SPEAKERS

Greg McKeown, Caroline Achkar


Greg McKeown

Carolina you there?

Caroline Achkar  

Yes, I, Greg.

Greg McKeown    

It’s so nice to be talking with you. How are you and where are you?

Caroline Achkar    

I’m good. I am in Beirut, Lebanon, in the Middle East.

Greg McKeown    

I see that you sent a photograph of yourself in the, how do you say it, The Lebanese Shoff Mountain?

Caroline Achkar 

Yes, that’s correct.

Greg McKeown    

It’s a beautiful picture.

Caroline Achkar 

Yeah, thank you.

Greg McKeown    

Thank you for reaching out to me. Thank you for emailing me.

Caroline Achkar    

Well, thanks for having me. I am honored to be here.

Greg McKeown    

It’s a pleasure to have you on the What’s Essential Podcast and in your email to me, you said I, I’m just gonna read it. You said, I have the pleasure to write you from Beirut to Lebanon. I read your book a few years ago, while I was on a visit to Montreal. I got one also as a gift for a friend and recommended it to my daughter who got the book as well. And we’d like you to know that even in faraway devastated countries, your book is very much appreciated, and helps us a lot. I keep it next to my bed and refer to it very often. I have a dream, a mission, which I would like to see happen someday working on it, but need the gut to go completely for it, as it is essential for me. Thank you for the podcast, for your book. You wish me all the best now. I was really touched by you reaching out for two reasons. One, because of this description you have you said faraway devastated countries. Could you describe the current experience of living in Beirut?

Caroline Achkar 

Yes, recently, we had a problem economically. There was the bank stopped providing foreign currency. And also, we had a big blast explosion the Beirut Port. So it was a shock to us. And there was many people killed here. Many houses destroyed. And you know the situation is not wet. But we live in a beautiful country in nice weather, warm people and we love life here in Lebanon. Although economically and with the political situation, it’s not the best.

Greg McKeown    

Everyone I’ve ever talked to, from Lebanon feels a real deep love for the place. Something almost eternal in the way people talk about the place, like it’s living in some way. Like you can feel this love has gone on for many generations. And it’s contrasted by the current state of affairs. And that’s even before this horrific, massive explosion that happened and all of the other economic and political challenges of the time. How have you coped with these challenges around you?

Caroline Achkar 

Well, unfortunately we are used to have challenges in the area. I live in the civil war that started in 1975 lasted until 1991. So, somehow, we adapt, we adapt to different situations, we adapt to ups and downs, and we have a beautiful bond in in the country among the people. So, this bond helps us a lot to cope with difficult situations, you can feel there is warmness, there is love. I know there is also war and her and difficult situation economic situation. But there is something that is attaching to this country. Otherwise, we would have left long time ago.

Greg McKeown    

What is that connection for you?

Caroline Achkar 

First, it’s family. We are attached to the family, to the values of the family. Meaning that you can have your parents living with you, for example, you can have your children staying with you until they are like 30 years old or whatever. So there is a lot of affection and there is also the beautiful environment. You have the sea and the mountains that are very close to each other. So you can go swimming in April and then go skiing in in around an hour or so.

Greg McKeown     

That’s what they always say about California. And it’s quite lovely to hear you describe the same the same value proposition for being there. You mentioned having a dream, something that’s essential for you, what is that dream?

Caroline Achkar 

Well, actually, it’s, um, I would like to open a place or a relaxing place like a café. A nice, cozy, relaxing place, ideally by the beach, to welcome people, especially the younger generation and assist them in blooming, living, growing up in a healthy body, healthy mind. So that violence is replaced with peace, that hate is replaced with love, aggressively with compassion and with a beautiful life, because if we put the will it will happen.

Greg McKeown    

For you, this idea of the cafe is symbolic. It’s really important. It’s not just it’s not just a cafe. It’s a place for healing. It’s Tell me more about why this matters so much to you.

Caroline Achkar 

Well, I have lived difficult experience more than 10 years ago. I went through a surgery, which would have cost me my life. And then I changed my lifestyle since then, because I decided to take my health in my own hands afterwards, and under my own responsibility. So it was a wakeup call for me. So I started some research, I found also your book. And it helped me a lot. Your book helped me a lot in the way that I understood that, yes, I can, I can do something. It’s all about going through the path we choose. While reading the essentialism, I moved forward, it helped me to move forward to continue with my research. And that’s when I found another path, another way, another lifestyle, and I started it. Which means I stopped all the unhealthy foods that was poisoning my life somewhere. I adopted a healthy lifestyle because I, I found out that it improves a lot the way of thinking the actions we take the decisions we make by changing our diet.

Greg McKeown     

How did essentialism help you to make progress in your research? Just specifically, what did that do?

Caroline Achkar 

It helped me prioritize my life. It helped me to look for what is really essential. Not what is the trend, not what people wants you to do

Greg McKeown    

And specifically, what did you say yes to, what did you say no to?

Caroline Achkar 

I said yes to my health, to what really is healthy for me and  what I feel that is correct for me. I said no to people who were against the lifestyle I adopted.

Greg McKeown    

Maybe there are obvious things, but what is it that you started doing in your healthy lifestyle that other people at first weren’t supportive of?

Caroline Achkar 

Well, I stopped eating all kinds of flour. And in Lebanon, it’s very important that you eat bread. So somewhere, people they said, you’re crazy to stop this kind of food. So I went into the gluten free diet. It was not very, very easy, because people around me think that this is not the right decision to take for your health.

Greg McKeown 

It was culturally not understood, this is crazy. This is not the way for health, would you because you do research felt it was really important, especially for you.

Caroline Achkar 

Exactly. The essentialism book gave me strength, emotionally, it gave me strength. And I understand that, yes, we have to protect the asset first of all.

Greg McKeown    

It gave you some courage, for your convictions, some permission to pursue this, that you’re not crazy to really take responsibility for your health.

Caroline Achkar 

Exactly, so I continued in this path. And I continued some research, I educated myself, I continue reading books about health. And I attended a conference in Marseille in France about alternative natural healing. And slowly day after day are discovered that balancing between a healthy lifestyle, healthy, calm and focused mind is essential to lead a good life and the rich state of complete well-being.

Greg McKeown    

I think you’re describing a personal awakening, the discovery, there’s a different way to live life, there’s a different lifestyle.

Caroline Achkar 

Yes, that’s correct.

Greg McKeown    

And what has it done for you?

Caroline Achkar 

I was more open to people. I was more focused in my work at home, I could have more attention. I’m less angry, I find more strength. And I find out that if you search for an answer, and you put your focus on it, the answer comes to you. And I could also have people around me who had some minor, minor issues. And it was really essential to me to do to go through this.

Greg McKeown    

It sounds like what began with a wakeup call, led to enlightenment. And now you’ve already seen how you’re helping other people. And you really want to increase that you want to create a place to do that on an ongoing basis.

Caroline Achkar 

Yeah, that’s correct. I feel that, especially for the younger generation. Leading a healthy lifestyle, can help them growing up in a healthy way, and build a better environment, a better life. So this is why I was thinking of opening this place. Because also with a with a pandemic, with the difficult situation everywhere, it’s important to have a place where we can relax, where we can chat openly. And I believe that if you have a good way of eating, it will help you to think better to have a clearer vision.

Greg McKeown    

Yes, the way that you’re describing your vision is to help people start with what they physically consume, but to see the connection between that and their mind and their clarity. And also, their openness, as you said, in your own experience, your openness to other people, that what started as physical health really is so connected to emotional health, social health, and this is a key part of your vision for starting this cafe.

Caroline Achkar 

Yes.

Greg McKeown    

Do you have a name for the cafe?

Caroline Achkar 

We are French educated most of us, so I have chosen to name it in French. Viens Te Relaxer. VTR and it means come and relax.

Greg McKeown    

Yeah, it’s beautiful. And what, are you already committed to doing this actively I am I’ve already begun, or are you hesitant to go for it, where are you at on this journey?

Caroline Achkar 

Well, I could not find the right place but I have started the preparation like, like preparing some foods and have them in organic shops. But not yet the place.

Greg McKeown    

Are you hesitant about it, is it just a matter of time? Is there a wrestle that you’re going through, or are you already committed?

Caroline Achkar 

I’m hesitant because of the current situation in the country, that does not help you much to do any new investment.

Greg McKeown    

Yeah, right now, you’re trying to think of starting a venture in a time of political, economic, and now because of the epidemic, physical dislocation.

Caroline Achkar 

Exactly.

Greg McKeown    

So one person could say, well, don’t even bother, why are you even thinking about this is crazy. And your response to that would be what?

Caroline Achkar 

We have to do something crazy. Otherwise, if you don’t go forward, you will go backward.

Greg McKeown

When you say that, it feels like a leadership impulse. Where something deeper inside of you is saying, I will not accept this. I, I must do something.

Caroline Achkar 

It I don’t want to see just like, like crying on what is happening. Instead, we can do something we can move forward, as we have always done. It’s the pandemic will go away someday; the economic situation will improve someday. And we have to find a strength also to do something for the people and for our community. Help the young generation most of them are leaving the country. So if you have a bond here, if you have something to come to, then you might stay.

Greg McKeown    

One of the foundational principles of positive psychology is you can focus on what you can control, or you can try to focus on what you can’t control. And depending on that choice, many things change. It just sounds like what you’re doing is really focusing what I can do. I can’t do anything about all of these things. I can do something but it’s also a sense in you quite a fierce will to say I will do this I, I will not I will not do nothing.

Caroline Achkar 

Yeah, that’s right. I am still looking for a nice place, and I’m still hoping that, that I will find it and I can, can open this place and enjoy and enjoy gathering with other people and do what I have to do

Greg McKeown    

You have a vision of what you want it to be, and now one of the main obstacles is where to do it.

Caroline Achkar 

Where to do it and also, there is a part of the of the economic situation, of course, that I hope it will be solved soon.

Greg McKeown  

Yeah, because this is such an immense problem that you could do, you’re worried that you could do everything right. And still not overcome that problem? Yeah. You could put yourself into a worse economic position.

Caroline Achkar 

I hope it will be it will get better and we can achieve what me and other people here I want to achieve.

Greg McKeown    

One of the things that I think about is, as soon as a person has a vision, as soon as they know what their intent is, in the very moment of wanting it. In the very moment of wanting it. It seems like a whole flow of obstacles come to your mind. All the problems, all the reasons it will be difficult, all the challenges involved. And sometimes, those challenges and obstacles feel overwhelming. Often, they feel overwhelming. But something I have learned that’s so important is that all of those obstacles that flow to our mind, are really out. They are gifts. They are our brain, telling us all the things we need to solve in order to achieve our dream. All the obstacles come into existence, the moment we have a vision of how something could be. And so what I’ve learned is to is to take advantage of that in the following way. Write down every single obstacle, every problem in a long list in a column, and in the next column, think about every single obstacle and how to solve it. And it sounds like a pretty simple idea, but I have found it really helpful way of one discovering and remembering that all of the obstacles are really like stepping stones that they are helpful. They give us information. Well here’s it’s like the it’s the first half of the plan for achieving your goal. And then if you make the list according to each problem, you know, literally on a piece of paper. Now you have basically the plan. It doesn’t take very long it’s a quick way to create a plan to achieve a goal.

Caroline Achkar 

The minute I had this dream, this idea of opening this place. Exactly, I had a lot of problems in my head. And I was overwhelmed with, with all the issues, and I don’t know how to solve them all, it’s efficient what you are saying.

Greg McKeown    

To me, the first breakthrough is just to embrace all the problems that come to our mind as a good thing. It’s sometimes we think, oh, I must be being pessimistic. Or maybe just look at all these. It’s like, all those problems that come to your mind, or your enemies in achieving your dream, but they’re not these, these are your friends, they’re saying, okay, here are all of the things you’ll need to now address, your all of his the work to be done. And then to take each problem one by one. There may be problems, of course, it is possible, there are problems that just are insurmountable, it is possible, of course. But if you can take them one by one outside of your head. So you’re dealing with on paper, I find that solutions do come. And it’s much better than trying to handle it all in your brain. The recent research suggests we can only hold 2,3,4,5 things in our mind at the same time. We can’t even hold much information present. And so as soon as you’re trying to achieve a goal in a dream with, of course, then many problems to address it, we’re overloaded. And so just the simple process of write out all the problems and against every problem. You say, Okay, what, what do I need to do? How could I solve this, who could help me solve this?

Caroline Achkar 

That reminds me when you said that, to have a diary, like every night before you go to bed, to write down some, some ideas of the day, which I am already doing. And I started it like, a few sentences, a few ideas. But to tell you the truth, I don’t have time to do with every night. So I’m doing it as often as I can. But it does help because if you want to see something that happened last week, then you can go back instead of going back in your mind and having your mind overwhelmed. Then you go to this diary, and you can read it and see how we can improve, for example, what you did last week.

Greg McKeown    

I had on the podcast, David Allen. And one of the things that he says I love this quote is that your mind is good for a lot of things, but it’s a very poor office. So, getting it out of our heads onto paper, it doesn’t feel like a dramatic thing. You know, putting it in paper doesn’t mean you suddenly have the cafe of course but it is an act of creation. And, to me, the process of writing things down is an important part of a first or spiritual creation. And then we use that process to help us solve key problems. I would encourage you to bring the journal with you everywhere, just your one book. Okay, worry less about, I have to write in it every day, but just have it with you. So that when the ideas come, whether the ideas are more problems, or solutions to problems, you just can get them out of your mind and, and on paper. As you make this long list of problems to solve, what you’re also doing is you then take each problem one by one is creating an advanced search engine, where you set your mind the task, solve this problem. Of course, one of the problems, where do I where do I do this? Well, that’s one problem. And your mind is now constantly working on that in the background. And whenever it comes across information that could help solve that it will come to you. There’s something else that seems to happen in my own experience when I get really focused and serious about achieving something and hold the intent clearly. Especially when I’m humble about it and admit that I can’t do it on my own. People turn up, opportunities find their way to me. And it’s part of this process, I think of admitting the problems, not fighting them, not pretending it’s easier than it is, then trying to solve each one admitting when you don’t have the answer. And other people and resources suddenly turn up. What are your thoughts about this?

Caroline Achkar 

Yeah, that that’s right, because sometimes you don’t have an answer to everything, especially nowadays. You don’t have an answer to all the problems. There are a lot of a lot of issues, a lot of problems that you cannot control that can happen. And you don’t have the tools to do anything about it. But writing down, like you are saying and what I did, and what you mentioned, though, in your book, is to plan for the week ahead. Like during the weekend, you plan your week. So, you don’t have to be squeezed every day to know what you have to do. So, when there is a problem that arise somewhere you can, you can handle the problem in a way because you have already planned the other things to do.

Greg McKeown 

You’ve created enough space that whatever new problem comes along, you have enough space to absorb that unexpected issue, you have enough buffer.

Caroline Achkar 

Yeah.

Greg McKeown    

How can I be most useful to you in this conversation?

Caroline Achkar 

You are already useful because you permitted to me to have this podcast, and to speak for the first time about this dream I have. I was like keeping it to myself and this is the first time I am talking about it. And that helped me a lot like part of it is realized, when you speak about your dream about what you like to do. I feel like yeah I can do it. And with your advices, I wrote it down, and I hope I can overcome the problems.

Greg McKeown    

I think you said something powerful, which is that speaking, just putting something into words, putting it out there is also an act of creation. And I think a lot of times when people say, Well, you have to take action, in order to make something happen. They’re not wrong, when people say that they’re not wrong. But sometimes we don’t realize how powerful writing things down and speaking them out loud, our words have power, not just to describe the past, but to create the future. I believe that deeply. That words have a creative force about them. It’s one reason we have to be I think so careful about the words we use. To not use our creative words to create distrust, to create hopelessness, to create contention. Our words can create those things almost immediately, within ourselves and within other people. And for me listening to you today there’s a lot of hope, in your words. And they have power and they have they cause hope in me that you hold this intention inside of you and now you’re expressing that intention outside of you. To hope amidst hopelessness is really important. It’s really profound. And I’m touched by it.

Caroline Achkar    

Thank you. It’s really important to me that we have we had this talk. It’s like I was looking forward to it since quite sometimes. And it was a like, yeah, I’m going to talk to Greg today. And I felt the happiness, I felt joy, and it really means a lot to me. It really means a lot. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your advices.

Greg McKeown    

How could someone listening to this today who wanted to help, who wanted to support you, how would they do that?

Caroline Achkar 

Well, first by encouraging me to talk to continue to do it to, to have this dream realized. Supporting the idea trusting that it would to a positive to a positive thing. That yes, it will, it will help people that it will be a nice place. And that people they need, they need such a place. They are allowed to, to come in the place and to relax, not only to listen to news, to politics, to what is happening worldwide. And the support of the people emotionally, by their presence, by listening, by believing that this is a good thing. It would be helpful. I would like also to find the nice place. I found some places, but to some spots, but like it, it was not really what I’m looking for. So I don’t want just to jump on any occasion. I want to find the right place that that is that is looking for me.

Greg McKeown 

Yeah, and that’s a lovely way of putting that, a place that’s trying to find you. And people who are trying to find you. I believe, I’ve always believed that each of us has a unique mission in life to make a contribution. But what I have learned slower is that some people have a mission in their life to help you. You know, and it makes sense, because if I have a mission to help other people, then there must be other people out there whose mission is to help me in my life, and in my dreams and goals. And it’s the same for you and yours. And as you as you speak this dream and vision into existence. As you share it with me today, as you share it with everybody else that’s listening. As you keep talking about it with people around you, people will be attracted to that. And you won’t be so alone. So what you’ve done to today has been an important step. And just think, if you hadn’t put into words, this, that there even was a dream. If you hadn’t sent that to me, we wouldn’t have the conversation. And we wouldn’t be able to share it now with other people more broadly. And so maybe it doesn’t sound so profound, but I think it’s a really important part of this journey that you’re on.

Caroline Achkar 

Yes, you are right. Well actually, every time I read a paragraph or a chapter of your book, and then I go into the life of every day, I find something in what you said during the day. That goes back to what it was what you said. If you think about it, you will find it in your everyday work. And I yeah, and I do a lot of meditation. So then I meditate about what I read, what happens during the day.

Greg McKeown    

Well, it’s inspiring to me to know that in Lebanon, in Beirut, in the middle of all that’s going on, you are breathing, life into essentialism and essentialism is playing this modest role, but a helpful role in your journey too. One of my favorite ideas is that a book is not an entirely dead thing, but it still needs the reader bring their life to it and to engage with the ideas and to make them real. And you’re doing that. And I’m very grateful for that. And I don’t know if it’s of interest to you, but the book is not available to other people yet, but I have just finished a new book. And if you’re interested, I will just give you access to that. So that perhaps these new ideas can also help you in your journey. The book is called is called effortless, make it easy to do what matters. And it’s devoted to a single principle, which is that getting great results doesn’t have to be so hard all the time. And I feel like in some ways, it was like written for you because it’s not trying to argue that everything in life can be easy. But it’s saying that there are ways of thinking and acting that can make impossible things possible. And remove some of these burdens that make things harder than they have to be. And so if you’re interested, I will make sure that you get access to that.

Caroline Achkar 

Yes, yes, I am. I am looking forward for your new book because I heard you talking about it before.

Greg McKeown    

Well, well, I’ll just get you access to it ahead of time in hopefully continuing the help in you bringing about your dream because it matters and understand why it matters to you. And it’s to do good in the worst of times, and to help them in the most kilometers. It’s been such a pleasure, such an honor to have you on the show today. I hope we will stay in touch. Thank you for sharing your essential dream and your journey to making it possible.

Caroline Achkar 

Thank you, Greg. It was a pleasure talking to you. I am deeply honored to be on your podcast. Thank you very much.

Greg McKeown

Thank you.


Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown