1 Big idea to think about

  • When we begin to understand our story better, we can turn our challenges into meaningful growth that can help us become who we were meant to be. 

2 ways you can apply this

  • Set aside dedicated time to identify and reflect on a “perspective moment” from your life. 
  • Write about that moment. Explore the feelings, emotions, and meaning of that experience. 

3 Questions to ask

Ask yourself some of the following questions Dan suggested to find your ”perspective moments”.

  • Who has influenced me most in my life? Why?
  • Who do I need to forgive?
  • If you were to spend time doing something every day that you felt was your gift to the world, what would that be?

Key Moments From The Show 

  • How Dan discovered what he was meant to do (3:34)
  • “I am what I could have been.” (6:26)
  • Perspective moments (10:52)
  • How to find your perspective moments (13:02)
  • Asking the right questions that allow you to find your perspective moments (16:26)
  • Finding meaning in your perspective moments (20:40)
  • Questions you can ask to reveal the meaning of perspective moments (22:42)
  • How others have turned their stories into action (28:23)
  • How your story can turn suffering into meaning (36:19)

Links and Resources You’ll Love from the Episode

Connect with Dan Davis

Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook | Website

Greg McKeown (00:05):

I’m Greg McKeown. And I’m your host on this, the newly minted Greg McKeown Podcast. I am in this for the journey to learn together how to understand each other. That sounds so simple, but my goodness, it has power.

Greg McKeown (00:22):

Have you ever wanted to be seen? To be heard? To be known? To feel that your life, with its challenges, even its suffering, that all of that matters? Have you wanted to be able to understand your own story better and to be able to share that story with other people, and even to have it last after you are no longer here? Have you ever wanted to turn the challenges of your life into an empowering story? By the end of this episode, you will learn a step-by-step process for how to turn the suffering of your life into a meaningful story, a story that can inspire you to go forward, and further, a story that can inspire other people around you, a story that can inspire people after you. I’ve invited Dan Davis, the founder of Stiry, to be my guest in today’s episode. Dan is a storyteller. He uses video to do it. He’s recorded hundreds of stories from extraordinary people all over the world. He specializes in being able to identify and find those key moments that really bring a story to life. And he’s going to share with us exactly how we can do that in our own lives. So let’s get to it.

Greg McKeown (02:17):

Remember to teach the ideas in this podcast to someone else within the next 24 to 48 hours of listening. And if teach seems too strong, just share it with someone. Talk about it. Discuss it together. Dan Davis, welcome to the show.

Dan Davis (02:35):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Greg McKeown (02:37):

We were introduced through a mutual friend, the great Harry Reynolds, and just off-air, you were telling me a story of how your work was accelerated because of a conversation with him. Tell me that story.

Dan Davis (02:54):

Yeah, it was just divine intervention or whatever you want to call it. It was a pretty miraculous experience for us. We had just started Stiry, and we were filming. I think we had filmed about 15 to 20 films across the country, and I reconnected with Harry. And he had mentioned to me that his brother was a lead singer of a band and asked me if I had heard of Imagine Dragons, and I kind of chuckled and said, of course, I had. But I had no idea that my good friend, his brother, was the lead singer, Dan Reynolds.

Greg McKeown (03:24):

Harry is Dan’s older brother, which for some reason, he always wants to point out to me, you know, like an older brother. There’s a birth order. That’s hard to eliminate, perhaps ever in family dynamics, but go ahead.

Dan Davis (03:37):

Yeah. And definitely, it’s true with them because there’s a lot of brothers, and they’re all attorneys, entertainment lawyers, and Dan’s kind of the, not in a bad way at all, black sheep where he’s, you know, lead singer of this band. And Harry proceeded to tell me that his other brother Mack, that also has a background in entertainment law, manages, Imagine Dragons. He said to me, you know, they have this nonprofit. They desperately need you as a storyteller. And Stiry as a storytelling company, to help them with their messaging, with their story. And I didn’t know what that was going to turn into. We were just a year into filming people’s stories. And a few weeks later, we were flying out to Interscope Records in LA with the band, filming their story and why they were passionate about helping families with pediatric cancer.

Dan Davis (04:25):

And that’s what their nonprofit was founded to do. And we are sitting in Interscope Records with a limited amount of time interviewing these four band members that were clearly very passionate about this nonprofit, but they hadn’t worked with a company like ours to tell the story the way that we could do it that would have the most impact. And I realized very quickly in directing that film that these band members, as they were in tears talking about these families who were dealing with the pediatric cancer diagnosis, that this was just as important or more important than anything they were doing outside of playing in their band and traveling the world. And at the time Harry told me, you know, they’re the number one rock band in the world, and nobody knows about this nonprofit. So we need to tell the world about this. And that’s where we became partners and have filmed hundreds of stories and captured families across the country that are dealing with these diagnoses and been able to tell those stories and have helped them raise millions of dollars through that approach.

Greg McKeown (05:25):

This was a game-changing moment for you because suddenly, you are doing what you have developed the competence to do, but you’re doing it on a larger stage. But you have a story yourself behind this story of waking up feeling, “I’m not doing what I came here to do.” Tell me that story.

Dan Davis (05:49):

Yeah, that’s exactly right. I tell people when I have an opportunity to speak or talk to groups; I tell people, there’s nothing worse than waking up knowing you’re not living up to your potential. It’s a very discouraging empty feeling. It can drain your energy. And so many of us do that. We walk around in our careers, and we’re excited about maybe the progress of our career or what our LinkedIn says about what we’ve accomplished. Then we go home, and we wake up the next morning going, what, what am I doing? What’s my calling? And that was the case for me. I had been an entrepreneur since college. I went to business school thinking I’m going to run a company. And I had started several just real small companies before that. And so I started my first business, and I found passion in being an entrepreneur, but I didn’t find the passion I needed to continue running that business.

Dan Davis (06:41):

So I jumped from business to business, whether ones that I had run myself or running those for other people and just kept getting this feeling deep inside me that my flame was going out and I need to reignite it and figure out what I’m meant to do versus just things that I’m good at. And I started to question, well, what am I great at? What am I meant to do? What is my calling? And it actually came from being unemployed after I resigned from being the CEO of a healthcare company in Arizona. And I found myself in the most submissive, humble state probably I’d ever been in. No job. We had just had our second kid, and we had no money and had just moved into my parents’ basement, literally. And we’re trying to figure out how do we move forward, and no health insurance, no ability to put food on the table.

Dan Davis (07:31):

And that was the greatest blessing for me in my career because it was the first time in, gosh, 10, 12 years in my career where I had actually just sat and thought and took the time to read books and discover myself and reconnect with spirituality and these things that were missing. Because I was so busy like we oftentimes are. We’re just moving from thing to thing. And during that experience, I had this distinctive thought. I felt like I was receiving all these downloads, all these pieces of inspiration and information about which way to go. And the distinctive thought was you need to go tell people’s stories. And I had a background in film because I had run as a manager and director of this company from the business side. I had run a film company, and I had never seen myself necessarily on the creative side because I was running it for a film director, and I let him do the creative side, and I did the business side for him. But I kept getting this prompting like, Hey, you need to, you need to go tell people’s stories.

Dan Davis (08:32):

And the distinct impression was the business will follow. And I kinda laughed. And I was like, that’s the worst business model known to man. It’s not that simple. Right? And it turns out it was that simple. I followed that direction. I came home and told my wife, long story short, Hey, look, I feel inspired to start a company. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m gonna do it. And so I need to go every day like I’m going to work, even though I had no job and we had no money to start a company, no business doing something like that. But I said,  “I’m going to go figure out what that is.” And it was amazing because I met an individual right after that that had a phenomenal story. And I just said, “Hey, I have a background in film.”

Dan Davis (09:15):

”Can I tell your story?” And his name is Nathan. And that was the first story told. And then another story came, and another one, and I kept saying, all right, what’s the business model. And the inspiration I kept getting was keep telling stories. And that business model actually ended up paying off because as we started to create this library of content and these stories, I figured out I was a much better director than I was a business manager or owner. And I could tell stories very naturally. And it felt like that was what I was called to do. And the more I did of that; the calling just got magnified. The flame got lit inside of me, and it’s never gotten away a sense.

Greg McKeown (09:51):

It also matters what you’re talking about. Because you are helping other people tell their stories, but in the process of helping other people tell their stories, you are now telling your story. You are changing your story. Now you are also helping people to change their stories, not just by working with you and your company at Stiry, but also through a book, a sort of workbook called This is My Story. And the vision seems to be that as people reflect on their story, as they write their story, it helps them to change their story, to design a story that really matters. And this is the phrase that’s yours. I am what I could have been. That you feel that yourself, I am what I could have been and that you see other people in telling their story in, discovering it in, deciphering it in, detecting it. They suddenly actually become something that they weren’t before, but they were always meant to be. Tell me where I’m wrong.

Dan Davis (10:59):

Yeah. Well said. I mean, that’s exactly the same process I went through when I was unemployed. I was thinking to myself, you know, is this what it’s all about? Going from company to company and not feeling fulfilled. And I went through this process, and that’s why I wrote this workbook. The way that I did it was the same process I went through. I was trying to figure out how in the world am I going to figure out what I’m meant to do versus just what I can do. And through that process, I coined this term perspective moments because I started to have all of these perspective moments. And once I strung those together, I figured out what I was meant to do. And that was to go tell people stories. And then I started interviewing all these people from billion-dollar CEOs, number one rock bands in the world down to just the everyday person. And they were all giving the same answers. They were all just sharing their perspective moments. And that was their story. And once we put those together, that’s where they figured out what they were meant to do. And that’s how others can figure out the exact same thing.

Greg McKeown (12:01):

I love this term, perspective moments. Tell us more about what it is and how we would find a perspective moment.

Dan Davis (12:09):

Yeah. Well, you’re not going to find it if you don’t look for it and take time to sit alone in your thoughts. And I think that’s a scary thing for a lot of us, but that’s the reason we wrote the book is we wanted to guide people through that process. And really, what a perspective moment is, is this, that time in your life where your perspective changed and you did something different as a result. So going back to working with Imagine Dragons for the first time, we had uncovered what Dan Reynolds, the lead singer’s perspective moment was with starting his nonprofit. It was meeting this young man that had pediatric cancer, and we dug into that, and we helped him understand and helped craft that story around that perspective moment. And what it was in that moment that Dan Reynolds met this pediatric cancer patient at a concert that shifted everything.

Dan Davis (13:01):

And Dan even says it in his film, my whole world changed. And that’s what a perspective moment is. It changes the way you see the world. It changes the way you see yourself. It changes the way you see relationships. And now, suddenly, Dan’s perspective moment turned into helping thousands of pediatric cancer families. And that’s pretty powerful. Once you actually discover what those perspective moments are, they guide you to do some pretty amazing things. And I feel like that’s what this life is all about. It’s figuring out what you’re calling is by dissecting and discovering those perspective moments. But you can’t do that if you just are in the hustle and bustle, and you don’t stop to actually diagnose what those moments were in your story.

Greg McKeown (13:42):

It strikes me as strange that we could miss moments that are, by definition, things that change the way we see the world, see ourselves, and change what we do. But you are saying despite that level of impact; we will still miss them. Did I understand that, right?

Dan Davis (14:04):

Yeah. Correct. Because I mean, think about that moment for Dan Reynolds, he met this young boy at a concert, and he had to finish the concert, right? He had to go back to his family. He had to go to the next concert, and you just keep moving, and you don’t stop to actually address what just happened. And luckily for Dan, he started to share that story. And that was part of his discovery is I’m meant to do this. And I’m not saying we helped him figure out how to start the nonprofit. He had done that a few years before we got to him. But what we did is help craft the narrative around that nonprofit to say, this is how it started. You need to know what that perspective moment is so that everyone else can have their own perspective moments and jump on board with that and be a part of that.

Greg McKeown (14:51):

So let’s just talk about this again, perspective moments what’s the exact process. Somebody listening to this, they want to discover their perspective moments because they want to craft a narrative around those moments that will become their story so that they can use it as a strategic guide for them to be able to more clearly say yes to the things that really matter and are essential and no to the things that don’t, they want all of that, but it all begins from your experience with identifying the perspective moment. So what does somebody actually do?

Dan Davis (15:25):

It’s about asking the right questions. If you want to know what the secret sauce is, we just ask the right questions. We don’t give you the right answers. So, for example, in our book, we ask questions like, what is your earliest memory? And we ask you to identify the sight sounds and feelings that came from that earliest memory. And all that does is just spark something within you to release some of those, that energy and those feelings that were associated with that memory. And we, we do that through your childhood memories, through questions. We ask about relationships. We ask questions about, you know, who are those people that stand by you no matter what and push you to be your best. And what does that do? It sparks a perspective moment. Oh yeah, I have this father or this father figure in my life that has always been there for me.

Dan Davis (16:17):

And what makes a difference for me is he truly cares about who I am and what I’m meant to do in this life. And they start to think about that person and how they’ve made a difference in their life. And all of a sudden, a perspective moment naturally flows from that. That’s what we’re trying to do, is we’re just uncovering those moments that have already happened in someone’s story. And they’re able to write them down and have their own spiritual being, or, you know, physical being is just uncovering those things very naturally through the way that we ask the questions like that.

Greg McKeown (16:52):

What are the questions have you seen be particularly powerful in helping people to discover their perspective moments?

Dan Davis (16:59):

You know, we ask one question that’s really hard for people. And sometimes, it sparks some major changes they need to make in their life. And it’s about forgiveness. And it’s asking people, what is one thing or one person that you need to forgive that has wronged you? And you can imagine what that sparks, you know, for somebody. It might spark some anxiety or, you know, discouragement that they haven’t forgiven somebody yet or anxiety about trying to rebuild or reconnect with the relationship. We found a lot of people just seeing a lot of progress in their lives from just asking that one question, a lot of perspective moments, and then asking questions about other relationships specifically, and you know, who their biggest supporters are and things like that will just spark people to spend the time and energy with the people that make a difference in their life.

Greg McKeown (17:49):

Beyond the questions that you’ve already shared with me. What is one more question that you find really useful in cutting through the clutter, in helping people to see a moment that produces the kind of perspective you’re talking about?

Dan Davis (18:04):

I think of one about gifts. So if you were to spend time doing something every day that you felt like was your gift to the world, what would that be?

Greg McKeown (18:15):

What have we missed in terms of questions that helped to draw out these perspective moments?

Dan Davis (18:23):

I think a big part of it is to create a quiet space for yourself to write your own script. And I’m not talking about a script for a movie, you know, a script for a film. I’m talking about your life script. And I think oftentimes, that feels like such a big task because we think about our lives or our stories as a list of chronological events. And we have people all the time when we say, you know, let’s talk about your story. They think I don’t know if I’m gonna remember all the details, and we say, no, leave that up to us. Let us help you write your script by asking you all these questions. And the formula really is simple. Uncover those perspective moments. Start writing those down. Find the meaning behind those perspective moments.

Greg McKeown (19:08):

How do you do that?

Dan Davis (19:10):

So it’s, it’s connecting that perspective moment with what you’re feeling like you’re meant to do. And once you start to uncover that, you can actually take action. You know, you can take a step towards the right direction. And I’m not saying it’s all gonna come at once. The meaning behind your perspective moment might take might take days, hours, might take months to discover that. But now, at least you’re paying attention to that.

Greg McKeown (19:39):

I’ve heard before this idea that everything changes for us when we start to think of life happening, not to us, but for us. And that seems to be what you are trying to encourage people to do in this second step. First, ask questions to discover your perspective moments. But second, if those moments have been given for you that there was purpose in them.

Dan Davis (20:08):

Yes.

Greg McKeown (20:09):

Then if you hold that assumption, the meaning can change in them. Yes. You’ve gone through something very difficult. You’ve gone through suffering. You’re still suffering, but somehow meaning transforms it. Meaning transforms suffering. And I’m trying to see what you have tangibly learned, and what is actionable from all of these stories that you’ve told to be able to accelerate the process of turning an experience into meaningful action. What have you learned about how to help people to do that faster or more consistently?

Dan Davis (20:54):

We’ve just connected those perspective moments with this idea that we have to be intentional once we uncover those perspective moments. And so that’s the biggest part is now you actually get to take the suffering by the reins and say, I’m gonna actually turn this, like you said, into purpose. That’s another word we use, you know, often here is now I get to take that suffering by the reins. Instead of saying I suffered just for suffering’s sake. I’m going to intentionally shape my story now. And I’m going to find the meaning behind that suffering. And I’m going to actually take those reigns and give a little whip and go, I’m going to do something with that.

Greg McKeown (21:41):

Are there any questions that people can ask themselves to reveal the meaning of a perspective moment beyond just asking that general question?

Dan Davis (21:55):

Yeah. I think one of the things that has certainly helped me and others is to actually sit and think about what you gained from a perspective moment, gained from an experience. Because you said it perfectly, what was this experience for? Not just what was the experience. I think oftentimes, we’re just scratching the surface, saying what was the experience instead of saying, what was this for? What did I gain from that?

Greg McKeown (22:24):

I think there’s a tremendous change when we are able to say of an experience. Thank you. Thank you for the experience. Coming back to one of the perspective moment questions. Is there somebody you need to forgive? We know we’ve forgiven when we can say to that person either directly or often, I suppose, just without them being there, but we can still say it ourselves. Say it out loud. Thank you for the experience. Even if you wouldn’t go back and repeat it, even if it was difficult and painful, somehow we can see that there was growth that came because of changes that came because of it.

Dan Davis (23:11):

That’s exactly right. It goes back to the time and quiet place. We don’t do that in this rat race. We usually move on to the next thing, and we miss these perspective moments of what they can do for us. So one of the things we encourage people to do when they’re going through a question like that is to write a letter to yourself about what you’ve gained from that experience and write a letter to that person that that experience was with. And what happens is you sit down to write, and you start to naturally uncover what you gain from that experience. And you find yourself thanking these people that have, what you felt like, wronged you. But now, all of a sudden, you’re changing the narrative to your story, and you realize there was great purpose in that experience. Now I can let go and forgive that person, but also take what I gain from that and use it to go live the way I’m meant to live. And that is powerful.

Greg McKeown (24:14):

I shared in a previous podcast why I love the movie Arrival so much, and it comes down to a single idea for me, which is that meaning is more powerful than time. And it hits me so hard whenever I say that truth out loud because, of course, we can’t change the past, but because everything has many different meanings, we can change even what the past means. And if we combine that with this theme that’s emerging in our conversation, that there is deep meaning to be detected. Then these past experiences, the ones that we resent, the ones that have hurt us, the ones that have left scars, these are really the fodder for revealing our most meaningful life ahead of us.

Dan Davis (25:12):

Absolutely.

Greg McKeown (25:13):

What other tools can you use in your experience to help people to turn their perspective moments into meaning?

Dan Davis (25:25):

Well, from personal experience, you hear all the time you should read this book. I mean, we’ve all heard that hundreds of times throughout our lives, right? But my perspective has changed over the years of that phrase. When I hear it, I will take a book recommendation, for example, from somebody, and I will be thoughtful and seek inspiration on whether or not I should invest my time in that thing. And so I think it goes back to this intentionality is what are you gonna do with your time? And it’s not just enough to say, “What am I gonna do with my time? I’m gonna go read books.” But what if you thought, instead of reading 52 books, you know, one a week, I hear people all the time say I’m gonna read 52 books this year. That’s my new year’s resolution.

Dan Davis (26:14):

And I think to myself, man, you’re, you’re getting a lot of inspiration. If you’re inspired to read 52 books, I’ve never received that level of inspiration. But what you could do is you could be intentional and say, you know, I’m gonna read books during this time or listen to an audiobook during this time. What do I feel inspired to listen to? And I’ve seen that the more and more I seek that type of inspiration, it becomes more and more obvious to me what I should be spending time doing, who I should be spending my time with, and how I’m getting my inspiration on a daily basis. And pretty soon, you realize, gosh, meditation works really well for me. These types of books work really well for me, spending time around these types of people going to lunch with this person. I saw that in my own life, especially when I was starting Stiry. I started to be led to the experiences that ultimately got me to where I figured out what I was meant to do. And it was such an intentional path that I started to feel very confident that each step I took was actually getting me to where I needed to go. And it’s because I sought inspiration for everything in my life at that time.

Greg McKeown (27:23):

There seems to be three steps. Creating space to find your perspective moments. Number two is to be able to detect the meaning behind those moments. And the third is to let your story stir you. And that’s, I think the meaning behind your company name Stir. It’s a story that stirs you. And so talk to us about what you’ve seen people do as they craft their story, as they turn suffering into meaning. How have you seen people turn that meaning into action?

Dan Davis (28:07):

Oh gosh. I can think of a thousand examples. So that’s a hard question. But one that I think of is we were telling this story on this woman that had an addiction, and she was also an aerial arts performer, CRC Dule type stuff. And she had this alcohol addiction and was trying to figure out her life and what she was meant to do. And this addiction was driving her into the ground versus pushing her career and everything forward. And her perspective moment at that time was when she was driving down the freeway; she looked, she was driving right by the prison and saw on her right hand. She said, “I could end up here.” And she looked up and saw one of the temples that is a part of her faith and said, “Or I can end up there in a place where I’m finding inspiration and finding direction versus being in prison to this addiction.”

Dan Davis (29:07):

And what she did is all of a sudden, she uncovered that perspective moment. She found the meaning behind it, and she said, “I’m gonna stop this addiction.” She cleared herself from that because now she knew she had a greater purpose. And she created a school for kids that are trying to figure out and navigate their own lives, through addiction, through mental health struggles, and all that. And so she created a circus school and of all things, you know, in her area, there was nothing like that. But she felt called to do that and meant to do that. And as a result of that, she has, I’m convinced, she’s saved hundreds of kids’ lives through her program. And she wakes up every day and knows her purpose. And that’s just one of many examples of people that I’ve witnessed. Once they find the meaning, they go do something great with their life.

Dan Davis (30:00):

And it was that same thing that I said earlier, where they wake up every day knowing I’m where I’m supposed to be. And it feels pretty dang good. I think of another story of a guy named Sean. He’s become a dear friend of mine. He was bullied when he was young. He didn’t feel like he had much meaning and purpose. And as a result of that, into his later teenage years and into adulthood, he had three separate suicide attempts. And on his last suicide attempt, he was in the mountains. He had pulled his car over to the side of the freeway, stared up at the mountains, and said to himself, that’s the mountain. I gotta climb. And I don’t have what it takes to climb it. And he was about to pull the trigger. And that was when this thought came to his mind. There’s so much more to live for.

Dan Davis (30:46):

And it was that phrase. And that’s what we called his film when we captured it; so much more to live for. Sean didn’t know what that was at the time, but he just took one action, and he got back in his car. He didn’t take his life that day. He didn’t even know what it was that stopped him, but he just had that phrase. I have so much more to live for. And Sean took us to that when we were filming his story. He took myself as the director and my audio guy, and our camera operator in his truck up to that same spot. And I’ll never forget this. I had the most distinct perspective moment myself being in that truck with him and him explaining what his thoughts were going through his head during that time of desperation. And what Sean discovered after that was that this idea that there’s so much more to live for was relationships.

Dan Davis (31:40):

He got married, he had a couple kids, he started to find more of his purpose. He had been a firefighter for years, and he had done that because his dad had done it and his brother had done it. And he decided to break free from that mold and his perspective moment. He called me after we filmed his story and said, Hey, guess what? I’m quitting my job as a firefighter. And immediately, I thought, did you tell your wife? You know, I hope you told your spouse, your partner. And he said, I know that I’m not meant to be a firefighter. That was maybe what I was meant to do before, but now I’m meant to go do something different. And as a result of that, he started to speak to people, started to influence people to find their own perspective moments and figure out what in their life gives them meaning. Why did Sean have this? I, this idea of there’s so much more to live for, what is that? Let’s go find that. And we’ve had the opportunity to invite him to different events and speaking at premieres and different things for our films. And that’s what it’s all about. It was uncovering that perspective moment for him. And he figured out he had way more to live for. And as a result of that, now he’s waking up every day feeling fulfilled, feeling like he’s living his calling.

Greg McKeown (32:56):

Give me one more story out of the thousands that you have that come to mind.

Dan Davis (33:00):

Oh, there’s another great one out of Chicago. We filmed a gentleman’s story named Gideon, a first-generation American. His family sacrificed everything to come here. Gideon was in sales and finance. And one day, he woke up and said, “You know what?” This, his perspective moment was, is this what I’m supposed to be doing? As he’s walking through Chicago in a suit and tie, and he said, I don’t know about that. And he started to question it. And shortly after that, he was at the gym, and he was just out of habit training. He was a college athlete, a college football player. He was just training his friend at the gym. And his friend said to him, you’re really good at this.

Dan Davis (33:54):

So he quit his job, took the time to figure out what that looked like, started his own training business. And now he’s actually being filmed by various companies and training big groups all over the country on how to be well, to focus on their physical health, and how that pushes them to live a better story. That was the first part of his amazing story. But the second part was he discovered boxing through his training, and he decided I I’m gonna box, and I’m gonna compete. And he hired a trainer. And within months of hiring a trainer, he became a Chicago golden glove boxing champion. Through that experience, was that what he was doing for a living? No. But he found his passion for helping people live their best physical selves and how that influences their mental health. And in the process, it became a boxing champion. And what’s funny is he gave up boxing for the last few years and focused on his fitness business. And he decided to start training again with his old coach. And he just, once again, just a few months ago, won the Chicago golden glove championship. And he is in his, you know, mid-thirties.

Greg McKeown (35:07):

It’s like a Rocky story.

New Speaker (35:17):

Yeah. Oh, it was. It was like a Rocky experience. I tell you what being in the suburbs of Chicago, working with his trainer, I felt like I was a part of that movie.

Greg McKeown (35:18):

Well, and that’s a great way to sort of wrap what we’re saying here. I should say that today’s conversation was supposed to be a private conversation between just you and I. A meeting that Harry had set up, but a little perspective moment, using that term now, came me coming into the conversation. And then we shifted. We used our time differently. We let that moment stir us and have recorded it. Now this episode, every single person who’s listening to this is listening to a conversation that would otherwise have happened behind closed doors. I’m so glad that you were so game to do that. That we’ve followed that moment because I think in these steps, there is something really profound. My experience is that suffering is almost universal. And in general, if we don’t know people are suffering, it’s because we don’t know them well enough, but in this surprising process of discovering our perspective, moments of detecting the meaning behind those moments, and then of letting that story stir us into new action, there is a real process, a real pattern for being able to turn that almost universal suffering into meaning and into being able to wake up in the morning saying I am what I could have been then. Thank you for being on the Greg McKeown Podcast.

Dan Davis (36:54):

Oh, thank you for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Greg McKeown (36:57):

Thank you. Really thank you for listening. What a difference you are making by listening to this, by sharing it with others, by teaching it to other people. If you found value in this episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. The first five people to write a review of this episode will get a signed. Copy of Effortless. Just send a photo of your review to info@gregmckeown.com. Alternatively, have three people just put a five-star review in Apple Podcasts and send a picture of their reviews. They don’t even have to write the reviews, but it’s just a way to encourage you to help other people get on this journey together. If you haven’t yet signed up for the free 1 Minute Wednesday newsletter, you can do that at gregmckeown.com/1MW. If you would like to be part of a live series where we are going to practice negotiation and conflict resolution skills, then sign-up now at essentialism.com/negotiation. The details have yet to be announced, but you’ll be the first to know once we run it. Remember to subscribe to this podcast right now so you can receive the next episode. Let’s continue the conversation then and do it in a way that we can build a movement together.