5. Rachel Hollis on The Montage At the End of Your Life

SPEAKERS

Rachel Hollis, Greg McKeown

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Transcript

Greg McKeown

Okay – I’m here with the amazing Rachel Hollis, influencer extraordinaire, New York Times best seller, author multiple times over, but – that’s actually where I want to start. Because that’s an achievement. I understand that that matters. But it seems to matter more to you than might be obvious, that it’s symbolic to you in some way. Am I reading into this?

Rachel Hollis 

No, it was a very big deal for me. I wanted to be an author from the time I was 11 years old and realized that someone wrote the books that I loved. And I actually started writing books as a hobby, which is funny, but I started writing many years ago. And I actually really love those beginning stages of writing books that only a few people cared about, and the anonymity of being able to be awful and slowly try and get better. Books are one of my favorite things in the whole world so it feels like the sacred space to me to get to be a part of it. And I slowly tried to just become a better writer with every book I really fought to become better and better. And so there is something so poignant to me about being able to experience becoming a New York Times bestseller, but it wasn’t until my sixth book. And I think that’s one of the most special things about my journey. My husband just wrote his first book, and it came out and he immediately made the list. And that is its own special kind of amazing, but I’m so glad that’s not my story. Because I can tell you that I appreciate it so much more, because I had to fight to achieve it.

Greg McKeown   

In almost anything you do, I think you have to start with the courage to be rubbish. And nothing is that truer than in writing, because all writing starts rubbish. All of it.

Rachel Hollis  

100%. In fact, when we spoke at the beginning of quarantine – I’m in week 10, and I don’t remember when you and I spoke – but it was at the very early stages of it all.

Greg McKeown   

It was.

Rachel Hollis   

I was telling you that I was crashing a book. So, for the first time ever, I was attempting to write a book in an absolutely insane timeframe. Like, could I write something inside of quarantine? So since you and I spoke, and now it’s week 10, I have turned in that book.

Greg McKeown  

Oh, you have not!

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah, I have. And it was interesting, but it is for sure garbage. But really like all of my books,  now I’m kind of jumping all over, but all of my books are born in an edit; they’re not born in the first draft. And so I’m very gracious with myself about a first draft, because my processes is if I can just get that first draft down, then I can work anything to a place that I want it to be. But I will never be able to mold anything if I don’t have anything to start with.

Greg McKeown 

I read somewhere… well, you wrote it somewhere, that you have a few rules about how you write and one of them is sort of number of words per day – a goal per day – and it changes, but you have a target of just number of words of output. Yes?

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah. I don’t try and write magic, I don’t try and make it great, I’m just trying to hit a word count. And depending on how much time I have to complete the book, obviously that word count could be 500. And I’ve had days where my word count needed to be 10,000, which sounds insane. But my process is, I found… have you studied flow? Do I feel like that’s something that you would know a lot about?

Greg McKeown 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure I have. Yeah. Go ahead.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah. So I have found that that is one of the most powerful things that I ever learned and learning to, for lack of a better description, kind of activate my own flow state. And one of the things that really puts me into flow is a deadline, even if I make it up in my own mind. So even if my publisher will say, “oh you have until June 1,” I’ll tell myself, “you have to turn it in by April 3rd.” Because I will give myself a tight deadline, and that gets me into a state of just create, create, create, create… and once I’m in that, I can… the amount that I’m able to put out is so much greater. And I will say, this book that I just wrote, I keep joking with my team that it’s probably, like, the worst thing I’ve ever written. But it felt the best of anything I’ve ever worked on. It flowed out of me the easiest and it felt… the writing process felt the best. And ironically, it was the hardest deadline I’ve ever had. But I think that it felt so great because I had to stay in flow in order to accomplish it, which made it once I sat down to write, the words just poured out in a way that they haven’t before.

Greg McKeown 

What trade-offs did you have to make in order to achieve that sort of intense deadline for this book?

Rachel Hollis

So my, it’s interesting, because I don’t know that a lot of the public… if people know me, I don’t know that a lot of them actually realize that my greatest core mission in life and the thing I’m most proud of is that I am the founder and CEO of my company. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 17 years, and it’s, you and I spoke about this before, it’s one of the most important things in my life. And in order for me to write books, it has always, it’s funny, writing books I said before, it was just a hobby. I never, ever, saw a world where I would be known as an author. I always thought I would be an entrepreneur who just wrote books as my fun thing that I did on the side. So in order for me to accomplish being able to write, I have to give up time doing my job, which is also my passion. So I have to take time away from my business and my company in order to accommodate it. And frankly, it’s also why I’ve learned to write so fast to learn to write with those deadlines because I need to accomplish it and then I have to get back to my job. Like I was sitting here in the hour before you and I were speaking working on a marketing plan for a big initiative we have coming up in a couple months and it – the amount of how much I geek out, how much I love the puzzle of that,  just it’s one of my favorite things. But in order for me to write in that way, it means that I have to step away from that until I am done. And I will say there was a time in my life where what I would have done was work just as hard, write just as hard and then lose time with my family. Earlier in my, for lack of a better word career as a mom, I really struggled with being a workaholic. And I obviously I’m talking to the Essentialism guy, but it took me a long time to understand and redefine what my values were. And I got to a place in my life where I made the decision, I would never again affect my family time with my work time. So if something has to go it will either be the writing or the work but it will never be my time with my children or my time with my husband. So that’s what I give up is the work and I understand I’m super blessed to own a business and be able to do that not everybody has that option.

Greg McKeown   

So you were writing from about when to when each day?

Rachel Hollis  

When I’m doing full writing days when I’m on a deadline, I mean my editor would have a heart attack if she understood that I wrote the bulk of that book and the three days before it was due. Truly, I mean, that’s true.

Greg McKeown

Did you pull an all nighter? I mean, did you go… was is that, sort of?

Rachel Hollis  

No, because again, I won’t… I’ll wake up early before the kids. I’ll get up at 5am and I’ll work until dinnertime. Because that would be normal for them is for me to be working and then come and be finished at dinnertime. So it was that and so I won’t work into the evenings because it’s not good for them. And also, it’s not good for me. I think best the earlier in the day. So at night, my brain is a mess anyway, so it’s just better to have that time and be able to go reconnect and not work, but I would work from, you know, 5am to 6pm in order to accommodate these huge days.

Greg McKeown 

Last time we spoke, one of the things that you said had sort of slipped because of this weird environment that we’re in now is that you’d gone from being able to have a pretty good rule of, “Okay, I’m close my, you know, my laptop, I think you said at four o’clock, and I’m just with the family.” But then with all this sort of weirdness where time has become more malleable somehow and days slip into each other, you weren’t doing that as much, but we talked about that. How have you been doing since? It sounds like with the book, maybe not so well, but tell me how you’ve been doing.

Rachel Hollis 

I mean, the amount of times that I’ve thought about that conversation with you since then, you know, when 4pm sort of comes and goes and I’m still sitting here. The thing is, I’m very – I’m super mindful of it, which is not something I would have been years ago. So I am, I will honor myself in that I have just such a different experience about it. I’m in a really interesting, I’m going into a very interesting season with the business in that we had to pivot so drastically for people who are listening or not familiar, my business, a huge part of it is live events. So we do these fantastic conferences, and it’s a big part of what we do. And in this world that we’re living in, that went away, and we honestly don’t know when that will be back.

Greg McKeown 

So you have to assume it’s gone.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah. You have to act as if 100%.

Greg McKeown 

Because if it comes back, great, well, then then then you’ve got all the capability and the capacity ready for that. But you can’t hold on – well, maybe it’ll be two months, maybe it’ll be three, or maybe it’s six months now. Forget it. You know so when you say pivot, I know what you’re talking about.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, yeah. You just have to, you know, hey, let’s figure out the next thing. And so we have completely reorganized how we do business. And, thank goodness, it’s working. It’s been incredibly successful for us. We’re so – our team, it’s so incredible and they’ve worked so hard. But a big part of why I don’t have the normal rest that I would have is because it’s just, it’s like double the capacity for my brain and managing everybody. But that being said, I am, as odd as it sounds for me to be in the season that I’m in, and to still be shutting off when I normally shut off and to truly be checking out on weekends like I would before, is a big deal, because there’s a time in my life where that wouldn’t have been the case.

Greg McKeown  

Yeah, you’re saying the fact that there are boundaries at all is progress.

Rachel Hollis 

Such incredible progress for me, because there is the fear or the anxiety of taking care of making sure that my team is safe, would have kept me working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so just even the capacity to sort of sit in, like, we’re doing everything that we can, we’re making smart decisions, it’s all going to be okay. You’re gonna go play in the pool with the kids and not carry this into every single waking second is a big deal.

Greg McKeown  

Yeah, I mean I totally relate to that and, and in addition to just the challenge of this moment for me at least, I grew up with no money. I know that’s, you know, part of this story that you’ve shared. So, in that – when that’s your family of origin story, when that’s your experience, there can be a feeling of that you carry with you a burden of like, you know, there’s no one to save me.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah.

Greg McKeown

So you never stop because there’s like a, I don’t know like a tiger from your past. Always just there out of, you know, out of sight.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah, the expression that I heard years ago was if you’ve ever been hungry, then you’ll never be full. And it’s like, it’s such a harsh expression. But, I heard it years ago and I was like, ah, man, I hear that I understand that. And I think for me, it’s, again like this is tons of work over the years and a lot of therapy to get to the place where I can understand that I am – I understand my business enough to be able to look at it and look at the bank account and go no, you’re good. Because it’s not at this point in my life, it’s not working to ensure my family or me, like I’m very confident in that, it’s my business, and my team and just really wanting to make sure I take that so seriously. All of these employees and their families and I have been – I’ve led my company before through a recession. And so I know how fast it goes from “you’re doing great” to “oh my gosh, we’re in trouble”. So, there have been so many, honestly so many blessings inside of quarantine for me. And one of them is the reminder of what do we actually want to focus on? What are we actually in the business of doing? What do we really care about? How do we make sure that we keep this clarity long after we’re out of quarantine? So it’s been an interesting 10 weeks, I’ll tell you that much.

Greg McKeown

Over those 10 weeks, would you say net positive? Net negative, like overall do you think you’ve gained more than you’ve lost?

Rachel Hollis 

Oh my, I mean, it’s not even close how much I’ve gained. It’s not – and you know, like you know me a little bit now. We’ve talked a couple times, I am the queen of look for the positive, and how can this be for me, and how/what can I learn here, I truly live my life that way. And so, I –  while I certainly have had moments in this, especially at the beginning that this felt very hard, this has been almost exclusively positive. And I understand that I’m privileged to be able to say that because I’m safe in my home right now, not everybody has that ability. But even when things have gone bad, it’s still – I’m still able to see how it’s for us. Like, I know you have a billion kids like I have a billion kids, and believe me, there are days when I would just I like, please, I just can someone take these kids for five minutes? Can we please? But even in that I feel so much closer to my kids than I did 10 weeks ago, because we spent so much time together.

Greg McKeown   

Well and really what you’re saying is, you don’t want to sound insensitive to people that are having bigger challenges, but if you’re being straight up honest, you just have thrived in this challenge.

Rachel Hollis 

Yes.

Greg McKeown

And see it as this creative, not just a pivot like oh well we have to do it, an opportunity to create something new that you wouldn’t have done, if this hadn’t all happened.

Rachel Hollis  

Absolutely. And I will say too, for your listeners, that was a conscious decision. There has been opportunity in this.. there have been blessings in this… there have been goodness in this because, like I had a week where I freaked out and then I got a hold of myself. I was like you are going to create amazing things in this; you are going to figure out new lines of revenue; you are going to have a stronger marriage on the other side of this; you are going to be a better mom, like, I claimed it. And then I have done my best, I haven’t always gotten there but I’ve done my best to live each day. Trying to live out a life that is claiming that as my truth.

Greg McKeown 

What was the freakout week like… describe that.

Rachel Hollis   

There was a lot of vodka. There’s a lot of vodka for me. And I’m also a huge lightweight so a lot of vodka is not that much. But, and then there was, there was shame in that for me because drinking more than I should is a coping mechanism, a negative coping mechanism from my past, that I’ve worked really hard to not, you know, absolutely have fun, you know, have a drink with my friend or have wine, whatever, but it had been a really long time since I was using alcohol to cope. And so I felt some shame in falling back into an old bad habit. And I had it you know, and that’s cyclical, right. So you are triggered, you reach for this negative coping mechanism, you do it, that creates shame, you’re triggered again, then you kind of stay in this vicious cycle. So I had a few days of that. And then, you know…

Greg McKeown

I just was, I just was reading from yesterday about this for a second that described this sensation as the dark playground.

Rachel Hollis   

Good.

Greg McKeown  

And because it’s yes, it’s fun. Yes, on the surface, it’s easy but actually the emotion underneath that is what you described – it skilled, it can be shame, it can feel, you really know this isn’t where I want to be.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, absolutely. And I also know that I am so conscious of what I put into my body like how physically what I’m consuming and water and you know, making sure that I’m eating well and all of those things. That… I understand that in doing that and drinking too much I am sabotaging my body and I need my body to be able to perform at the highest level for me to live the life, to be the mom, to be the leader that I want to be. And so there’s just all sorts of things on many different levels that were wrapped up in that time and it was just coming from this anxiety that I know a lot of people felt and especially small business owners felt, of you’ve worked hard to put all these plans into place and that first week, we didn’t know and so we were trying to make decisions without knowing if we were making the right decision or when or how and so you’re really making decisions in the dark which is just even more anxious. And so it was just this feeling like I was on shaky ground and knowing that, you know, if it’s alcohol for me or food for someone else or whatever, that there is something you could reach for that pretty quickly is going to make you feel better than you did.

Greg McKeown   

Yeah a quick fix.

Rachel Hollis   

Yeah, quick fix. So yeah, I had a I had a few days of that. And then, as I often do, I just was like, knock it off dude, to myself.

Greg McKeown  

Talk about that moment. Was there a specific moment? Do you remember it? Or was there just a sort of phase where you started going :okay, I’m not doing that”

Rachel Hollis   

Yeah, I just feel like I’ve done it so many times. And I talk about this a lot. And I teach about this a lot that it’s, I have zero fear of failure. I’m not afraid to fail at all.

Greg McKeown   

Why?

Rachel Hollis  

I mean, this is I get this question a lot, I think on several levels. So one, at the risk of sounding maybe cheesy, or whatever the sounds like, my childhood was so difficult, that I felt like I was always in failure. I was always at no, I was always at hard, you know, and so I’m like, what, oh, okay I’m going to try and write a book and no one’s going to read it, like that’s nowhere near as painful as my past. So, why would I care about this little thing when I’ve been through so much worse. And then also, I think of just honestly, I have stood up from falling down, over and over and over, that the motion of getting back up again, truly feels like one of the most normal occurrences in my life. So even in, even in this crazy pandemic, I was just like, look, I know how to do this. Talk to myself, knock it off. This is not who we want to be. Let’s figure it out. And I did.

Greg McKeown   

So it was a self conversation. And you say, okay, enough of this.

Rachel Hollis   

Yeah.

Greg McKeown   

You’ve had your you’ve had your week of self pity.

Rachel Hollis   

Yeah.

Greg McKeown   

Put your big pants on and you get on with it.

Rachel Hollis  

And I can tell a couple cause I love tactics, so a couple things I can tell y’all who are listening, if it is helpful, is before I was able to have these conversations in my head, it was very helpful for me to have them in a journal. So I will set an amount of time to journal until that time is up. So that might mean that I have to sit there and stare at a blank page. But the reality is, you won’t. So you’ll write for a minute and then you kind of run out of things to talk about. And then if you have to sit there for 25 more minutes you’ll sit and you’ll sit and then you’re like okay, and you just keep writing and I find that the real stuff starts to work its way up and out if I sit there. So it ends up being sort of like self therapy. And a lot of times me having a conversation with myself in journal form, allow me to be really honest about what I’m scared of, what is giving me anxiety, and I also will find the solution in that writing as well.

Greg McKeown  

Is it just free flow writing? It’s just whatever your mind is producing is going on that page?

Rachel Hollis   

Yeah. And it depends on you know, if I’m having a, let’s say, like a feeling of a negative feeling or sort of feeling like I’m living in a state of suffering. So if I’m having anxiety, if I’m mad at my husband or whatever, that’s one kind of journal. That’s me just kind of peeling back the layers trying to just talk talk, talk, talk, talk to see through what’s really up. But then I also have the journal work I did yesterday because I’m – I took the day off. So I had turned in the book on Saturday, the new book and then I had Sunday, but I was like, you’re gonna have two days in a row. So I took yesterday off, it’s the first day I’ve taken off in quarantine. And I tried to – and it actually was very effective – I asked myself, I do this a lot, I’ll say if you could spend the state anyway, how would you spend it? And I then try to create what is it about the experience that you’re wanting that you can create in the moment that you’re in? So for me yesterday, I was like, if I could do anything in the world, I would be at my favorite spa. Okay, well, what do you do at that spa that you love so much? And so I have never done this at a spa, but this was the closest I could get to like a Jacuzzi moment. I took a bath, and I drank a beer in the bathtub, which was the most decadent – I don’t know how I’m 37 years old and I never tried to have a beer in a bathtub before but that was delightful. And then I took a nap. And then I journaled because it anytime I’m at a spa, I will take I’ll sit down with like tea and I’ll just write for a long time. So I did an hour and a half journaling. And I asked myself, my next big birthday is 40. So I’m two and a half years away from 40. And I envision like it’s my 40th birthday party and all my friends are there and all my family’s there. Who am I? Like that woman that’s standing there my 40th birthday. Who is she? And who’s there, and what memories does she have? And so if I can envision my ideal dream 40 year old version of myself, well, then that gives me a roadmap, that gives me an idea, that gives me a sense of what I need to be doing today, or what do I need to be living out today that will make that future version of myself come true.

Greg McKeown

Who do you want at your 40th birthday?

Rachel Hollis

So I wrote, it’s funny, I wrote it out of what that birthday party would be, and who would be there just this incredible collection of… we have so many very dear friends who are like family to us and it’s this eclectic mix of like artists and dreamers, and really interesting people from all different backgrounds who sort of make no sense together and yet somehow work perfectly. And so I was just kind of writing about our friendship group as it exists, but then hoping that that’s even more expansive. And I thought I’m going to stand at my 40th birthday party and I’m going to read this part of my journal.

Greg McKeown 

Oh, that’s cool.

Rachel Hollis

And they’re going to look around and realize that that’s what’s in the room. Like I will have created this in the room.

Greg McKeown  

I imagined your list that you’re creating to include people that aren’t actually in your inner circle right now but you would like to be in your inner circle. Am I right?

Rachel Hollis

Yes, absolutely.

Greg McKeown 

Okay, come on, who? Give us a couple of names.

Rachel Hollis

The Rock will be at my 40th birthday party. And that is not at all the kind of friends that I normally adopt, but I have in my community that is I have like a weird – I admire him so much, because one of my like, I told you my value in leadership is hard worker. My grandparents were farmhands and so there’s a lot of like, pride that I have in a job well done and working very hard. And he just emulates that for me. My husband was in the entertainment industry for a really long time. So I don’t know that there’s anybody in the entertainment industry that has a better reputation than he does for treating people well, and being kind and there’s just all these things that I really admire about him.

Greg McKeown 

Yes, much to admire.

Rachel Hollis

Yeah, it’s been a joke forever, that we’re gonna be friends, but we really are.

Greg McKeown 

I asked a few people ahead of time on social media, what I should ask you, what’s essential to ask you? And here are some of them – one was what have you personally cut from your life because it’s not essential.

Rachel Hollis 

I would say it may be surprising for people because I’ve built such a career for myself on social media, but I don’t consume social media…

Greg McKeown 

That’s interesting.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah, I’ll teach on this quite a lot, it is such a time suck. It is such a distraction. So for me, social media is a place to create or to put things out in the world. I want to continue to put goodness out in the world. I want to continue to talk about the things that I believe in. But, I will go create, like, I’ll go put something on social and then I don’t look to see if people liked it. I don’t know how many likes it got. I’m not paying attention to followers. I just, I want to create and then I want to let it be. About 10 years ago, I cut out TV. So I don’t watch TV. I can’t tell you anything that’s on Netflix, literally for the first time in a decade I started watching a series inside of quarantine and you’re gonna laugh – I’ve always wanted to watch it – it’s the only thing that’s ever interested me in 10 years and that’s Downton Abbey. I’m on episode five. I love it. I’m a huge history nerd. So I am loving it.

Greg McKeown  

Where are you in the story?

Rachel Hollis   

I’m only on episode five. So I barely… I’m taking it in, in small doses. Well, because I can’t… I just hate… I mean, I think you’ll get this, I hate feeling like I lost time. I hate it. I hate the idea of – you went on to look at, let’s say, Instagram or Tik Tok or something… and I’m human, it certainly happens to me too, and you mean to go on for a minute and you lose an hour! Ugh, I hate it. Because there’s nothing… nothing came out of that, there was nothing good in it for me. And so, TV and streaming and shows is that in a lot of ways. It’s funny because I have a show on Quibi, which is this new network. And I think it’s funny because I like to create things but I don’t want to consume them.

Greg McKeown

But, I see the connection here between you saying that with social media. I hate losing an hour, and then this rapid, intense writing project that you’ve just completed, right? Those are related.

Rachel Hollis

Absolutely. Have you seen Hamilton?

Greg McKeown

Yes.

Rachel Hollis  

Okay. So Hamilton is so well done on so many levels.

Greg McKeown

Don’t you want Lin to be at your 40th birthday party?

Rachel Hollis  

Yes, you know what, thank you. Yes, I do want Lin to be there too. I would really… the overwhelming emotion I had the first time I saw Hamilton and I wept – WEPT – through it, was pride of this human I do not know, in Lin Manuel Miranda, and I just kept thinking, how did you do that?

Greg McKeown 

Yes.

Rachel Hollis

How did you do that? And I just kept imagining this man, and I know he had a name at that point, but him going to someone and saying, “I’m going to write a musical that’s like rap and hip hop, and it’s about Alexander Hamilton”. And I, you know, nobody believed in that. And I’m so inspired by people who, like, find a way to make their thing, a thing. Anyway, that’s not the point.

Greg McKeown 

Yeah, but it kind of is the thing yes, because there is real genius in what he’s created. And that’s really the phenomenon, is that you sit there going “how are you operating on this many levels?”

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah

Greg McKeown  

With each piece, with each word, with each… all the reflective music so that the story is being told at multiple levels at different points in the show… so there’s the amazement at the achievement that you’re experiencing. But then yes, you’ve got to go back to like, well, who is this person? And what was their journey to this moment? Because this is where the applause happens, but this is not where the genius was happening.

Rachel Hollis

Yes. And I think for me, I… I have so many ideas. And, I could write books from now until forever and I would not run out. I’ve learned over the years, at the beginning of every year that I will choose, these are the creative ideas that I will work on this year. And it can only be these things, and I can’t do more than this, because otherwise I’ll get excited and try and take on more than I can actually achieve. The most disappointed I could be… would be to get to the end of the year, and have gotten so distracted that I didn’t work on the creative projects I wanted to build out. Or, the reason I mentioned Hamilton, is because in that song, or in that musical, one of his things is, like, “why are you writing like you’re running out of time?”

Greg McKeown   

Oh, yeah.

Rachel Hollis  

You know, so… there’s this part of me that’s like, oh, you have all these ideas and these characters are real in your mind. And if you don’t write them down, what if they go away or… I don’t know. And so I just hate the idea of losing an hour doing what matters to me because I was looking at, you know, outfits on Instagram.

Greg McKeown 

This is a bit morbid but I downloaded that… I can’t get the name of the app now but.. the… you set a date in the future for something, and it will tell you how many days are left until that moment.

Rachel Hollis 

Like a countdown, or?

Greg McKeown  

Yes, thank you, countdown app. And I put on there my sort of… estimated date of expiration.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful thought to consider. I think it’s… most people don’t consider it, and then…

Greg McKeown 

Well because they don’t want to.

Rachel Hollis

Yeah.

Greg McKeown  

Because, I think it does feel morbid to people, but for me, it just reminds me, man, what are you waiting for? You’ve just got to get on and do it. And I just had the most amazing conversation with somebody, a musician. She’s written thousands of songs in her life, and she had a stroke not very long ago, unfortunately. But she was expressing to me something that was a little different than I’d ever thought about a mission before, you know… this essential mission in life. She was really saying that now in her life, she is trying to make sure that in this encore that she’s been given, that she will complete everything she needs to, and – here’s the phrase – and “leave nothing undone”. And that was such a different way of thinking about it because, you know, sort of in the first half of your life… and maybe we keep going generally with the same impression, “oh, we’ve got a sense of mission and a central mission delivering a unique mission”, but it’s still a general sense of purpose. Even if we attach goals to it… it’s the idea of ever expanding. But for her, she’s on the other side of this now, and she has been so consistent in living her mission. She’s been a source of great inspiration to me. And, now she’s like, “no, I’m trying to finish it”. And that changes for me the orientation towards thinking about what goals to set. Like there is a mission to fulfill, and I want to figure it out with enough clarity in my life, that at the end, I go “and it’s done”.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah. Do you know Brendon Burchard?  The author, Brendan.

Greg McKeown

Yeah.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah. So Brendan… I’ve heard him teach before on this topic, and it’s so fantastic. It’s the idea of “Mortality Motivation,” meaning that you either experience a near death experience or you lose someone unexpectedly. And that loss reminds you that you are human, and that the next 50 years are not guaranteed for you. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for you.

Understanding that hopefully shifts the way that we look at what we do with the time that we have left. One of the stories that I was writing about in the book was, last September, my brother in law died of a heart attack unexpectedly. My sister – who is in her 40s – they met when she was 12. And Michael was 13. And so, they had been together since they were children. And so this man has been a brother to me my whole life, like, I don’t have a memory in my life – because I’m my sister’s nine years older than me – so, I don’t have a memory that wasn’t with him around. So it wasn’t just the loss of a brother in law, it was the loss of a brother. And, it was a sudden heart attack at 46. It was not something anybody expected. And, we… I was writing the story of going up to Oregon, where they lived, for his funeral. And at his funeral, they – a lot of people do this where they play a video montage with pictures of the person’s life. And, you know, it starts when they’re a baby and sort of works its way up and it keeps passing and then you see him you know, meet my sister, and then you see their daughter and him, and then you see their son and him, and you’re sort of watching the story of his life and it’s beautiful and it’s sad. And in Michaels case it was cut off, you know, far too soon, and we got in the car to go, you know, to the reception and my husband was like, man, I can’t stop thinking about that video. And I, assuming that I knew, you know what he I’m like, oh, I know right? It’s, like so sad, that it, you know, it just sort of ends. Like he’s 46 and that this is the last picture, last picture. And Dave said, yeah, it is. But what I keep thinking is that we still have time to make the pictures that are going to go in our montage.

Greg McKeown  

Mm hmm.

Rachel Hollis

That we still have the opportunity to live a life that’s worthy of the photo montage. That when we get to the end that, you know, because this… again, this maybe sounds morbid in the same way that, you know, your countdown does to some people… but for me, the pictures that go in the montage at your funeral are supposed to be the highlights. They’re supposed to be the best. They’re supposed to be the pictures represent who you were. And so I wrote about this in the book, and I ended up telling my kids that later that evening, like man, guys, I hope for you… but certainly hope for myself that I lived my life in a way that fills up the montage.

Greg McKeown

It makes me think of not just… you know, the very, very end question of our lives, but also recognizing how short certain periods of our life are.

Greg McKeown  

I was reading a brilliant graphic essay online called “The Tail End”. And one of the things that the author points out there is that when you leave your home, you’ve had 94% of the face time you’re ever going to have with your parents.

Rachel Hollis  

Wow, that’s crazy and makes me wanna cry a little bit.

Greg McKeown

Yeah. Tell me this, what do you want to be at 50? You’ve talked about 40. And that’s quite a tangible thing. But I suspect that as your life has evolved, you are already finding yourself doing things and being involved with things that if they existed at all for you, they were barely a dream.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, for sure.

Greg McKeown  

But they’re happening. And they’re real. And I think I saw a post that you’ve done when you were with Oprah on a 2020 Vision thing, right? And I could imagine for you going, not just “wow, this is so cool, this is a good moment”, but a secondary reaction of “what does this all mean?”.

Rachel Hollis

Absolutely. I think that was most of 2018 for May 2018. February of 2018 was when Girl Wash Your Face came out. And the response to that book was beyond, like, just not even a… not something you could replicate, not something you could try for; and I certainly wasn’t, I mean, I think… I think Girl Wash Your Face has sold four and a half million copies, and –

Greg McKeown   

That’s just crazy.

Rachel Hollis  

It’s crazy.

Greg McKeown   

People don’t know what that means. Right?

Rachel Hollis

Well, I’ll tell you what it means. The fifth book – the book right before it – sold 12,000 copies… an insane, insane thing, and not something I was trying to do. That book was turned down by so many people. Like, it’s hilarious how that all came to be.

Greg McKeown 

Really

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah.

Greg McKeown 

Come on, come on, you’ve got to have known… you’ve got to have known that it was going to do well.

Rachel Hollis   

No, I honestly…

Greg McKeown  

Really?

Rachel Hollis

I was a blogger for a very long time. And I had been blogging those kind of stories for a very long time. Nobody, I mean, I had an audience but it was small. It was never, never, never, like, I with any book of frankly, with anything that I create, I just do my best that I can do. I think five years later, could have been something greater but at that I just like, hey, I’m gonna do the best that I can with the time I have. I’m gonna turn it in and hope for the best. And I knew that it was, it was the first time that I ever got an advance that was actually like a legit amount of money.

Greg McKeown  

Right

Rachel Hollis

And it’s still like hilarious, hilarious if you know what the advances versus what the book did. But for me, I was like, I am RICH, I AM RICH! I got $50,000 I am about to go, you know, there’s like, I never – my previous book advances are like $8,000, like, I just couldn’t even fathom that kind of money. And, I know it’s hilarious because you understand the publishing world. But it was such a huge deal for me. So I was like, okay, great. I’m moving up. But even in that I thought it was because just the amount of time I had been an author, but never, ever in my life did I think it would be what it was. So I spent the bulk of, I would say the last six months of 18 freaking out, because the book also was not an overnight success, which people don’t realize.

Greg McKeown   

It was or wasn’t?

Rachel Hollis 

No, it was not. It made the New York Times list 13 weeks after it came out. That’s not

Greg McKeown

Really?

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah

Greg McKeown  

What gave it the spark?

Rachel Hollis 

Word of mouth. It truly was just this crazy thing that happened. I didn’t have press for it. I didn’t, we didn’t like there was nothing, nothing! It is my career – this is the definition of my career, my success with my business. Everything. I have spent 15 years – been an entrepreneur for 17 years – I’ve spent 15 of those years building a community online, and I keep serving my community and she keeps serving me back. So this, to me, the book was my community who’d been with me even though it was a small but mighty group of people, were like, this is the book. And they told their friends and they bought it for their sisters and they handed it around. The community made the book what it is, and is what makes it continue to sell so well today.

Greg McKeown 

But somebody listening to this goes okay, well before the book came out you had what? What approximate followers on Instagram as this book comes out?

Rachel Hollis  

On Instagram? 30,000.

Greg McKeown

When the book came out you had 30,000 followers?

Rachel Hollis  

Yes.

Greg McKeown

Are you kidding me? I didn’t know this.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah. So that I would say that I had, I had a much bigger following on Facebook. I hadn’t been on – let’s say I had a couple hundred thousand on Facebook. I wish I had the exact numbers for you. But it was, I went from, I want to say like it’s slowly built up, built up. I remember getting to 100,000 and me thinking holy crap, this is insane. And it went from 100,000 to a million in six months. It was wild.

Greg McKeown  

So this was the phenomenon. This was the period where you went, “I’ve been doing the same thing consistently the whole time”, and you’re still doing the same thing consistently now, in a sense?

Rachel Hollis  

Yep.

Greg McKeown 

But this was the breakthrough where suddenly – it’s just happening.

Rachel Hollis 

That was the tipping point. Yeah.

Greg McKeown   

Yeah. That’s very interesting. That was the breakthrough.

Rachel Hollis  

Absolutely.

Greg McKeown

So that was… 2018 was the time where you suddenly are like, okay, I’m in new territory now.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah. And I describe it as it’s like Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill, which I felt like I had been doing for so many years. And then all of the sudden, the boulder slipped over the top and started racing down so fast that I couldn’t control it anymore. And I spent the last six months of 18, truly I just, I wrote about this in the book, it’s the first time I’ve talked about it publicly, truly trying to decide if I even wanted to have any kind of public figure ever again… because it was so, so overwhelming. It went from, “nobody knows about you or this book” to suddenly people know about it, to people like it – oh my gosh, a lot of people like it, that’s great. But what happens and I don’t know if this happens for everybody, or if this is something that is especially reserved for women, is that you hit a point where the success starts to become a negative, and the success starts to put a target on your back that I didn’t know… it went from “oh my gosh, like people are really enjoying this book”, to, now there was, there’s a ton of like blogs that came out or press that came out about how my message was hurtful to women, and how I was – this is getting into a way deeper conversation than you wanted on your podcast Greg…

Greg McKeown 

No, it’s really great.

Rachel Hollis 

But went into a conversation of that I was a bad Christian. I’m a preacher’s daughter, a preacher’s granddaughter. My faith is a big part of who I am, not ever intended to be a big part of my platform but is a big part of my core. And so publicly to have people, to have press outlets question whether or not I was a good Christian, like it just, it became something so negative that was very hard to come to grips with. So it took me a lot of time.

Greg McKeown 

What was the criticism on the Christian front? Just you weren’t being Christian enough in your book?

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah, so on both sides – so I’m incredibly, I’m incredibly liberal. I’m incredibly inclusive. My best friends are gay. I’m like, openly supportive of every kind of person, and that was picked up on one side and then on the flip side was, I am an entrepreneur and I have pretty openly pursued this idea of wanting to build to be stable and to have money and we talked about this earlier. I grew up without any, so in the book I had talked about saving for years to buy a Louis Vuitton purse, it was like a big deal. And so the amount of people who have gone up in arms, which sounds so crazy, but that, you know that I was, you know chasing wealth and that’s not a godly thing. It just the thing was when something was so well, the negative press was press. It was something interesting that people want to read. So, but that was hard for me to come to grips with when six months prior, nobody knew who I was. So it just took me a minute.

Greg McKeown  

What you’re describing is really the dark side of success.

Rachel Hollis 

Yes.

Greg McKeown

That really no one tells you about. So, you know, people see – and I still see this happening – that people see someone who’s successful in some vector. You know, it could be in sports, it could be in books, it could be social media, whatever the thing is, and then they create a completely false narrative that everything in their life must be great.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah.

Greg McKeown  

And if and even if they complain – or not complain – they share what’s not great, it’s like, “yeah, but but you’re all right… I mean, you’ve got it sorted”, and so there’s an empathy gap as well.

Rachel Hollis 

Mm hmm. And it sounds like – it sounds ridiculous like, oh, “poor little baby, your book is doing so well then people are being on the internet”. But it’s just if you’ve never encountered something like that, to that extent, and there is no preparation for it, it is – I don’t know there’s something interesting, and I touched on this a little bit in the book I just turned in, that my experiences this is way worse for women. Way worse for women in business, way worse for any sort of public woman with a public profile. But when people don’t like something a man creates, they attack the creation. They don’t – like “I didn’t like Greg’s book, that book was terrible”, they talk about the book. But when they don’t like something that a woman creates, they attack her. And that I felt on such a massive level and I have experienced it for, you know, since that time of so many of my contemporaries who are men who are in the similar field can do and say anything. And myself and the women that I know, if you care about your brand, or the public’s perception of it, you have to put everything through 10 different lenses and under a microscope and what are they going to say about this? Or what do they, and it’s very simple to say like, oh, well don’t worry about it. But it’s just… we’re getting into such a different topic, but it is, I have felt that it is very different. Even my husband who is now doing similar work, can say and do things that nobody bats an eyelash, and if I say or do the exact same thing you know, there’s 5000 comments about me, you know, oh, “you’re chasing the wrong things”, “I can’t believe you’re… you care only about money”, and I’m like, are you kidding right now? My best example – I’m going off Greg, I’m not gonna pull over the soapbox – but like my best example, let’s say pre quarantine because now the world is so different,  is male entrepreneurs. It is the coolest thing ever publicly to be a man and be an entrepreneur. And what is so cool about that people on the internet is these guys on… in a private jet, driving their Bentley, like there’s such this thing of like wealth and what they’ve achieved. If I am wearing a pair of jeans that people can publicly tell were something more expensive than Levi’s, I will be destroyed in the comments. And I’m not rolling around on a private jet. But it’s like, “oh, you only care about money, you’re –”  it’s just, it’s crazy. It’s crazy, we could do a whole other podcast.

Greg McKeown 

What you’re saying is that you feel that there is a double standard.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes. And I have when I first started to really be proud of the success that I was achieving with my company, I kept wondering, like, “why don’t I have any examples of like… where are the women? Where are the women? Where are the women?” And I started to research and I could name them for you, but I won’t so gonna sound like I’m calling it out. But there’s so many women who have built incredible businesses and I’m like, why aren’t these women talking about their success? Why aren’t they talking about what they’ve built or what they’ve achieved? Even to a 10th of the degree that these men are. And what I realized – and for a while I was like, maybe it’s my job to lead out. Like maybe I’m supposed to not in an obnoxious way, but just talk a little bit about because of what I’ve been able to build, I was able to buy my grandparents house because they didn’t have retirement. Like I’ve been able to take care of my family. I’ve given 10% of company profits away. I’ve given millions of dollars. Like the things that I’ve been able to do because of what I’ve built, I’m really proud of and so I started to talk about those things. And the reaction was so intense that I’m like, oh – this is why women don’t talk about it. Because it’s easier, because it becomes a distraction from the mission of your business. Because why in the world would you take all of this punishment for something that, like, you could open up right now and these guys are like, “here I am in my private jet”, and I’m like there is… there is no… you will not see a female entrepreneur doing that and having and being respected and having – no, it’s not a thing.

Greg McKeown

Do you feel like it’s equal criticism from men and women?

Rachel Hollis

No, only from women? That’s a very good question.

Greg McKeown  

And at the core of it now, of course, it’s all guesswork, I suppose. But is it women criticizing you because they feel somehow self critical themselves? That they feel worse about what they’re doing when they look at it? That they’re comparing and therefore being judgmental?

Rachel Hollis 

I don’t know that it’s that.. I – I feel like people are, I don’t want to see.. I don’t want to say afraid. But people don’t like things that are other. They don’t like things that are different. And we haven’t seen a lot of examples of that. And so I think when you start to see those conversations, in a medium like social media, which has predominantly been a place where women are showing off clothes or talking about being a mother or talking about being a wife, and someone comes along and says, “I am those things – I am a very proud wife and very close to my children and care about that deeply, and also, I’ve built this thing”. And I think that it’s, it just strikes people as so other that they think it’s wrong. Or that it’s or that in some way, you’re implying that that’s what she is supposed to want for her life. And I try and say this a ton. I wrote an entire book about this concept that you don’t have to want my life. You don’t want to have to want hers or anyone else’s. I think that you should want to pursue more. I think that you should want to pursue a better version of yourself than you were yesterday. But that doesn’t have to look like being a founder or CEO that could look like being the best mom in the entire world. And that’s beautiful. But I think that because it’s so different than what they’re used to seeing, that that narrative somehow implies that they’re wrong. And so they attack it. And it makes me sad, because I think that there’s a whole generation of young women who are maybe only looking at having a big career, instead of building an entire company. And my… I’m very proud of the fact that I’m raising four kids who only know a world where a woman can build something from scratch and can build it up and can create what I have worked really hard to… to create.

Greg McKeown

2018 was the year right? If you’re marking the line, that’s where it all takes off. That’s also where you’re suddenly challenged… the dark side of success, the other side that no one talks about. But how we got to this point in the conversation was this idea of.. you start to experience things in life that you go, whoa, what does it mean? What is this experience preparing me for?

Rachel Hollis  

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

Because it’s not just for you. And at least the way I would imagine it for you… there are moments where you say, all those little impressions I had about my own mission in life aren’t a joke. They weren’t just frivolous. They weren’t just grandiosity. This is really coming to be.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, I think I continue… what’s interesting is that you have a moment like that. And then you, I still have moments where I’m like, oh, wait, this is what it was for. Oh, wait, no, this is what it was for. Oh, it’s still revealing itself. In all the ways that… I honestly said to Dave in quarantine because we immediately, once I sort of had that bad week, we rallied and we got our community involved, and we did a challenge and we’re going to be intentional, and we’re going to we did all of this work with our community to serve them in this time and continue to do this work while we’re in quarantine. And we had a live event we just we did all this stuff. And I thought I had this moment where I’m like, what if – and this sounds very grandiose – but I believe that a lot of what I have and the opportunity that I have been given is because of something greater than me has given me the opportunity. And I thought, wow, what if what if Girl Wash Your Face happened so that in quarantine, people would listen to you tell them to have hope?

Greg McKeown  

Hmm.

Rachel Hollis  

Truly, like, what if you thought it was for this whole thing over here? And what if it was never for that? What if it was for something you don’t even see yet? Because I really do believe that… I really, honestly believe that every single thing in my life and every single thing that has happened could all be so one person hears one thing on a random Tuesday, that changes everything. Like I honestly believe that that is how life works, that everything that has happened for me, to me, all of these things could be leading to a moment so that someone could hear something that would help them become the person they were supposed to be 25 years later. And not that I would say something profound, but just that I would be in the right place at the right time to say that thing for that person.

Greg McKeown 

Well, I think that you’re saying two things there. One is that it’s about the one, you know, the individual.

Rachel Hollis   

Yes, always.

Greg McKeown  

Caring about that person. But also there’s a second idea, which is there’s a bigger plan going on. And I’m just a piece of that plan. And I’m, like, watching it unfold as I’m going along myself.

Rachel Hollis   

Absolutely. I fundamentally believe and I, I, I’ve said this a lot, I’ve talked about this a lot, of how – one of the questions I’ll get often is how – how do you hold, how do you hold space? So I, we do these conferences, and it’s three days. And it could be, you know, 8000 women for three days. And I’m on stage for four or five hours a day. And if I think about what that is, if I think about the responsibility of that, I could never get on stage. It’s too much. It’s too much. And so for as long as I’ve been speaking, you know, let’s say for the past couple years, been speaking at the level of crowds that I have, my prayer before I get on stage, every single time is always, God, just give me one. Just give me one. Let there be one person in this audience today that hears something that you wanted them to hear, that they were meant to be in the space, just give me one, because if I can focus on that one, not knowing who they are, then there’s no fear or there’s no anxiety, there’s no nerves, because then it’s not about me. It’s about them. And so, yeah, that’s a lot of what I do.

Greg McKeown   

Do you imagine the one in a general way? Or do you have a clear vision of who that person is you’re trying to speak to?

Rachel Hollis

No, I don’t. I don’t believe it’s my job to figure them out or what they’re supposed to hear. I just, I believe that I’m supposed to do the best that I can with what I know that day. And that I hope that somewhere in there is a message that someone needed. And frankly, like it could be that someone needed to laugh, or someone needed to be in community with other women or someone needed to hear that they matter. I mean, who knows.

Greg McKeown  

Or even sometimes it’s not… it isn’t the words at all, is it? It can be that they just hear something that isn’t actually being spoken.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes, absolutely.

Greg McKeown 

But, they get their own message. This has happened to me definitely in life where I’ve attended somebody else’s teaching, speaking, some other event. And it’s not the words, it’s not something I can quote that they’ve said. But they’ve been operating in a certain way with a certain spirit with a certain degree of light, that somehow some other message comes to me. That is what I really need.

Rachel Hollis 

100%

Greg McKeown  

You want you want to be able to increase the level of light in your sphere of influence.

Rachel Hollis

Yes. So much of what I’m trying to build and what I continue to lean into, and I hope that I can keep getting closer and closer to this. And I think that I will as I continue to get older and I think that I truly think the blessing in quarantine was the reminder of what matters in the world, what really matters, what is true and good when all else is stripped away. And that it’s different for, I mean, this is the idea behind what is essential – is that it’s different for all of us. And that what is essential to you has power because… it matters because you matter. But that the closer that we can get to that, the closer that we can clean to what really matters to us, is, is a happy life; is a more joyful life, is a just a better existence. I was, I was reading this book – I read so many books, so please do not laugh at this topic, but I was reading about angels – sp I had never read a book like that, and I just was curious what people say about angels. And so I was reading –

Greg McKeown 

There’s nothing funny about that to me. I think that’s great.

Rachel Hollis

Yeah, so it was like angels, and like spirits, and whatever. It was just like, I picked it up on a trip, and one of the things that she was talking about was what things in life give you energy? What gives you joy? What, what fills your cup, what fills your spirit… and how I interpreted it for myself was what brings me joy. And so I started to do a lot of work in myself on what is my joy list and what are the things that bring me joy, but, what I loved is that when she was describing her – the things that filled her up, however, she described it – I can’t remember all of the things on her list, but I remember that she loved textiles. She’s like, I just love a good… like the textiles, and the texture, and the design, and the whatever… And she was describing it in such a way that you knew that it brought her so much happiness. And I was like, I have never, in my life cared at all about textiles. And I love that what is good for us as humans is different based on who is having a conversation. But that hopefully we can let go of needing to live into what society thinks we’re supposed to be, or a family of origin thinks we’re supposed to be, and just pursue a life that is authentic to us. Just to remember what matters. And in order to know what matters, you have to know yourself.

Greg McKeown 

And that can be one of the biggest challenges because everywhere we go, there we are. And so, I remember, Anna pointed out to me, years into our marriage, she said, you know, “have you ever thought about the fact that this little this factory of ideas that you have is like… have you ever thought that’s just like a gift? That’s not everybody’s… not everyone’s brain is doing that. You know, not everyone’s built that way”. And it was sort of news to me because I thought, well, first of all, what you don’t want the muse taken away. So suddenly, you’re aware of that in a different way. But also you just go yeah, this uniqueness sometimes is the hardest thing to see. And how do you actually see it? How do you see it when it’s so familiar?

Rachel Hollis 

Well, I sat down that day, you know, me and my trusty journal, and I challenged myself to write down 20 things that made me so happy. And I think that people struggle with it, the more that they second guess what it’s supposed to be. So for me, I was like, no judgment, like, I’m just going to make my list and I’m going to write down anything that just makes me feel really happy and joyful. And so the very first thing on my list is coffee. And the second thing on my list is also coffee. It is! My first thing on my list is a slow cup of coffee with a view. Like where you don’t have to rush where you can sit and have your coffee really slowly, while looking at something pretty. And my second thing is getting to go to independent coffee houses. So this has been a little hurt and in quarantine, but getting to go into an into an independently own coffee house and just…

Greg McKeown  

Yes.

Rachel Hollis  

I love like, “what is your best drink?” And “is it a poor over”, I’m just a nerd, I really love coffee. And so I made a list and some things were simple, like slow cup of coffee, and some things were bigger, like international travel. But by challenging myself to come up with that list, I now know 20 things – and at least 10 of them are things that I can incorporate into any day of the week, very easily. And so that means I can build a day that’s filled with joyful things. Every morning of my life, I have a slow cup of coffee with a view. Because I intentionally wake up early, so that that can be part of my day, and the slow piece means that I have to wake up before anything child of mine is awake. But if I know what matters, if I know what makes me happy, then it’s so easy to plan it into my life. At first I did it in a calendar – like I would plan in “go to a cute coffee house on your lunch break”. But now, those things are so regular for me, that I don’t have to think about them. I just do them.

Greg McKeown  

They’ve become meaningful rituals for you.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes, and I just feel like my life is so much more peaceful and it feels so much… I feel so much more content. Because when I made that list, I think the only item on it that was, that was a costly item was travel. It was the only thing. And obviously traveling on vacation is not something I do very often. So it wasn’t like my list didn’t have like designer clothes, that’s not – that’s not my style. And so to, to be conscious of the fact that everything that I love about my life really doesn’t have money attached to it is a reminder of when I start to go too hard at work, when I start to feel this, like whatever it’s like, wait a minute, this is not even what we’re chasing. This is not even what matters. This thing matters. And so I feel such a sense of contentment in doing this practice for the last, like year and a half.

Greg McKeown 

Well and, and what I hear you saying is, it’s a high joy per dollar ratio.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

And when you say this practice over the last few years, you mean you identified the list one time, and now have continued to try and craft and define a design a day and practices and rituals around that list.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah, and bonus points when you can have multiple items on your list happen at once.

Greg McKeown 

Yeah, I love this. You’re using as the building blocks, pure joy.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes.

Greg McKeown  

It’s like joy lego.

Rachel Hollis 

Yeah.

Greg McKeown   

So you get to – whatever you build, in almost any combination, is going to be joyful for you.

Rachel Hollis  

Yes.

Greg McKeown 

I mean, we talk about this idea of “JOMO”. The joy of missing out.

Rachel Hollis  

Absolutely, I love – I love to miss out on the stuff other people are really into. I’m such a homebody. So I get that…

Greg McKeown 

But with this, it’s somehow double joy because it’s – it’s – you’re building a specific set of joy of missing out, you’re going “just because you love this stuff doesn’t mean I have to incorporate it”.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah. Yeah.

Greg McKeown  

Skiing is a perfect example for me. I feel like I’m supposed to do skiing. You know, like, that’s what people do.

Rachel Hollis  

Yeah.

Greg McKeown

And you know, you’re successful. You’re – skiing is a thing. You’ve got to do skiing and, and I, I don’t want to do skiing! There’s, there’s no… space in my life for skiing, I’m not interested in this. And yet somehow you feel the pressure to do it. But I love this exercise you suggested. And I look forward to doing it and having each of us in our family doing it because then you start to have signature joy days.

Rachel Hollis

Yes. And I think for your kids it’s powerful, but it’s really powerful for partners to know what makes your person so happy.

Greg McKeown  

It’s about recognizing that what’s essential to someone else needs to be as essential to us as that person is to us.

Rachel Hollis

That’s really good. I feel like that’s a quote that you need to, like, put somewhere.

Greg McKeown 

I’m talking to someone who would know. You come with high credibility on that.

Rachel Hollis  

There you go, there you go.

Greg McKeown

The dots that I want to connect here, bringing this together to what is essential, is that often – I would say far too often – people think of essentialism, or they may think of it as… sort of a productivity type approach to life. And there is overlap, so I’m not saying it’s completely crazy to make that connection. But it’s not how I think about it. Yes it’s about getting the right things done. But it’s also about creating a type of experience in life. Instead of an experience in life that is overwhelmed and exhausted, that’s stretched too thin, that’s busy but not productive, and also constantly comparative with other people… where you’re not just stretched too thin yourself, but you’re constantly looking at what everyone else is doing, and “oh, I need to do everything, the way they’re all doing it.” It’s to put all of that aside, so that you can live this essential experience, an experience that is joy, and will be as different to each person as my closet is to yours.

Rachel Hollis 

Yes, absolutely.

Greg McKeown  

Right? Like, we could both essentialize closet, get rid of the stuff that doesn’t spark joy, and so on. The process is the same, but at the end, right, none of your clothes are going to fit me, and none of mine will fit you. And that’s the whole point. But yours will spark joy for you. Mine will spark joy for me. And the same with trying to create an essentialist lifestyle is that it will be full and rich in joy. And the example and practice you just described is a terrific embodiment, a practical way for us to be able to leap forward in this way.

Rachel Hollis 

That’s so good. And I love that for me at least, it makes so much sense to start with this idea of what is unique to you, what matters to you, that it can be different than anybody else’s, that it can be different than the people in your house. But that it’s about building a life that is your own.

Greg McKeown 

It’s exactly the right spot for us to be at in the conversation. This conversation today, this podcast as it exists, its intent is to try to remind and inspire people with a single idea which is that they have a unique and essential mission to live that no one can live for them, and that’s where all the satisfaction, and that’s where all the contribution will grow out of. And, and Rachel you’re doing that and I’m excited – thrilled for your journey, but also so curious, you know, where things will be. Not just the 40th birthday, I’m sure you’ll achieve what you just set out in your journal, but, but 50… and then of course beyond that 60 and so on, that there’s a great, important, highly impactful mission that lies ahead. And, and I’m just happy to be on the sidelines cheering you on.

Rachel Hollis 

Thank you, Greg, I appreciate that. I have, I have really appreciated the conversations that we’ve had so far, that we’ve been able to have offline too. So I’m excited. I’ll see if I can’t send you an invitation to the 40th birthday party.

Greg McKeown

That’s it, I know, you feel obliged but now you’ve said it.

Rachel Hollis 

You and Anna. You’re gonna fly out to Hawaii, it will be a whole thing.

Greg McKeown  

It’s, it’s, it’s Anna and myself and The Rock. That’s who’s coming.

Rachel Hollis 

That’s it. That’s it. That’s the circle of friends. We did it.

Greg McKeown  

Rachel, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Rachel Hollis  

Thank you.