Shaping The Conversation
In his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, the author and poet David Whyte writes about “the everyday conversational essence” of the word destiny. It’s not some future we can’t control. It’s not some future influenced “by some fated, unseen force…a greater hand than our own, working at the edges,” Whyte writes. It’s “our future influenced by the very way we hold the conversation…by the very way we shape and hold the everyday conversations of life.” Therefore, Whyte writes, “a different way of shaping the conversation will result in a different outcome.” Shaping the conversation in a different way and getting a different outcome—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6.I Completely Forgot To Be In A Panic Attack
Usually, Judd Apatow dreads going to the Oscars. “Usually I’m really nervous,” he said. “I get a lot of anxiety because it’s too many people and something about is that I’m very bad with names, so it’s a night full of awkward conversations and worrying, ‘do I tell them that I don’t know who they are?’ And I’m also afraid that I’m going to drink a little too much, be a little obnoxious, or try a little too hard to be and funny and then the next feel stupid. And so he whole night is scary for me.” But a few weeks before the 2023 Oscars, Judd watched an interview where Rick Rubin suggested to the host that they close their eyes for a couple minutes and set the intention of really being present with each other for the duration of the interview. Judd saw that and thought, ‘I’m going to try that before the Oscars.’ “I set the intention of, it’s corny but, ‘I’m just going to think that I’m so lucky I get to talk to these people and that there’s a night where they’re all together.’ Instead of making it all about me and whether or not people are going to like me or think I’m funny, I made it about my appreciation for them and what they do.” Holding this conversation in his head throughout the night, Judd said, “actually worked. It really worked. It really affected me the whole night. As the night was almost ending, I thought, ‘Oh, I completely forgot to be in a panic attack tonight.’ It was the least anxious I’ve been at an event like that.”
A Little Mental Jiu-Jitsu
On May 2, 1972, Bruce Springsteen auditioned for the record producer John Hammond. Hammond had signed icons like Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin—two of Springsteen’s heroes. “I would’ve been in a state of complete panic,” Springsteen writes, “except on the way up in the elevator, I performed a little mental jiu-jitsu on myself.” “I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing, so I’ve got nothing to lose…If nothing happens, I’m going to walk out of here the same person as when I walked in.’” Because he shaped the conversation in that way, Springsteen said, instead of panicking, he walked into the audition feeling confident. He performed his song, It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City. “When I was done I looked up,” Springsteen writes, “and I heard him say, ‘You’ve got to be on Columbia Records…That was wonderful.’” Springsteen signed a ten-album deal and would go on to record with Hammond and Columbia Records for the next fifty years.
A Valid Way To Do Really Interesting Things
In 1954, at his local library, Jim Henson checked out 2 books on puppetry. Soon after he read them, he started making puppets, performing puppetry, and considering a career as a puppeteer. Then one day at school, Jim was holding one of his puppets when a teacher said to him, “You [are] wasting your time with those puppets.” Jim began to think that she might right, and from that point on, he said, “I didn’t take puppetry seriously…It didn’t seem to be the sort of thing a grown man works at for a living.” With the conversation shaped in that way, he said, “I decided to chuck it all.” Not long after he chucked the dream of being a puppeteer, Jim “wandered over to Europe” without a plan. It turned out to be a turning point in his life. To Jim’s surprise, in Europe, puppetry was a highly regarded art form. “That was the first time I’d ever met any other puppeteers,” Jim said. “They were very serious about their work. It was at that point I realized the puppetry was an art form, a valid way to do really interesting things.” After being in a different place where there was a different conversation about puppetry, Jim said, “I came back from that trip all fired up to do wonderful puppetry.” And for the rest of his life, Jim did wonderful puppetry, performing with his classic characters: Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and on and on.
This Is A Country Of Second Opinions
The Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger has son, Johnny, who was born with athetoid cerebral palsy. Johnny struggled to talk, to put his own clothes on, to hold a fork, to feed himself with a spoon. The first doctor Dr. Eger took him to told her that Johnny might not make it to high school, and that he definitely needed to be in a school for special needs children. Refusing to be shaped by that conversation, Dr. Eger said, “That’s when I asked, ‘Where do I get a second opinion?’” She flew to Baltimore and at Johns Hopkins, she met a neurologist, Dr. Clark. Johnny stayed with Dr. Clark for a week. After that week, Eger writes in The Choice: Embrace the Possible, Dr. Clark told her, “Your son will be whatever you make of him. John’s going to do everything everyone else does, but it’s going to take him longer to get there. You can push him too hard, and that will backfire, but it will also be a mistake not to push him hard enough. You need to push him to the level of his potential.” After that conversation, Dr. Eger dropped out of graduate school, and everyday, she took Johnny to speech therapy appointments and occupational therapy appointments and any and every other specialist she could find that might help in some way. Around the age of 10, Johnny was physically and academically stable. And in 1978, he graduated from the University of Texas, top ten in his class. “This is a country of second opinions,” Eger said. This is a country of second conversations. A different way of shaping the conversation will result in a different outcome.
In The Way You Craft Your Narrative…
“If you listen to people,” Michael Lewis said, “if you just sit around and listen, you’ll find there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.” Some people are always the victim. Some people always get unlucky. Some people are always in the middle of some impossible project. Some people are always having the worst day. Some people are always the obnoxious, un-funny guy at the Oscars. “There are lots of versions of this,” Lewis says, “and you’ve got to be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are—in the way you craft your narrative—crafting your character.” You are—in the way you shape your thoughts and your conversations—shaping your destiny.