933: How Building a Habit of Bravery Transforms Everything with Todd Henry

Pete Mockaitis

Todd, welcome back.

Todd Henry

Pete, it is so good to be back on the show. Thanks for the kind invitation.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. You’ve got a fresh book, and you’ve said a lot of interesting things, and written a lot of cool books. I’m curious, why bravery as the topic now?

Todd Henry

10 years ago, I wrote a book called Die Empty. It released, and did really well, but there was something that I overlooked in that book, and it always plagued me. There was one topic that I didn’t write about. And it was kind of one of those forehead-slap moments when I realized, “Oh, there’s kind of an important thing I overlooked here,” and that topic was bravery.

Because I talked about all the ways that we can overcome these hurdles we encounter, these pitfalls, when doing difficult creative work, and some strategies for doing that, but the one key element that I found in people and in teams who were willing and able to do that was that they exhibited bravery. And so, I kind of committed to looking into, to investigating that topic of bravery.

And my ingoing assumption was that, “Well, some people are just wired for it. They’re just more risk-tolerant and some people aren’t.” But the more I researched the topic, I realized, actually, bravery is exhibited in all different kinds of places by all different kinds of people, and people who historically had not exhibited bravery suddenly started exhibiting bravery, and vice versa.

What I realized was that bravery is not a baked-in personality trait, that bravery is actually a habit, it’s a discipline that we can train ourselves to exhibit. And so, that was kind of the initial source of the book.

And so, for the last six years, it’s been a passion project. I’ve been working on this book, and it took me six years to kind of pull it all together, and now it’s finally here. So, it’s called The Brave Habit, and it’s about how to develop the habit of bravery as you approach creative work, leadership, relationships, and everything that you have to do in life.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, tell us, what impact does having upgraded bravery deliver for us?

Todd Henry

So, I think that we often conflate two things. We conflate bravery with boldness. And we also conflate cowardice with wisdom. And what I mean by that is we all have moments in our life where we recognize an opportunity, where we see that there’s something possible for us if we were willing to act, but there’s a little voice inside of us that says, “Well, maybe it would be better if…” or, “Maybe someone else is better equipped to…” or, “You really don’t have the skills to…” or things of that nature. And that’s really cowardice whispering in our ear, but we often conflate it with wisdom. We think this is wisdom speaking to us.

And what I discovered was that there really are two things that comprise bravery in those moments. There are two core attributes, two core traits, that people who consistently ignore the voice of cowardice that comes disguised as wisdom, and, instead, choose to engage in brave action. There are two core attributes and they tend to exhibit in those moments. The first is they have an optimistic vision of the future, meaning that they have a vision of a better possible future that they could be navigating toward. And the second attribute that they tend to exhibit is a sense of perceived agency to bring that better possible future about.

So, think about a team. When I look at the teams who are consistently doing what I would consider to be brave work, they are teams who have a vision that they’re navigating toward, they have a very clear North Pole that they believe in and that they’re willing, if necessary, to sacrifice on behalf of because they believe deeply in that vision.

Versus people who have kind of a pessimistic vision of the future, “Well, I really don’t know what the future holds. And who can really tell anyway, right?” And so, that’s sort of the opposite of what I’m talking about. And they tend to have a sense of agency, meaning, “We believe that we have the platform, the proficiency, that we have people around us who can help us accomplish that vision.”

So, when you have those attributes, you’ve created a fertile field within which bravery is likely to occur. Now, it doesn’t mean it will occur but you’re creating a fertile field within which bravery is likely to occur. So, how does that play out for us as individuals in the workplace?

Well, we all have to confront uncertainty, we have big projects we’re working on, ideas maybe that are noodling around the back of our mind, and we’re thinking about bringing them into the world, but that little voice of cowardice is whispering in our ear, “Well, maybe somebody else would be better suited to do that,” “Well, maybe you should wait and let somebody else step up,” “Well, maybe you’re not the right person to lead this,” or, “Well, maybe you need to do a power grab because you need to prove that you’re the right person.” Well, that’s not necessarily bravery. That’s just boldness.

So, we have these little voices whispering in the back of our ear. In those moments where we’re tempted with cowardice, we can ask ourselves, “Okay, am I afraid to act because I don’t have a clear vision of where I’m going, or I don’t have a vision of a better possible future? Or, am I afraid to act because I don’t trust that I have agency to be able to create meaningful change in the direction of my vision?”

And simply by asking ourselves those questions consistently, by putting some qualifiers on what we feel, inherently, that self-protection instinct that we have, we can, a) develop a better narrative to help ourselves get through those moments, and, b) identify any areas where maybe we are lacking. We tend to think bravery is, “Well, just do it. Just leap. Just jump from the cliff, right? Just say the thing. Just have the conversation.”

That’s not necessarily always bravery. Sometimes it’s boldness. Boldness and bravery are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes bravery means waiting until the right time. So, when you ask yourself those questions, “Do I have a clear vision of where I’m going? And do I trust that I have the agency to be able to bring it about?”

If the answer to either of those is no, maybe the bravest thing you can do is wait as your vision is clarified, or wait until you develop the skill necessary to bring it about. That doesn’t mean you’re being a coward. That means you’re being strategic. And so, when you ask, “How does bravery benefit us?” It benefits us by giving us a sense of the places in our life where we can act in a meaningful way to develop our capacity to do work that is surprising, valuable, and, ultimately, contributive to the body of work that we want to build.

Pete Mockaitis

Now, I think there’s a lot of interesting tidbits here in terms of the voice of cowardice can be sneaky, and we may not even recognize that that’s what that is. I remember we had Kwame Christian say once early on the show that fear masquerades in many forms. And I thought that was really clever in terms of it’s procrastination, or, “You know what, maybe this isn’t the right time,” like, any number of voices. And it’s good to just say, “Oh, no, what’s really happening is I’m scared. What’s really missing here is bravery.”

And you’ve done a cool segmentation, so, “Is it a matter of vision or is it a matter of agency?” And help me out, when I’m feeling un-brave, I think what’s going on is I think, “There’s a substantial chance that this is going to go badly for me.” And so, do we categorize that as a vision matter, or an agency matter, or where does that fall into your schema?

Todd Henry

Well, that’s a really great example. Can I tell you a story of how that’s playing out actually for me right now? I think I mentioned to you, so before we started recording, I’ve been doing The Accidental Creative podcast since 2005.

As I was writing this book, I began challenging people, in the book, to ask some really brave questions and very dangerous questions, maybe. And among those questions that I began asking myself was, “If I were starting over again, would I be doing things the way that I’m doing them right now?” And the uncomfortable answer that I came to, Pete, was, “No. No, I wouldn’t.” Like, it’s fine, it’s working, people seem to enjoy it, it’s great, but would I be doing it this way? No.

Why? Because I have a vision of a way that things could be better, and I was feeling a little bit of discontentment around the way I was doing things. Well, there’s a lot of costs involved in changing something that has a substantial audience, and that has been successful, and that’s financially contributive to the bottom line of my business. There’s a substantial risk involved. And, to your point, you asked the question, “Well, what if this goes badly for me?” Yeah, there’s a lot of risk involved in doing something like that.

What compelled me to make the change that we made, which was basically completely rebranding the show, redoing the format, and eliminating thousands of back episodes of the podcast, and starting over with Episode 1 on January 1st, what compelled me to do it was that vision. I knew I had the agency to bring it about because I have created a podcast, I know how to do this, I know how to do creative work and make audio shows, but the vision was what compelled me. I had a very clear vision of what this could be.

And so, the question I asked myself was, “If I fail, will it be worth it if it’s in pursuit of a vision that I care about?” And the answer was, “Yes.” And like Seth Godin likes to say, “This might not work,” and it might not work. It still might not work. But the vision superseded my fear of failure in this case. And so, what my response was, “If it fails, I want to go down doing the thing that I believed to be the right thing. I want to pursue the vision for the work that I think is the best possible manifestation of this kind of work that I’m trying to do right now.”

And so, I think the answer to your question, that you have to be able to say, “It’s worth failing in the pursuit of this vision. It’s worth sacrificing something in the pursuit of this vision if I believe it’s the right direction.” And that doesn’t mean it’s always the case for everyone. In my case, it was, but the problem is we often don’t stop to ask the question because we just assume that the goal of life is to protect, to be comfortable.

Khalil Gibran said, “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning the funeral.” So, when we succumb to the love of comfort, the lust for comfort, we murder our own soul. And so, the challenge I would have for listeners is, “Where are you falling prey to the love of comfort?” Not comfort itself. There’s nothing wrong with comfort, but when you fall in love with comfort, you’re inherently going to compromise what’s possible because nothing great is ever done from a position of comfort.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, then it sounds like the fear I have that things are going to go badly, in your categorization system, that’s a matter of the vision may not be clear or strong enough to overpower, in the internal tug of war, the reluctance or internal fear.

Todd Henry

Yeah, that’s right. Or, in some cases, like in organizations, it could be that that vision just hasn’t been communicated clearly enough, or people don’t understand how they play into that vision. There are a lot of organizations with people who are more than willing to be brave, and to do brave work, and to have brave conversations, and to confront uncertainty, but they don’t really understand how their efforts would matter because the leader hasn’t given a compelling vision for where the organization is going.

And so, the result is you have all these people who are at the ready, they want to do something, but they don’t really know what to do. Or, you have organizations where the leader is casting vision constantly but they’re not reinforcing the agency. They try to be overcontrolling in their organization. They step in and do the work for people instead of equipping people and giving them agency to do their own work, to come up with their own ideas. And the net result of that is people just feel powerless, they just succumb, and they say, “Okay, fine. Just tell me what to do.”

Well, are they going to do brave work? No, of course not because they’ve been robbed of a sense of agency. And so, as leaders of organizations, the biggest gift that we can give to people is to position them in places where bravery is likely to occur, which means being very clear about our vision but also speaking agency into them, speaking encouragement into them, giving them the ability to try things, to experiment, even to fail in small ways that aren’t fatal to the organization so that they have that sense of agency to act bravely in the face of uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, let’s maybe zoom way in. Let’s say we have an individual, and they want to say something that’s maybe uncomfortable, unpopular, because they are going against the status quo, they’re challenging someone so they might get offended, outraged, create some political rifts, etc. Help us out, Todd. What are the key steps to follow in order to speak up when bravery is required?

Todd Henry

So, you have to be absolutely certain that your action is in the service of a vision, of a better possible future. It’s not self-serving, it’s not bold, because boldness is mostly self-serving. Bravery is always empathetic. So, how is speaking up going to be in service of a greater vision, whether that’s creating a better environment on the team, communicating something to the leader that maybe they’re not aware of, and they need to be aware of because this is impacting everyone else around us?

So, if the answer to that is yes, and the second question you have to ask is, “Am I the right person to have this conversation?” Because if a random person at a low level of an organization decides to ambush the CEO in the lobby of the building one day and say something, well, you have no agency, you have no platform. You’re doing something but that’s just boldness. That’s not necessarily bravery because what impact is that going to have? Probably very little impact. And, in fact, it could be detrimental to the overall cause.

And so, those are the two questions you have to ask, “Am I doing this in the service of a better vision, a greater vision? Or, am I just doing this to be self-serving for my own political purposes?” And the second question you have to ask is, “Am I the right person to be able to do this? So, do I have the agency? Do I have the platform to be able to do this?”

And if the answer to that second question is no, “Well, then who does have the platform? Who am I connected to who I might be able to, then, have this conversation with and we can go together to the leader, we can go together to whoever this person is and have a conversation together because the other person has platform, they have relationship, they have credibility that maybe I don’t have?”

So, again, this framework helps you in those moments where you have to make a brave decision, it helps you sort of gauge and diagnose places where, “Well, why do I feel hesitant to do this? Oh, it’s because I don’t really have the agency to do this. I could just go ambush this person with a conversation but they’re not going to listen to me because I don’t have the right platform, but I do know someone who does, so I’m going to go to them. We’re going to have a conversation, and we’re going to go together to them, and then we’re going to have a higher probability chance of creating the change we’re trying to create.”

So, two questions, again, “Is this in service of a greater vision or in service of me?” That’s the empathy question. And then the second one is, “Do I have the credibility, the platform, the proficiency to be able to have this conversation? If not, then how can I gain that agency in order to create this meaningful change toward the vision that I’m pursuing?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, could you maybe share some stories in which we’ve got a professional who is finding they would like an upgrade to their bravery, and then they walked these paths of upgrading the vision, or upgrading the agency to make it happen?

Todd Henry

Yeah, so this example I shared in the book of a guy named Scott. Scott was a commercial real estate agent, and it was the very fortuitous time of the late 2000s, so right around 2008, and you can kind of imagine where this story is going because we experienced a tremendous collapse in the real estate industry, and, thus, the entire economy in 2008, and so Scott was really in danger of just being without livelihood.

And so, he was talking with his wife, and they were expecting their first child, and it was obviously a really kind of nerve-racking time for them. And he was considering the possibility of making a transition into doing residential real estate but he didn’t really have a tremendous amount of experience doing residential real estate, so he had a job offer to go sell office furniture, and he was thinking about just going to sell office furniture because, “This is something that can pay the bills with our first child on the way.”

And as he was talking about this with his wife, his wife said, “Hey, listen, you have all of this experience in the real estate industry, you have some connections in the real estate industry, albeit not in the residential real estate industry, and you have a very clear vision of how you could do this differently, how you could be a different kind of real estate agent that could be more attractive to people, that could actually be kind of a partner with people rather than just sort of being the go-between in these transactions.”

And she said, “Let’s do this. Let’s establish some time, a timeframe, let’s call it six months, and why don’t you try this, let’s see what happens. And if we see some momentum, then we’ll keep moving forward. And if we don’t, then you can always go take the office furniture job, and we’ll just say, ‘Okay, now you’re an office furniture salesman,’ or whatever.”

And so, he did. So, he decided to launch his real estate practice, and it did not go well for the first handful of months, and it was a really difficult time in the market. But just in the nick of time, he did make his first sale, and that was enough to generate some cashflow and kind of keep the business moving forward. And the way that he did it was because he was following his vision, his vision of a better possible future, the way that things could be different in the real estate industry.

And the reason I share that story is because his instinct in the moment was, “Well, I just need to retreat to the easiest thing I can do, which is go take a salaried job to pay the bills.” Someone else came along, someone who had a very vested interest in his success came along and spoke agency into him, said, “Hey, you could do that. That’s fine. But that’s not what you’re capable of.”

“You don’t even know what you’re capable of yet. We haven’t even tried yet. You have agency you haven’t even tapped into. So, why don’t you go try this? I see what you’re capable of. I know what you’re capable of. You have a vision. Go try this.” He had someone, his wife, who spoke courage into him. And so, Scott did because she put him in that very fertile field where brave action is likely to occur, that place of agency and vision.

Now, 10 years later, his real estate practice is one of the top real estate practices in the country within his company, which is remarkable. But even if it hadn’t worked out that way, would he have made the brave choice? Even if it hadn’t worked out for him, would he have made the brave choice?

The answer, I believe, is yes, absolutely, because bravery has nothing to do with outcomes. You can make a good decision, Pete, that has a bad outcome, and you can make a bad decision that has a good outcome. That’s why it’s so difficult often to analyze our decisions because we tend to associate our outcomes with our decisions. But the reality is we make decisions with the best information we have at the time, and we can’t always control where those decisions are going to lead.

And so, even if Scott had failed, he still made a brave choice, and it still was probably a good decision for him to try it to see if he could make it work. And that’s part of the thing that I think leads us to succumb to cowardice, is that we are constantly analyzing our past decisions through our present understanding, and the net result is that we think that things were bad decisions, when, actually, they may have been good decisions, they just had bad outcomes. We made the best decision we could at the time.

So, I think that story of Scott is one that kind of illustrates what it looks like to have someone speaking agency and optimism into you in those moments of uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s lovely. Thank you. And we had Annie Duke, a professional poker player, say a similar point in terms of you may have made the best decision though the outcome didn’t work out, and that doesn’t mean it wasn’t the best decision. So, that’s good to consider. I’d love to hear the counterpoint to that in terms of we may be more likely to regret what we didn’t do. How do we judiciously, astutely, wisely, prudently determine, “Ah, this harebrained scheme of mine, I should kill right now rather than pursue it to my detriment”?

Todd Henry

Yeah. So, interestingly, we’re doing an episode of our podcast that kind of deals with that, how sometimes we get frozen in these moments. And as part of the interview, we revisited the conversation with Seth Godin about his book The Dip. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book but in the book, he talks about…

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yeah, it’s short. I read it. It’s fun.

Todd Henry

Yeah, the fantastic. The two ways that we get stuck. The first way is what he calls a cul-de-sac, which is basically a dead end where we’re just going round and round and round and round the cul-de-sac, and it feels like we’re making progress but, really, we’re just stuck, we don’t really have a vision. And the best thing to do in the cul-de-sac is just to quit because you’re never going to get anywhere if you’re in a cul-de-sac.

And then he said the second thing, the second kind of place where we get stuck is in what he calls the dip. And the dip is that inevitable difficult moment after we’ve started a creative project, and we have all this energy at the beginning because it’s new, and it’s fresh, and we have a vision, and then it gets really hard, and so a lot of people give up. Scott Belsky calls this the project plateau. It’s the moment where it starts getting really hard but we don’t have the same excitement about the work, and so we tend to want to quit. But you don’t quit in the dip.

If you have a vision, of the way things could be, and you can see a path to get there, you don’t quit in the dip. You keep pushing. You keep going because there are rewards on the other side. So, when we talk about a vision of a better possible future, and the agency to bring it about, that’s really kind of where I’m playing as well, is when you get into those moments where you’re in the dip, and it’s uncertain, you don’t know what to do, and you don’t know if you really feel like pushing forward, if you have a vision, you need to push forward.

If you believe that you have the agency, the will, the capability to bring that about, you need to push forward. Not only do you need it, we need you to push forward because that’s how the world moves forward. So, if you’re in a cul-de-sac, quit. If you have no vision, quit. If you don’t believe you have the agency, just quit. Or, develop it, develop the vision, develop the agency, but if you’re in the dip, the brave thing to do is to keep moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis

Alrighty. Okay. Well, Todd, I would love to get your perspective. Do you have any top do’s or don’ts for folks looking to be awesome at their job as they are contemplating this bravery stuff?

Todd Henry

Yeah, the main thing, and this is why the book called The Brave Habit, is that bravery is a habit, which means that we can build practices into our life to prepare us for moments where we need to be brave. So, the main do I would say is have some time that you block off in your life, and I walk people through this in the book, where you basically follow B-R-A-V-E. Which is basically block time once a week to look at your calendar, look at your commitments, look at everything coming up in your life that week, conversations in your life, projects you’re accountable for. So, block the time, and the reason I say that first is because it seems like an obvious thing but we don’t do it, we don’t plan time for the things that are most important.

The second part is review. Review upcoming conversations that maybe you’re a little nervous about. Review client projects, conversations, that you’re going to be having, and review them for points of uncertainty, for tensions that you know are inevitably going to be there. The third is claim agency, meaning assess what agency you have in those moments. What are you bringing to those moments that you uniquely are able to contribute? Why are you right person to have that conversation? Why are you the right person to do that project? So, re-root yourself in your sense of agency.

The fourth is vision. So, what is your vision for each of those relationships, for each of those projects, for your work as a whole, your vision for your life, your vision for your relationships? What is your vision? Re-root yourself. And then, finally, express your intent, E, that’s the E part. Express your intent, meaning, “Here is the outcome that I am committed to for each of these areas.” By doing this, what you’re doing is getting ahead of those moments.

We’re often surprised by these moments where we have to be brave. We come into a conversation, and we’re completely ill-prepared because we haven’t done the pre-work to set ourselves up for bravery, for exhibiting bravery in the moment. But, again, as we get ahead of it, and as we build practices to prepare us for those moments, then, in the moment itself, we’re not reacting. We’re simply enacting the plan that we’ve already put in place, that we know that we’re going to enact. And then as we do that consistently over time, it becomes more of a habit for us.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Lovely. And any don’ts?

Todd Henry

The biggest don’t, and this is, by the way, true of anything that we do as creative professionals, people have to solve problems, is don’t wing it. Talent gets you in the game but your practices keep you in the game. Talent is the price of entry. People think that they can wing their entire career based on talent alone. You cannot. You will, eventually, fail. You’ll eventually succumb to the negative drag forces of the marketplace.

You have to have practices in your life to prepare you for those moments and to help you be successful. And so, that would be the biggest thing, is don’t wing it. Have practices in your life to prepare you for critical moments.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Todd, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Todd Henry

I think the biggest thing that I would encourage people to consider is, listen, your life is comprised of moments, and how you approach those moments is going to define your life. We tend to think of life as a passage of days, and years, and months, and whatever, and that’s true but the reality is some of those moments are weighted far more significantly than others.

And how you respond in critical moments in your life is going to determine the arch of your life, and, ultimately, the body of work that you build, the relationships you have, and the degree to which you have deep regret later in your life. So, your moment is coming, make sure that you’re prepared for that moment when it arrives.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Todd Henry

Thomas Merton is one of my favorite thinkers, one of my favorite writers.

And he once wrote, “There can be an intense egoism in following everyone else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular, and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it, they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they justify their very haste as a species of integrity.”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Todd Henry

So, one thing that is really interesting to me in researching this book, I came across the work of a couple of key people. One was Martin Seligman, who’s kind of known as the father of positive psychology, and the other one was Albert Bandura, who did significant research into agency, and how agency affects us.

And one of the key tidbits that came out of the research was that people who live with an optimistic mindset versus a pessimistic mindset tend to outlive people who have a pessimistic mindset in their life, to the extent that people who live with a generally pessimistic mindset exhibit health effects that are similar to smoking packs of cigarettes a day in their life. Those are the kinds of health effects that they experience. Pessimism has such a negative drag on your physical health that is the equivalent of smoking packs of cigarettes a day. So, I thought that was pretty fascinating, actually.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Todd Henry

I was watching a video of a guy who was talking about the five-foot shelf of books, which is the complete Harvard Classics which were assembled like in the early 1900s by the president of Harvard. And he said, “If you read these books, this five-foot shelf of books, you will have all that you need in terms of, like, a Western liberal education.”

And so, I decided to commit myself to reading the complete Harvard Classics.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Can you share with us a couple titles that we’d recognize in that and a couple titles that we wouldn’t?

Todd Henry

Absolutely. So, right now, I’m in the midst of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which is the very first part.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s so good. All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to help you be awesome at your job?

Todd Henry

The tool that I use more than any other tool right now, as a podcaster, as a content creator, is Descript. It has radically changed my world, and I don’t say that very often. I’m not, like, a big jump-on-the-bandwagon-of-a-tool kind of guy but Descript has completely changed my world. If you do any audio or video creating, you 100% need to be using Descript.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Todd Henry

The one that I see circulating the most, because it got picked up by some of the, like, habit apps and things, is, “Don’t let your rituals become ruts,” and so, I think, every so often, or I know, every so often, it’s important to do a review of your rituals and make sure that they’re still serving you, and they’re not just there for you to serve them.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Todd Henry

So, ToddHenry.com is my personal website. You can find all my books. Our podcast is called Daily Creative with Todd Henry. We just started over with episode one. So, you could listen to the podcast where you get podcasts. My books are at ToddHenry.com or wherever you buy your books. The Brave Habit is available now.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Todd Henry

It’s really important that we understand that your time is finite, and this is almost something we say so often, it becomes cliché, but it’s cliché for a reason, it’s because it’s true. And so, treat today, treat this moment, treat your next conversation, treat the project you’re working on not as if it’s going to be your last, but as if it’s going to be your legacy.

We often hear this advice, “Live every day as if it’s your last,” and I think that’s terrible advice because if it was my last day, I’m going to eat donuts and do whatever I want to do because I don’t have to worry about my health. Instead, I like to think, “What if today was my legacy? What if this was the only day? What if a biographer was going to follow me around today and look at everything I do, and then was going to write the story of my life based on this day? How might I approach this day differently? How might I approach that next conversation or that conflict differently? How much effort might I put into this project I’m working on?”

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Well, Todd, thank you. I wish you much fun and bravery.

Todd Henry

Well, thank you. And thanks so much for having me on the show, and thanks for the great work that you do.