Harris III (Illusionist)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits and routines, and how their faith influences their work. Today's guest is Harris iii. He is a world class illusionist and public speaker. You might have heard of him. He has performed live for more than 2 million people in more than 40 countries and 5 continents and 49 US states. As we talked about, Vermont is really holding out on Harris iii. Harris and I recently sat down. We talked about why wonder is essential for mastery at work. I wasn't convinced of this before the conversation. I think I am now. We talked about why he and many of our guests refused to wear the mastery label. And we talked about how Harrison and I can geek out over our circadian rhythms while sleeping and working and how that makes us more productive each day. I think you're really gonna enjoy this conversation with Harris iii.

Foreign.

Thanks for being here.

My pleasure, Jordan. Thanks for having me.

An illusionist, not a magician. I'm curious if you make that distinction as strongly as Gob Bluth does.

Nowhere near as with as much passion as he does, that's for sure. And it depends on who I'm talking to, too. Some people just have weird issues with the word magician. So illusionist seems a little bit safer these days.

What is that? But seriously, what is the deal? What is the distinction between magician and illusion?

It depends on who you're talking to. You know, to the average person on the street who doesn't know anything about magic tricks or how they are performed, or my industry and weird world in general, there's really not much of a difference. You know, you watch a trick, it's an illusion, it's a sleight of hand. It's like it's all the same. If you were to go to a magic conference, which is another whole conversation entirely. Yeah, it's probably exactly what a lot of you are picturing in your heads right now. It's, you know, it's like, hey, what do you do? It's like, oh, I'm an illusionist. That would actually come with a certain meaning. So easiest way to explain it. David Copperfield is an illusionist. He does very large illusions on stage. So if you're a stage performer in the magic industry that, you know, in a traditional sense, cuts a lady in half and puts her back together again, or makes a car appear or disappear on stage, those are illusions. If you walk up to someone and say, hey, pick a card, any card, do a card trick, make a coin disappear, those are magic tricks.

And so kind of the scale in a way.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, yes. But outside of the world of magic, there is no difference. Yeah, exactly.

By the way, I was reading in your bio that you've done gigs in 49 US states. Is there an arrest warrant for you in the 50th state? What's the deal there? Who is it?

I am just beginning to be convinced that people in Vermont do not like magic shows. I don't know what the deal is. I've never been to Vermont. I'm sure they love magic. I just, I have yet to be invited to perform there.

If you're listening all the way up in snowy Vermont, here's the third is calling. So that sounds like the right holdout, though. I expected that. So, hey, man, you have a pretty wild personal story, so let's just start here. What was it in your story that led you to making magic? A profession? Like, what was it as a kid? As a teenager? What was it?

Yeah, started when I was a kid. You know, I grew up in southeast Tennessee on a farm, pretty poor family, lower part of the middle class. My mom was a housekeeper and my dad worked in a factory. So minimum wage jobs. And long story short, I ended up getting this magic kit for Christmas from my grandmother when I was nine. Not at all what I'd asked for for Christmas that year. I was pretty obsessed with baseball at the time. Had asked for a baseball glove. Ended up with this box of magic tricks and wasn't really excited when I opened it. To be honest. There was more disappointment that I didn't get anything that I wanted, but kind of tossed it aside. A few days go by, you know, it's the holidays, school hadn't started back yet. I'm totally bored. I performed my first trick, I guess to start, I. An important part of the story is I actually practiced the first trick in my room and thought, this is super dumb. No one is going to be impressed by this. Like, it's Kind of like what a lot of people learn the secret to a trick. They're kind of like, oh, that's it. It's a little bit disheartening. And you think, surely no one would be fooled by this. So to prove that I was right, I march into the living room. My mom and dad are watching tv. And I'm like, mom and dad, gather around. You know, here's what. Here's what Grandma got me for Christmas. And I put the ball inside the vase, this little ball vase trick. And I made the ball disappear. And their chins dropped. Their eyes got super wide. It was the first time that I remember someone else looking at me with this sort of look of awe and wonder in response to something that I had done. And, dude, I was hooked. I thought from that moment, I'm going to do magic for the rest of my life. Which has kind of ended up being true so far. So that's how it all began.

I love it. And it all started with you being bored.

It all started with me being bored. Yeah. It's where a lot of magic begins.

Yeah. It's so underrated. Right? Like, I was thinking about. So people who listen to my podcast know I'm obsessed with Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the West Wing and the Social Network. And I was hearing. I heard this story for the first time a few months ago. Sorkin's career as a writer started because of boredom. And he was talking about this in the context of, like, we're never bored. We pay thousands of dollars to have devices in our pockets to ensure that we're never bored. But, yeah, he in his apartment in Manhattan, and there was nothing due that night. I don't know, this is in the 80s or something like that, but there was a typewriter, and he just started typing. Like, he literally just started typing away dialogue. And that was the start of A Few Good Men.

He's so crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it all was born out of boredom.

You're gonna have to definitely change your subject. Boredom is not a relevant topic right now in the time of COVID So.

Yes. Seriously, Right? Yeah. Bad timing. Bad timing. We're recording this in August. Horrible timing. So where I read in your story, you know, in this book, you were a millionaire by the time you were 21, and then you were bankrupt by the time you were 22. What's the story here?

Yeah, well, you know, from the time I was nine, I started becoming obsessed with those magic tricks. It took a couple of years, but by the time I was 11, I finally got paid to do my first official, you know, booking. I made $25. I was on top of the world. But to an 11 year old kid living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, like I just got paid $25 to do a magic show. Like that was insane. So probably by the time I was about 14, 15 years old, I had dropped out of public school, was doing this homeschooling program, was on the road full time, touring kind of all across the Southeast and Midwest. Started making six figures and by 21, it made a million bucks. And by 22, I was practically bankrupt. Never officially filed for bankruptcy, but we'd racked up a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of just really bad consumer debt. Couldn't keep up with the minimum payments. Everything came crashing down. And it was really the beginning of me trying to take a step back and ask what life was all about. Clearly when you have that kind of experience, it sort of humbles you if you allow it to, and it forces you to step back and go, okay, maybe I don't know everything there is to know about how life works and I've got to figure some things out. And so yeah, I started the journey of just asking questions like how did I end up here and how do people change and how does transformation work and how come this happened to me but it hasn't happened to so many other entrepreneurs and what did they do differently that I didn't do, or what kind of mistakes that I make that they had avoided or learned from or whatever. So just began the process of trying to figure out how transformation works and.

What'S your faith story in general. And I'm also curious how this particular incident played a role in shaping your faith.

Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. You know, I grew up in a small rural Southern Baptist church, was pretty legalistic, and I think I grew up in a really religious home that was pretty focused on making sure that you don't do the wrong things. Sure, sure. Kind of avoidance of the stereotypical list of sins, but not really about what it really looks like to obediently follow Jesus. And I think probably when I was around 17, 18 years old, it's not that I had this moment where I denounced my faith. I think I just. Everything grew sort of lukewarm and I started becoming pretty cynical about the church in general. And at the time I was also being booked by a lot of churches. And because I was a good communicator, I had somewhere along the way been taught by the companies that booked me, the schools that Booked me. The churches that booked me. If I could combine strong, clear communication with a magic trick as an illustration, that was a very marketable product. And there wasn't really much of a difference between the companies and schools and the churches. And so I thought, man, if I can package this really articulate, clear presentation of the gospel, and, you know, that can be my product, the church can be this really lucrative market. And churches functioned in a way that never really showed me anything different from that. And it sort of led me to some pretty dark seasons of life. And I think that's why by the time I was 21, I'd sort of insulated myself from the truth. And it made all the lies that I'd been tricked into believing much easier to hold on to, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And so coming out of that, at 21, it's not. I wouldn't say I was. I still would have, you know, claimed the label Christian. I still would have said, yeah, I'm. I'm a believer, and I do what I do for the glory of God, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But in no way was I being obedient to the calling of Christ. I wasn't actually following Jesus. I certainly was not walking by faith. I was completely living my life based on what my senses perceived to be true, which is pretty ironic, considering I was making a living doing something that is rooted in our ability to fool people's senses. Magic tricks. And so that was the big aha moment for me is, you know, when I mentioned earlier about taking a step back and trying to figure out what life is all about, I asked myself, how did I get tricked into believing all this stuff that I believe? And that's the big aha moment. Epiphany for me was realizing the principles of deception that I was using on stage harmlessly to entertain people as an illusionist were pretty universal. And that the same way that we trick people with a magic trick is the same way we're tricked to believe anything that isn't true. And kind of realized that I had this pretty powerful tool to help other people come to more of an understanding of how they get tricked into believing the things that they believe and how to sort of reclaim agency over that part of their story and to come face to face with the truth. But even if you realize that like I did, okay, now I understand how I've been deceived. I can identify some of the ways that I have allowed the world to influence my worldview. But that doesn't mean that I knew what the truth was. And so, you know, that's another whole part of my story, which is how did I get back to learning what it really looked like to follow Jesus.

Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm curious how that realization impacted your work, which we'll talk about in a minute. But first, let's talk about mastery. Let's talk about mastery of your craft. So you've clearly mastered your craft as an illusionist and speaker throughout the years. What did you find were the keys to really mastering this particular craft?

Yeah, to be honest, I've always just felt really uncomfortable with that word. I'm sure that happens a lot with your guests. But the idea of mastery to me is something that in my mind, I have yet to attain and is probably completely unattainable by the end of my life.

But you know what's funny? I think. I think that is the common thread amongst yes here. And it's because mastery isn't a destination. Right? It is a lifelong process of the humble pursuit of mastery.

Sure, yeah. Yeah. I think excellence is probably a great word for that. So have I achieved excellence? I hope so, because, you know, there's a part of me that doesn't want to ship any work that isn't considered excellent because I feel like that's what we're called to, while also at the same time feeling proud of doing work with excellence, with a high degree of professionalism without ever being willing to claim the word mastery. But, you know, some of it is just experience and time being willing to put in the work. I don't know about the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm has written about, but I have certainly put in my 10,000 hours. And so some of it is that. But, yeah, at 21, it was less about how do I master my craft and how do I. How do I pivot to a new craft, this new fascination that is no longer simply about using tricks to entertain people, but how can I invite people into a new story? And I started studying a lot of, like, you know, Marshall McCollum around the medium is the message started peeling back the layers of, you know, if medium is the message, then what is the medium of magic tricks? And that's where I uncovered a lot of the principles of deception and psychology and influence that I referenced earlier. And so a lot of my mastery was now about how do I become a better communicator, a better storyteller, how do I come into a greater understanding of how people transform their lives and how change takes place? And of course, that, like Anything. When you discover a new body of work or a new journey that you want to take, it's almost like the clock gets reset on the mastery of those 10,000 hours. Right. So now you're starting all over again. And I think that's probably an accurate picture into my career is this constant reinvention of yourself and feeling like you're going back to zero on the mastery scale and having to learn new things.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So you just released this book, the Wonder Switch. We're releasing this episode the day after the book drops. I'm really curious. How do you define wonder?

Oh, man, that's. I mean, I have to. When you see it, the whole book on it.

Yeah.

The easiest way to define it, I think, is wonder is what gives you permission to believe in something that you have yet to see. And I think for a long time, wonder has been sort of viewed as this feel good. Would be nice if I had it, but probably isn't essential. Yeah. You know, especially in the corporate space or the workplace might feel a little bit soft to a lot of leaders, but that's certainly what. Not what the neuroscience from the last few years of studies are showing us, that wonder is absolutely essential. You know, I define change and transformation now that I understand that human beings are what I would just simply call storytelling. Creatures like God wired us to think in narrative. The narratives that we adopt as true, regardless of whether they are actually true or riddled with lies or not, is what drives all human behavior. And so the stories that I tell myself, what drive my choices, how I spend my time, how I spend my money, how I see myself in the mirror, how I see God. And if you want to change any facet of your life, that means you have to move from the story. You're into a new story. But no one is willing to do that because of cognitive dissonance or a whole other variety of factors. We're unwilling to step into a new story if we don't believe that new story is possible. It's just the way that God created and wired our brains. And so wonder is this idea of a sort of an openness, an openness to the possibility of what could be. And so when our wonder gets crushed, or as I talk about in the book, when our wonder switch gets turned off, it sort of leaves us sort of stuck in cynicism and complacency and. And we're unwilling to explore new territory.

So how do you turn it back on? And I'm really curious about this in the context in the context vocationally. Right. So, yeah, I just think about your career. You're doing the same show over and over again for years, and of course you're iterating the act over time. Right. But I gotta imagine it's pretty easy to lose your sense of wonder and joy in your work, even when you work is to make other people inspired and wonderful. So did you experience that? And if so, like, how did you combat that? And how can we cultivate wonder of our own vocations as we're spending tens of thousands of hours practicing them?

Yeah, great questions. And it's really two questions. You know, the first part of that I would speak to has a lot to do with cynicism. And even people who aren't classified as highly cynical, they still live with this sort of perspective that seeing is believing. Right. There's a lot of like, oh, I'll believe it when I see it sort of mentality. And even if they don't say that out loud with that blatant cynical attitude, you can still see that what's driving most of their choices is they feel like they need to see evidence before they are willing to believe. Well, with the absence of that belief permits again an unwillingness to step into exploring new things and unwillingness to embrace curiosity, creativity, innovative thinking changes our mindset. And so there's kind of this journey that we have to move on from seeing as believing to living as if believing is seeing. And sometimes when I say that, especially with. Around people of faith, you know, we sort of throw up a red flag because it can sound really new age. We've all heard like the secret stuff or like the. The attraction stuff where it's like, oh, if I just believe in it, I can manifest it, right. When I say that believing is seeing. And when neuroscientists say that believing is seeing, that's not really what they're talking about. It's often more similar to, you know, we all have an example of a friend or a family member that we have known. And, you know, you kind of get together as a group and you're just like, why can't he see it? Why can't she see it? The truth is right there in front of their face. Well, it's not that that truth isn't there. It's that their belief systems are literally blinding them to see it. And so sometimes you have to believe in something before you can see it, because what we believe has the power to change what we see. And again, that works in both positive and negative ways. Roald Dahl famously said that those who don't believe in magic will never find it. So you could kind of embrace that mindset of, like, well, magic, like, that's for kids, or, you know, we're serious in this workplace. We don't believe in childish things like magic. But that's because you're going, well, show me magic and then I'll believe in it. But those who don't believe in it will never find it because you have to believe in it first. And so the first part of that question, I would respond by saying we have to move out of this cynical mindset of thinking that seeing is believing to realizing that what we believe changes what we see. And then as we move beyond that to going, okay, well, how. If that's the goal, then how do we do that? And what I've discovered through tons of research and through my own personal experience and interviewing and researching with others, is that to discover or reawaken wonder, to turn the wonder switch back on, is less about going and trying to find something that we have never had or that is out of reach, and more about removing all of the things that are in the way of getting back to something that we already have. Right.

What's an example?

You know, so much about wonder is understanding that it's the state that we came into this world in. You know, we were all born and came into this world with the wonder switch on. And so it's more about identifying what turned it off, whether it's a voice, an experience, trauma that we haven't dealt with, or healed from a story that we're stuck in, you know, something in our environment that's crushing our wonder. It could be anything from economic noise to a bully to the wrong boss at work. There's all these different indicators or things that can lead to sort of stripping and taking our wonder away. So to reawaken that sense of childlike wonder is simply to remove those things, because wonder is our natural state. So if you wonder as a natural state, it means that you've got to get all the stuff that's keeping you from being your authentic self so you can get back to who you really are in the state that you were meant to live in. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. Do you see this topic of wonder, this idea of wonder in your pursuit of mastery of your craft or pursuing excellence in your work? Like, why do you deem wonder essential to the pursuit of excellence vocationally?

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think it was. Who wrote Atomic Habits? James Clear. Yeah. You know, in the book he talked about how mastery or excellence essentially requires. I think the way he framed it was both patience and impatience, right? Because you have to have this, you know, you have to be geared towards action so that you don't sit around all the time and get lazy. You have to approach each day with this sense of urgency. But then it also requires this patience because, you know, you have to trust and praise the process, not perfection. You have to delay gratification or you have to wait for your actions to accumulate. He talked about, and you know, to be patient requires wonder. To trust the process requires a wonder mindset, because otherwise you have to survive the dip of liminal space that a lot of people don't survive. Liminal space is a foreign concept to many people, but it's simply that space between no longer and not yet, when God is calling you out of something old and into something new. But the old thing isn't really gone yet. The new thing hasn't really fully been realized or come to fruition. And so you sort of feel trapped in the in between. There's a lot of people that would say that space is holy because that's where all your spiritual formation takes place. That's your becoming. But what cultural anthropologists would say is there's an old story and a new story, and when you're moving between an old story and a new story, you have to travel through that space between that liminal space, and that space has no story. Well, if we're storytelling creatures who make sense of the world, if we find meaning through narrative and stories and we have no story, well, how uncomfortable is that? We feel untethered. We feel like we're floating through space. We don't know who we are. Our identity isn't anchored in anything that we can attach meaning to. And so that's really uncomfortable. And so wonder is sort of required. Not sort of, it is required, is essential to the process of bridging that gap between the old story and the new story without giving up.

I love that. That's a great answer. We're going to talk about the intersection of your faith in your work in a minute, but real quick, we talk a little bit about routines on the podcast. I'm really curious what your day looks like, typically, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. What is a typical day? Maybe in the midst of COVID Oh, man, yeah.

The old story or the new story?

New story, New normal.

Man, I used to fly 150,000 miles a year, so I honestly, I'm loving this pace of life because it is absen of 5am, 4am, sometimes 3am wake up calls to catch early morning flights, to get home to see my family, or to go serve a client to do a keynote. So it's been really awesome because you know what we're coming up on. Now that it's school season, I wake up early and take my kids to school, which is something that I enjoy once I'm off the road. And so I wake up, I try to squeeze in a quick workout, and then I take my kids to school, I come home, I eat breakfast, I shower, I chat with my wife, I sit down and fill out my daily pages, whatever that looks like for that season, whether that's like daily pages from Julia Cameron, the Artist's Way, or daily pages in the planner that I use, which I'm currently using Michael Hyatt's planner, the full focus planner, which I'm really enjoying. And then I begin my day. And so, you know, pre Covid it was, you know, a lot of variety of work in a lot of different places, but now it's working from a home office, more of a traditional 9 to 5, which can include everything from podcast interviews, like I'm doing now, hosting webinars, lots of emails, phone calls, and then trying to do what Cal Newport calls deep work, where I just calendar block some time to make sure that I'm working on the important things and get out of the weeds of.

So we talk a lot about deep work. When are you getting deep work done typically in your schedule right now?

Well, I actually, I'm really enjoying a new app that I use called Rise, and it's a sleep app, and it basically tracks your dips throughout the day based on your circadian rhythm. And so I'm trying to calendar block my time based on my peaks throughout the day. So ironically, I'm actually scheduling phone calls and meetings and zooms and interviews, emails, phone calls, all that stuff during my dips and trying to calendar block my peak time around what we would call deep work.

Yeah, brilliant. I love it. There's a lot of science to back this up. Have you read why We Sleep by Matthew Walker?

I have not.

Yeah, he talks about this and these circadian rhythms and how they're different for different people. Right. So you got to figure out what yours is, but I've never heard of Rise as a tool for this. I gotta check this out.

Yeah, it's a pretty new app that's pretty inexpensive. I just went ahead and paid for the premium version and yeah, yeah, no, I'm a pretty big proponent of the Apple Watch because I love data. I love everything from food and nutrients to sleep tracking to. I mean, I. I do a long 60 minute bike ride every Sunday on my peloton. Sunday afternoo now, since I'm no longer traveling on the weekends. And so I track that. I jump in a steam shower. I do heart rate while I'm in the steam shower because I'm curious what my heart rate is doing. I just love all the metrics. But this particular app doesn't require Apple Watch. It's all built into the iPhone. I'm not sure if they're on other platforms, but it's been really cool.

Yeah, I can be a little obsessive about these things. It sounds like you can too. So right now, after why we sleep, I built a spreadsheet where I'm tracking different variables in my sleep. So I'm like, did I have a beer that afternoon? When was my last cup of tea? And map it out against Fitbit sleep data.

So, yeah. Oh, that is absolutely. Yeah. I keep a food journal. I no longer track, like, every single calorie that I put in my body or every nutrient or whatever, and I pay very close attention to how what I eat and what I drink makes me feel. And I journal that and track it so that I can go back and try to figure it out.

Yeah, I just gave up variety in my diet like two years ago. I eat the exact same thing every single day. Once I optimized the work. Yeah, yeah, it's just locking in. So here's. We talk a lot on this podcast about how the faith of our guests influences their particular vocation. So at the highest level, to ask you the broadest question possible, how does your faith influence your work as an illusionist, as a performer, as a communicator? What does that look like?

Man, oh, man, Great question. I mean, the simplest answer is it keeps me from being a con man. Yeah. Especially now, as, you know, as my intersection of my work as an illusionist and my work as an entrepreneur. You know, there's this very clear, like, gosh, if I think some of the greatest evidence of God's presence and reality and work in my life and the Holy Spirit's present in my life is the fact that I'm not a con man. Because if there was no moral law and there was no moral campus, and it is just survival of the fittest, I mean, there's a reason why there's so much crossover in the world. Between, you know, the magic community and all of our trainings and books and conferences and, and trade shows and like the psychics and spirit mediums and witch doctors and shamans and con men and pickpockets of the world. Right. Because the skill sets are all the same. And at the end of the day, like, it's just the motive. Right. Like we sell cars and makeup and jeans using the same principles of persuasion that I would use to trick someone to magic trick. You know, we talked a little bit about that earlier, which means that, you know, what determines the label that you put on me is just my motive. So if I use a principle of deception, that means that you would call me a con man. If I use a principle of persuasion, you would say, oh, he's a great salesperson or he's a really good leader. It's the same principle of psychology. It's just we call it deception if it's bad, and we call it persuasion or influence if it's good. And so I think the first thing that comes to mind when you ask me that, I know it's a goofy answer, but no, it's a good answer. Yeah. I think it's a picture of redemption. It's like, how do you redeem my work for the glory of God? You use these powers of deception for good instead of for evil.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I love that. So you mentioned before that you grew up basically doing these gigs at churches. I'm curious, have you always been overt about your faith in your performances? Yes.

No.

Has it kind of been all over the map? I'm curious about that journey for you.

Yeah, Honestly, I. I fall into the camp that I feel like it's my job to be respectful to, serving the client well. And so, you know, a lot of times I get to partner with some really amazing churches who, you know, obviously the reason they're bringing me in is to share my story and I kind of take a more invitation centric approach. And so by that I mean, like, I feel like there's a greater story that I have the opportunity to invite people into, as opposed to selling the gospel to someone. You know, I think in the American church we've gotten better at it, but with the whole seeker sensitive thing that started a couple decades ago, you know, there's been this rise in us pitching the gospel with a presentation and expecting people to make a commitment to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. And they're expecting people to respond to that based on a presentation that lasts.

Based on the magic trick.

Yeah. Or. Or a presentation that is shorter than the presentation that we listen to on what kind of car we should drive. Right. So, like, we spend more time choosing a car that we're going to drive for one to five years or 10 years than we do taking the decision seriously of, like, should I be following Jesus or not.

We don't count the cost.

Exactly. Exactly. Which leads to, you know, surprise, the current state of the American church, which is, you know, a lot of people who haven't been discipled because we're not fulfilling the Great Commission, and a lot of lukewarm people that are feeling church pews when the doors of church buildings are open, but aren't actually being obedient to the call of Christ on their lives and vocations. So there's that. But then, you know, outside of that, one of the things that I love about my work is that, you know, I love the word magic. Magic is not something that you see a magician do on stage. You know, I had a friend a few years ago, his car got broken into at the cruise port. He was getting on a cruise ship, and his car was parked and his gear was in there in the back of his suv. And he's like, yeah, man, someone busted the window and stole all my magic. And I know it's not what he meant, but we had a conversation about, like, dude, they didn't steal your magic. They stole your boxes and your gimmicks and your special devices that you use to create these experiences that people look at that they refer to as magic. But it's pretty ironic that people like you call people like me magicians and you refer to the tricks you see as magic, even though they're not magic. They're just illusions. They're just tricks. But yet there are these truly magical things all around us, often in the mundane experiences every single day right in front of our face. But we roll our eyes in cynicism and we miss all that stuff because we don't think it's meaningful. And so, to me, it's like when I'm in a space outside of the four walls of a church building, I get to talk about magic as this experience is this thing that you can't really put your finger on. It goes beyond what you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear. And if you can convince someone that magic is real again, it's a reawakening of wonder. It opens them up to the possibility of what could be. And to me, that is incredibly compelling. And I have noticed in my own work, People are so much more curious to pull me aside and ask questions about my faith or that my faith is more evident to people, even if I was not as blatant about it, because the conference I was speaking at just wasn't appropriate. I heard Irwin McManus probably 10 or 15 years ago say something I'll never forget, and he was, you know, I grew up. These were his words. He said, I grew up. My parents tried to make me eat broccoli. They tried to shove it down my throat, and it made me grow up hating broccoli. And now that I'm adult, I've realized that broccoli is really good for me. And when it's prepared properly, I actually really enjoy it when they use that as analogy for the way that we've tried to take the gospel and sort of shove it down people's throats instead of just living a life and showcasing an obedient walk of faith and then just loving your neighbor so well that at least people with questions going, this doesn't make sense to me. Your life doesn't make sense to me. Your work doesn't make sense to me. Your generosity, your commitment, your integrity, none of it makes sense to me. So much to the point where they're asking you questions and they demand an explanation for this faith that you have. And so that's sort of the walk that I've embraced these days in my work as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, I love it. And, you know, isn't there a sense in which, you know, let's say you're doing a gig at Southwest Airlines. I know you've done a gig for them, for Pinterest, whoever. Right. And you're obviously not giving a gospel presentation, but isn't there a way that magic can awaken wonder that makes us long for the kingdom? I mean, nobody would say that in those terms. But isn't there something that can awaken in us that makes us more receptive to things of God and things of his kingdom?

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. In the book, the wonder switch book you mentioned earlier, you know, there's something in there called the transformation map. And it's just my attempt to lay out the process of how transformation works and how change works by moving from that old story to a new one. And when you get halfway around the map on either side of it, there is an inciting incident. And so it's often an inciting incident in our childhood that turns the wonder switch off. But on the flip side, it's also an inciting incident that can serve us our way and our path back to wonder. And then the very next step that follows a positive inciting incident is a spark. And following a spark is awe. And so we have these experiences sometimes that serve as a spark that leads us back to wonder. And when we have the experience of the emotion and feeling of awe, what the neuroscience shows is that it opens us up to the grand scale of the universe, that it opens us up to empathy and emotional connection with other people on a deep spiritual level. There's another study that shows awe and wonder connected to a sense of smallness. And by that I don't mean, you know, a low self esteem or being self conscious or insecure. A sense of smallness in the sense that it allows you to look around and realize, man, the world is so much bigger than just me. It makes me feel compelled to search for something that goes beyond just me and my life that I'm living on this planet. And so awe certainly has a sense to do that. It's why we're captivated by the stars, by sunsets, by, you know, all these things that awaken our, our wonder through the experience of awe. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, experiences that feel new or feel new again. That's why a lot of my path back to wonder is connected to becoming a dad, you know, because you have the wonder of your childhood where everything is new. But then in the information age, where no matter what mystery you come in contact with, supposedly you can pull a device out of your pocket and figure out the answer and solve that mystery. And so we've sort of psychologically been reconditioned to feel really uncomfortable with mystery. We come in contact with it, we don't like it because we've been trained and conditioned to think that we can crush it whenever we find it and go, oh, that's how that works. As if understanding how something works means that we can't look at it and go, wow, that was beautiful, or wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. The information age has, I don't know, kind of created this illusion of omniscience. Right. No doubt, where magic provides this kind of all of the unknowable. Yeah. I think I've heard a lot of people say, oh yeah, when we get to heaven, we'll have all the answers, we'll know everything. And there's actually like no evidence of that in scripture. Right. I think we'll probably know more than we do now, but certainly not everything. And I find that comforting because wonder is a gift and it also reminds us that God is God and we are not. Like, he is omniscient. We will never be. And that is good.

Yeah. I don't. I don't get why someone would say that. Doesn't make sense to me. Because, yeah, that would basically mean we get to heaven and become God.

Yeah.

And so if. If instead we get to heaven and worship God, like, I would think that, you know, him being the object of our worship would make him worthy of that worship, which means that he is God and we're not. Yeah. In the book I call an abundance of certainty. You know, we live and what appears to be an abundance of certainty. And it's like, we want that. We crave that. We think that curiosity demands to be satisfied, but it doesn't. You know, that's sort of a counterfeit form of curiosity, which is. That's what magic tricks show people. You know, you watch a magic trick and your first reaction is, how did you do that? I have to understand and, like, will you please tell me the secret? And when I give a talk about the role of curiosity and the value of it, sometimes people will often use that against me. They'll come up after the talk and be like, so if curiosity is so important, why can't you tell me the secret to that trick? Because I'm just curious how you made that table levitator. I'm just curious how you made that thing disappear. And that's actually not curiosity. What the science shows is that genuine curiosity is less equal to getting the answer to a question that we have. And it resembles more of a willingness to step into a search and a journey without being having a clear destination in mind. And even if you do have a clear goal in mind of where you want to end up, not sort of having a predetermined path. It's just a willingness to be open and explore. That's really good.

That's really good. I can't wait to read that section of the book. So, speaking of books, Harris, we love to end every conversation with the same three questions. First one is related to books. I'm curious which books you tend to recommend or gift most frequently to other people. People.

Oh, man. Just obviously it depends on the person. Right. And what they're searching for. I mean, the first ones that come to mind. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Everyone should read that book.

One of the most frequently named books on the podcast.

Yeah. Because of the story, which is the conference that I run. I can literally say that we've given away thousands of copies of that book because we've given that book away to all attendees multiple years. When it comes to my faith journey, you know, I often go back to the Reason for God by Tim Keller. I think in my mid-20s, early to mid-20s, when I was coming out of losing it all, after making it all and feeling like I was trying to figure out what faith was, for me, that book was literally a godsend. And what helped me hold on to my faith mindset, I think is incredibly important to life. And so the book Mindset by Carol Dweck I think is an important read. I would read Everything by Seth Godin. I know he's often considered a business or marketing author, but there's nothing that he puts out that I end up not reading often times. Yeah, I think of him less as a business author and more as a futurist. Is like someone who's able to peer into the future and help us make sense of the world that we find ourselves in or the stories that we find ourselves in.

Yeah, I think that's right. Well, you guys can find all Those books@jordanrayner.com bookshelf I know the War of Art is already on our leaderboard. I think the Reason for God is going to go on there. That's been recommended a couple of times and is one of my all time favorites. Who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith influences their work? Who are you really curious about? Like, huh, I wonder, wonder how the gospel shapes that person's vocation.

I mean, there's certainly a lot of public figures that I have so much respect for that I can I get this little glimpse and I'm like, gosh, I would be shocked if you are not a person of faith. And so I would love to know that, but I have no way of knowing for sure. The first person that comes to mind is Brad Montague. You know, he was the creator of Kid President, which is this massive YouTube sensation and has gone on to do a whole bunch of just really incredible creative work. And he has spoken at story for us multiple years in a row. And someone who's doing a lot of really important work outside the four walls of a church, who clearly his faith is informing his work, but also is doing work with excellence. And I would love to hear a conversation with him on that topic.

That's a terrific answer. I love that answer. Last piece of advice, you want to leave this audience with people like you who, you know, are not magicians but are committed to their craft and doing great work as a means of making our Lord famous and serving people through the ministry of excellence. What do want to leave them with?

Identify the problem that you're facing. And whatever that problem is, I can almost promise you it's a storytelling problem, which means that it's also a wonder problem. And so you've got to find a way to flip the wonder switch back on, to give you permission to hold on to all the possibility that awaits, that could be that God created you to experience. And so to me, wonder and faith go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other, I don't think. And to some people, that feels like a bold statement. But we've got to find a way back to wonder.

I love it. Hey, Harris, I want to commend you for just the important, thoughtful, redemptive work you're doing in the world and for pointing to the wonder of God and for leaving us with wonder still in our souls for things that we cannot see. Thank you for loving your audiences and your clients through the Ministry of excellence. Hey, guys, the book book is the Wonder Switch. Great title. And by the way, I'm holding the book right now. It's one of the best covers I've seen in a very, very long time. You guys will. As soon as you see it, you'll remember it for a really long time. You guys can pick it up right now wherever books are sold. And of course, we'll have a link@jordanraynor.com bookshelf Harrison, thank you so much for joining us, man.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

I thought that conversation was fascinating. I. I hope you guys did, too. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe to the Call to Mastery so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed, take 30 seconds right now. Go leave a review of the podcast. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to the Call to Mastery. I'll see you next week.