies and helping them internalize them and act on them. Them. I take risks when I speak, of course. I've given, I don't know, probably 10 or 11 talks in the last handful of weeks to companies or conferences. And I always try to take strategic risks with my talks. But I'm really pushing myself as a writer right now to really get outside of my comfort zone and to write in ways that are unexpected, that surprise me. That's sort of my measure is, am I surprising myself as I'm working? If I'm not, then I'm probably not taking enough risks with what I'm doing.

Fascinating. So what kind of writing surprises you?

It's turns of phrases, it's observations, it's the directness of my tone. It's really easy for me to slip into, okay, here's a point, and here's an example. And here's a point, and here's an example. I mean, it's so easy to slip into that, right? So for me, as a teacher, as somebody who teaches through speaking, who teaches through books, one of the things that I have to regularly challenge myself on is finding connections that may seem tenuous and finding ways of making them apply.

To what's in front of you. I actually start my new book with a story. I can't tell this. I don't want to tell the story because I want it to be fresh when it comes out. But it was this experience that we had on vacation as a family, and it framed up the entire experience of the new book just based on this one experience that I had in a gift shop at Disney World when we were sort of visiting Disney World. And it was kind of this really interesting, unique experience. But for me, it's a stretch to try to tie that into leadership principles, which is what I'm working on right now. But that's a kind of strategic risk I'm trying to take right now with my writing, is to draw more sort of everyday examples into the work, rather than just saying, this person was a manager at this company, and here's what they experienced, and here are the lessons from that.

Excited. I'm really, really excited with where the strategic risks are leading me.

I love it. I love the idea. I mean, that's bold to talk about one strategic risk. Every day. I talk in pivot about smart risks. I don't think I ever used the word risk without putting smart in front of it because I feel similarly to you. I wanted to make sure the two go together. But I love the idea of challenging ourselves once a day. And all the examples you gave are so Great of the new, of how we can do that. And then to your point about capturing, I think, so much of the creative process that people probably don't even acknowledge as being part of the process. But being curious observers, I even have an Evernote notebook called Curiosity. And when things sort of grab my attention, like you're a Disney World experience, I'll just put a note in the folder and then when I go to write or actually see, start creating with a capital C, there are more little nuggets that I've collected, like little Easter eggs that I can revisit. So for one thing I want to get better at is fleshing them out in the moment when it's fresh, because I often forget some of the more salient details. I don't know. I don't know how memoirists do it, where they remember such richness from like the time they were 10. It's remarkable, isn't it, that kind of brain. Yes.

Yeah. Especially memoirs who are writing.

Now from 30 years ago when you didn't have. It'll be so much easier for memoirs 20 years from now. They just go back to their old Instagram feed or their old Twitter feed or their way. Or Facebook or whatever. Oh, yeah, that's what I was doing. Right. I mean, assuming any of those things will be around in 20 years. But yeah, it's so interesting to see how people do that and how vivid their memories are. I wonder if in some ways it's going to inhibit our ability to.

To develop a cohesive narrative of who we are because we have kind of off boarded that sort of internal memory of our child. You know, we sort of. We store all of our memories now out in the cloud somewhere rather than sort of internalizing those stories. I don't know. It's interesting, right?

Or even documenting in the moment instead of being in the moment. I wonder if that changes our memory of it or. Or our ability to recall it. Just kind of outsourcing a bit of our memory even from the get go.

Absolutely.

The last thing I want to ask you about, because I just can't not talk about this. I love how you describe a sacred space, or as Joseph Campbell calls it, the Bliss Station, or he calls it a sacred place too. I believe maybe you call it Bliss Station. Can you just briefly tell us how you've created this for yourself, either energetically a sacred space or time in your day or a physical one?

Yeah, those are both Joseph Campbell phrases, by the way. Sacred space and the blessed station. And he talks about how. So Joseph Campbell for those who don't know, he's sort of the really probably the preeminent thinker about story and narrative. Think like the hero's journey, right? And he says that all of us, he believes all of us need to have a place in our life that he calls a bliss Station. A bliss station is the place we retreat to where there are no from the world, no external pressures, we're not going to be distracted in any way. And it's filled with things we love. A handful of years ago, my family was building a house. And I told my wife at the time, there's a perfect little corner on the corner of our new house. I said, I want to create a place in this new house for me to do my life's work. Not my life's work like my business, but my life's work to develop myself and to just go, to retreat, to think, to be by myself. And that's really what a Bliss station is. A bliss station is the place, it doesn't have to be a physical space, but it could be a time of day and like a park bench that you go to, or it could be you get up before anybody else is awake in your household, or you sort of get up and you go for a walk and you pop in the noise canceling headphones and you sort of walk or whatever it is. But it's a place that you go to be alone, to be alone with your ideas, to fill your soul, to absorb the great thoughts of other people, to listen to music that you love. And it's all about filling your well. That's what it is. I love that phrase from Julie Julia Cameron, who wrote the Artist's Way. It's all about filling your well. That's the goal of going to your bliss station.

I believe that we all need that if we want to be people who are spending ourselves in a way that's meaningful and valuable. Part of that is finding a way to fill ourselves so we have something to give away. Because you can't draw water from an empty well. My encouragement to people is make sure that you have a time, place to go where you're absorbing the thoughts of others, you're filling your well, you're listening to music that you love and you always leave inspired because it's really centered around how you can develop yourself and.

Sharpen your saw and fill your well so that you have something to give away.

Amazing. Todd, thank you so much for sharing all of your insights. I could talk to you about this for hours and hours, but we will Add anxiously await your next book. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

So you can find me@toddhenry.com that's my personal site. And also I have a podcast called the Accidental Creative, and every week we put out episodes talking about things like this and interviewing brilliant guests like you, Jenny Blake. So, yeah, so you can find the podcast wherever. You listen to podcasts as well.

You've been at the podcast for a long time now.

It's been 10 years. 11 years now. Yeah. It's funny because 11 years, absolutely. So when we. When I started the podcast, literally, like, you had to take this device called an ipod that looked like a deck of cards, right. And you had to plug it into your computer, and you had to download files to your computer, then sync them up to the ipod, and then you could listen to them on the go. That's what a pod. It's the only way to listen to a podcast at the time, unless you wanted to extreme it online.

And I was not into doing all that.

Yeah. No way. I mean, it's so funny. And now, like, it's so much fun. Easier to listen to podcasts. But it was. Yeah, I started. It's funny because When I started 11 years ago, I was like, you know, I think maybe I might be sort of on the back end of this podcasting thing. I think maybe I might have missed the curve a little bit, which is so funny because it'd been around for, like, a year, you know, when I started it. And now to look at where podcasting and On Demand audio has gone has been amazing.

How's that? How's that for a lesson in creativity? Like, don't give up just because you think you're late to the show. Okay, now I have to sneak. Oh, go ahead. And then I have one.

It's also a really valuable lesson about getting in early on. When you see a new technology that matches who you are and the unique gifts that you have and your unique sort of means of expression, jump on those platforms. Because if you get in early on the platform, then you're going to find an audience.

The way you just said it is the best way I've ever heard that phrase, which is not just try everything new right away, but when the technology matches who you are. That's brilliant. What's the biggest thing you've learned doing podcast interviews for however many hundreds over 11 years?

You know, the biggest thing I've learned is that everybody, every single person that I've interviewed.

Has arrived at their understanding of the world via vastly, vastly different circumstances. And vastly different, whether work circumstances or personal circumstances or educational experiences or whatever it is. But the one thing that I have learned is that you can always learn something about yourself by asking questions of other people. And it's almost like when I'm interviewing people, it's almost like looking in a mirror, because I learned so much about human nature, I learned so much about the world in general, and I learned so much about myself by asking questions of other people. Really, the biggest gift for me, I mean, I just love asking people questions. I love learning about what they know and what they've experienced. The biggest part of that is, selfishly, I do the podcast because I learned so much about myself, and I learned so much that I can apply to my own life and my own work by doing it. And I'm privileged. I get to share those experiences with all of our listeners, which is amazing. But I mean, selfishly, I kind of do the podcast for me because I love what I get out of the experience of doing it.

That is so cool. I know. I feel the same way that even if no one was listening, and I'm so grateful to everybody who is right now, but even if no one was, it's so enriching. It's one of the most enriching things I've ever done, and I had no idea it would be that way when I started.

Well, and I think that's what makes for a great podcast, right? Is when the host, I mean, all the podcasts I listen to and I love like yours are. The host, is genuinely curious and genuinely interested in whatever the guest is saying and really wants to get beneath kind of veneer of it. Those are the best shows, and it's not like, okay, now we're going to ask our slated set of questions that we have for you, right? Or, okay, let's go through the top talking points of your book or your movie or your whatever. No, let's have a genuine human conversation and try to get beneath the surface of what's really going on here. This conversation with you. I have never talked about much of this stuff before in years of talking about the book Die Empty, which is kind of cool. And so as a result, the conversation is going to be a little awkward, maybe because we're really trying to get to the human part of this, but at the same time, that that's what makes it really valuable. And I think endearing and helpful to the audience is because it's getting to the real and getting beyond kind of the talking points, which I love. I love that you're talking about. I love talking.

Likewise. I feel the same way. And for anyone listening, I feel so awkward. Pretty much every question of every interview, but I just let myself keep going. So I'm really pleased about that. Thank you, Todd. And yeah, it's true. It's a willingness. I think this is a takeaway for everyone. It's like a willingness to be awkward and imperfect and just keep going and keep doing it anyway.

Yeah, because we're all awkward and imperfect. And that's the reality. I mean, the reality of it is, I mean, I think the reason I listen to podcasts is because it feels like company to me. It feels like other people are sharing their life with me and it doesn't feel that way when it's stilted. And so I think the best conversation conversations, you sort of get to the eminently human aspect of whoever is involved in the conversation.

I love it. Well, this has certainly been a highlight of my day and week and month. So Todd, thank you so much again and good luck with all your writing for Book number.

Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thanks Jenny.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny Blake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.