Ep 31: Todd Henry - Choose To Be Brave

Bio - Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution”, Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of six books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, Herding Tigers, The Motivation Code, Daily Creative) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

Background – With more than fifteen million downloads, his podcast The Accidental Creative offers weekly tips for how to stay prolific, brilliant, and healthy. Todd’s book Die Empty was named by Amazon.com as one of the best books of 2013. His latest book, Daily Creative, offers daily sparks of inspiration and practical advice for creative pros. Let’s GOOOO! Without further ado Passing The Torch with Todd Henry starts now.

Show Notes:

Intro 00:00 – 02:00

Since his second book “Die Empty” has been out for ten years, what is one story that Todd Henry wishes people would become familiar with, or a chapter he wishes to compel many people to read at this point in time?

02:12 – 04:36 Todd Henry: I think the main story that led to the writing of that book is probably the most important story. And I think I even used this story in the talk that I gave at the military ball that I spoke at, but I was in a meeting in sometime in the early 2000s. I was in a meeting and we were trying to make a decision about a big project that we were working on and there were millions of dollars on the line and the person leading the meeting, I think, could really sense that we were all very nervous about this endeavor. And out of the blue, he stopped this presentation. He said, let me ask you a question. What do you think is the most valuable land in the world? And we thought, it's a really weird question. It was sort of out of context. And so we started throwing out guesses and we were all wrong. And then quoting the late Miles Monroe, he said, you're all wrong. He said, the most valuable land in the world is in the graveyard. Because in the graveyard, it buried all of the unwritten novels, un-executed ideas, all of the value that people carried with them their entire life. And they carried it to the point when they reached the book end of their life, all of that value was buried with them dead in the ground, never to be seen by human eyes. That day I went back to my office and I wrote two words on an index card and put them on my office wall and those two words were die empty because I want to know when I reached the book end of my life that I'm not taking my best work to the grave. And so that was really the impetus for the book was trying to identify what are some of the reasons why we get stuck. What are some of the reasons why we don't get our best work out of us while we're, while we have the time, while we have the opportunity. And there were seven of them that identified in the book. Seven. I call them the seven deadly sins, but those are really the seven common areas. The main point of the story though is, listen, we all have things we want to do, ideas, aspirations, and they don't have to be big things. It could be something as simple as I want to reconcile a relationship. I know that I need to, yet I haven't done it. Well, why aren't you doing it? It's often because we think, well, I'll do it tomorrow or I'll do it next week or whenever it's more convenient, but the reality is, those are not promises made to us. We don't have that as a guarantee. And so all that we can really control is what we do today. And so we need to make certain that we're emptying ourselves every day of what's inside of us for the sake of the people around us. 

When Todd Henry was 16 years old, he awoke one night unable to move his legs. He spent close to two months in the hospital, lost nearly 50 pounds, and had to learn how to walk all over again. While going through all the surgeries, Todd Henry recalls his AHA moment

05:00 – 09:11 Todd Henry: Oh, I think so much of it does. And I don't, it's funny because I haven't really talked much about that other than having written about it a few times. But you know, when you are a teenager, your world centers around you. You think that you have all the answers. You think that you're invincible. And I probably had many of those same attitudes, same mindsets when I was a teenager. And then all of a sudden here I am, laying in a hospital bed with some mysterious illness that nobody could diagnose and I lost 50 pounds. I went in as an athlete. I was six foot three, 185 pounds in peak physical condition. Basically, I lost all muscle because I had no fat on my body and like you said, had to learn to walk again. Plus, endure the shame, not the shame but the indignity of having people poking and prodding, wearing a hospital gown for two months and just all of the stuff that comes with all of that. And so there's no question that then learning how to walk again, not only learning how to walk again, but learning how to run and learning how to compete and actually coming back and competing at a high level in high school taught me something important, which is that there is an urgency to the choices that we make every day and life is not guaranteed. And I think as much as it was painful at the time, now I look back on that as a tremendous gift to have received that awareness at such an early age, because I think many people are much later in life, maybe when they start losing a parent or somebody close to them, when they start realizing, oh, life is finite, that's when they sort of first really realize it. And I'm really grateful, I think, that it happened at such an early age for me, because I do believe that I've lived life with a lot of urgency since that time. Yeah, well that was the thing. They thought that I, well I had an infection that they finally determined it was an infection. At first they thought it was a cancerous tumor because all they saw was a mass in my abdomen. And then they realized it was actually a swollen muscle because there was an infection that had, a staph infection that had taken residence basically in my abdomen. And they determined later, they think it was from me licking my fingers and wiping the bottom of my shoes to get traction during basketball games. Like on bad courts, sometimes kids would do that. And now they have those like fancy mats. My son just graduated from high school, he played varsity basketball. And now they have these like fancy mats, right? By the bench that you step on and kind of like give you traction or whatever. But back then we didn't have that. We used to lick their hands. Unfortunately, that probably led to my two month hospital visit. But you know, the thing I remember the most about that was my parents in telling me the story later, my doctor's name was Dr. Michael Brady, which is I always remember that. Mike Brady. Mike Brady. But also at one point he went to my parents and he said, you know, if I can save him, I'm going to have to pump him full of so much antibiotics that, you know, there are going to be a lot of side effects, you know, consequences. And, you know, my parents were like, well, I mean of course save him, right? Do whatever you have to do to save him. But the funny thing is, now I just turned 50 years old, I've not had any of those side effects that he talked about or any other adverse consequences. So I'm just, I'm really grateful to have had that, I guess near death experience and have escaped with relatively few side effects, at least to this point. Maybe I'll grow a third arm here in the next couple of years, but so far I think everything is working out fine. 

When Todd Henry was 16 years old, he awoke one night unable to move his legs. He spent close to two months in the hospital, lost nearly 50 pounds, and had to learn how to walk all over again. While going through all the surgeries, Todd Henry recalls a childhood memory that helped him persevere during this time 

09:18 – 13:11 Todd Henry: Oh, that's a really good question. So interestingly, I don't know if it was a memory as much as maybe an activity. My parents had bought me a little keyboard, a little piano that I used to play in my room because I played music and it was something that just came naturally to me. And so they brought it to me in the hospital and I actually wrote my first couple of songs while I was in the hospital because that's all I could do. I couldn't really move. So I would just lay there. They would lay the keyboard on my lap and I would just play and record or write songs. And then when I got out of the hospital, I actually ended up performing a couple of those songs in a talent show and then ended up actually playing music for a number of years professionally after college. That was kind of the beginning of my adult life was traveling and singing and writing songs and stuff, which is really fun. But I think having something to take my mind off of the pain and the discomfort and something kind of generative that I was doing, something creative that I was doing took my mind off of, or at least remove from me the mindset of woe is me. Oh, how terrible it is that this is happening to me. And instead focused me on, you know, what good can come out of this? What can I make? How can I produce something that at least makes the time bearable for me while I'm laying here in the hospital? You know, everybody else is watching TV or listening to music or whatever. And I'm like, I'm going to make, make stuff while I'm here. And so that was, that was pretty fun, you know, getting to do that. And I think that same principle applies to all of us. You know, I find, I work with a lot of business executives, as you can imagine, and a lot of high performing teams. And when people slip into that sort of downward spiral, that doom loop of self-pity and frustration and blaming, and it becomes just a really toxic work culture, usually it's because everybody is so obsessed with and focused on what they're not getting from other people and that narrative begins to define their existence within the organization. One thing I always tell leaders is, listen, when you start to find yourself slipping into that mode, you need to go into generative mode. You need to become the person who is creating value. You need to become the person who is serving, the person who's going outside of yourself. It's funny how that has the capacity to turn that doom loop around. If...because people tend to emulate what they experience, what they see, and if they see the leader being generous, being generative with an optimistic, realistic but optimistic mindset, not wishful thinking, but realistic optimism, and going outside of themselves and putting real skin in the game to make something happen. It's funny how that tends to turn a culture around because people then begin to trust that you're authentically who you say you are, but you get the culture that you tolerate. And so if you join in the doom loop mindset, then often it just becomes a never ending downward spiral for the team. And so again, back to the hospital room, I think just having something I was working toward, if it was writing songs or thinking like, hey, I might want to perform these songs when I get out of the hospital. Or having that mindset of, you know, when I get out, I'm gonna start, you know, learning how to walk, I'm going to learn how to run, I'm going to run stairs, I'm gonna...you know, work my way back and be able to play basketball again. Just having something I was aspiring toward took my mind off of the self-pitying thing that probably would have very well happened had I not had that optimistic vision. 

On the importance of creative writing as an aspect in the recovery process that people miss

14:12 – 17:12 Todd Henry: I think it's huge for a couple of reasons. We are often unaware of what we are actually thinking. This is something that I tell leaders all the time. Your greatest value is your intuition. The thing that you bring to the organization that nobody else can bring is your intuition because you have the experience to form patterns that maybe people on your team can't form because they don't have the same level of understanding of whatever sector you're working in or they don't have the experience or the perspective that you have. But often leaders don't know what's on their mind. And so, for me, writing has been one way of not just expressing myself, but identifying what I even think. Sometimes I write things I'm surprised by. I'm surprised that I actually understand something or I'm surprised that I actually see a pattern that hasn't yet made its way into my consciousness. And it's the act of writing, of slowing myself down and forcing myself to put pen to paper or going clickety clack on the keyboard, that brings out those ideas. And so, the process of journaling, which for most people who aren't acquainted with it feels like, dear diary, today I had a swell conversation with my friend Rick, or whatever. That's not what journaling is really good for. What journaling is really good for is getting stuff out of your head that...you don't even realize is in your head. And sometimes you will surprise yourself. If you go back and read your journal, you'll see patterns over and over of rumination of these repeating thoughts that you have, or these tapes that play in your head that are telling you things that may or may not be true. They may be ghost rules, invisible narratives that are limiting how you're approaching life. And so for me, the value of journaling isn't some sort of new age woo woo, like, you know, let's you know, talk about our feelings. There's nothing wrong with talking about your feelings. It's not just about like that. It's really, as much as anything, it's about identifying things that are already there that you may not be aware of, patterns that are simmering just beneath the surface that you haven't yet brought into the light. And so I would encourage anyone, I mean, it's one of the most powerful practices that I have. I would encourage anyone to have a journaling practice. I mean, you showed me your notes from the book that you take from all the books that you read. And that's again, a powerful way of retaining ideas, but also of identifying patterns, because you can begin to see themes between books that resonate with you. And it's like, oh, maybe there is something here that I need to pay attention to, because this theme from this book and this theme from this book seem to be connected. And for some reason, those both resonated with me. Maybe there's something there that I need to identify and act on. So yeah, I really encourage, I mean, for me, songwriting was kind of a fun creative outlet. Creative writing to this day is sort of really the primary way that I get ideas out of my head and into the world. And sometimes there's ideas I didn't even realize I had.

Specific advice Todd Henry would give to rising writers

18:00 – 22:07 Todd Henry: I would say, well, the best advice is, this is in the words of Austin Kleon. Strive to be a verb, not a noun. Meaning, a lot of people want to be a writer, but they don't write. You know, they're waiting for the opportunity to write. No, if you want to be a writer, then write every day. If you want to be a painter, paint every day. If you want to be a musician, make music every day. If you want to be a leader, then start leading wherever you are. Don't wait for somebody to come and anoint you as a leader. Just lead wherever you are, whatever that looks like in whatever capacity and for writers specifically, the thing I tell people who are trying, maybe they're trying to write a book and they say, well, I'm just stuck. I just can't, I can't get moving. Well, listen, I've written six books, I've published through major publishers, six books in about 12 years. That's been my pace. So about a book every two years, which represents, I don't know, maybe a couple or three million words I've had to write to get to those finished drafts. I write books 500 words at a time. 500 words a day, five days a week. If you do that, that's 2,500 words a week. If you do that, that's like a chapter every two weeks. That's a couple chapters a month. And then that's a book every six months that you can write. If you're diligent, you're disciplined about writing every single day, it's just going to happen eventually. Now, it's not quite that easy because books don't come out in full form. They don't come out as perfectly edited, you know manuscripts, so often I'll have to write maybe 100,000 words to get to that 70,000 word manuscript because a lot of words get edited or whatever, or ideas are redundant or things just don't work. But if you want to write, you have to write every single day. That's my primary advice to writers. And so set a word count for yourself and hit it every single day. And the other advice I would give, and it's funny I gave this advice to Ryan too, I think is I have a word count that I hit every day. And when I say I have a word count that I hit, I don't mean a minimum word count, I mean a maximum word count. So I write 500 words a day. When I get to 500 words, if I'm right in the middle of a sentence, I stop. And the reason I do that is because I want to know exactly where I'm going to pick up the next day. You know, the hardest part for any writer often is when they sit down, okay, what am I going to say? What am I going to write? What is the subject of today's work? Well, if you already know that right in the middle of an idea, it's super easy then to just, you know, continue where you left off. And once you're moving, it's easier to keep going. It's just really hard sometimes to get going. The second advice to writers is you're a terrible judge of your own work and don't think that you're a good judge of your own work because you're not. Too many people self-edit. They think too hard about the first draft. I don't care if you're writing a memo or if you're writing a book or you're writing an essay or if you're writing an email, your job is to get to the, and I will not say the swear word, but to get to the crappy first draft. There's actually another word that I won't say because I don't know if this is marked explicit on Apple podcasts, but this is a word, a phrase from Anne Lamott, who is an author and she said, listen, all first drafts are awful. They're awful. They're awful, they're terrible. You have to get to that crappy first draft. That's your only job, is to get to the crappy first draft. Because only then can you actually turn it into something meaningful. So if you're constantly self-editing and you're second guessing every word you type and stuff, you're never going to get to that. So you just have to get it out, just get words out. I often, on this book I'm working on right now, this has happened many times, we'll all write 1,500 words of a chapter and I'll be like, that's terrible, and I'll go back and read it, this is actually really good. But it felt bad to me as I was writing it. You can't trust your intuition, you can't trust your gut. You just have to get the words out and then you can go back and reshape them later. 

Purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted his life

22:18 – 23:11 Todd Henry: Oh boy. That's, that's tricky, no doubt, boy has most impacted my life. Okay. I'm looking around right now to see what is in my, probably, honestly, probably my French press coffee maker because it's my favorite way to make coffee and it's just always really great and it's sitting in my office right now. And so on my, as my wife calls it, my coffee bar, because I do have like so many coffee making devices, but that's, that's always my go-to, so probably my French press. 

Todd Henry’s favorite character from the show Mad Men and from his published books, which one he would gift Don Draper

23:14 – 23:55 Todd Henry: I mean, my favorite character, I don't know. I mean, you have to kind of go with Don Draper because of just the different, the ways that he sort of morphs, you know, and yet stays the same throughout the entire thing and then what book would I give him? Probably Die Empty would be the book I would give him. I feel like he's stuck and I can see so many of those patterns in his life where he's just kind of stuck in some of these places that I talk about in the book. 

Senior Thesis in college

23:59 – 24:21 Todd Henry: I don't think that I had to do one actually. I don't think I had to do a senior thesis. Yeah. I went to Miami University a very, very long time ago and studied marketing and I don't think that we did a senior thesis while I was there. But I did study marketing. I remember, I do remember having to write several papers while I was there but I don't remember a senior thesis.

Books Todd Henry would assign as required reading if he were teaching a class on creative writing and work ethic

24:25 – 25:07 Todd Henry: Probably one of two books on creative writing, probably On Writing by Stephen King, which is I think one of the classics of the genre. And then also I would assign Bird by Bird by Annie Dillard, which I think is where that crappy first draft quote comes from which is also a memoir on the craft of writing. And both of those books combined, I think, offer incredible advice for people, not just writing fiction, but people writing any kind of long form work. So I think those are probably my two recommendations on writing for sure.

Billboard message for everyone to see and read

25:09 Todd Henry: Yeah. I would put it in a public place probably. Actually, you know what? I would put a billboard right in the heart of the government district in Washington, DC, maybe on the National Mall, and it would say, choose to be brave, because I feel like what our country needs specifically right now are people who are willing to be and this, I'm not, I don't mean it in a political way, but I mean from a leadership perspective, we need people who will choose to do the right thing, even when it's the uncomfortable thing for the sake of those around them. People who in leadership are willing to do what is necessary in order to, or do what is right, even when it's not politically expedient. And I feel like right now we live in an age where, whether it's in business or in politics or in a lot of places. People are doing the expedient thing, even though it's not the thing that's really best for the people that they should be emptying themselves on behalf of. So that would be it, it would be choose to be brave, would be my billboard.

More info about the guest:

Website: https://www.toddhenry.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/toddhenry

IG: https://www.instagram.com/toddhenry/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhenry1/

Books and People mentioned: 

• Miles Monroe
• Dr. Mike Brady
• Austin Kleon
• Anne Lamott
• Book On Writing by Stephen King
• Book The Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• Steven Pressfield 

Quotes: 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

- Winston Churchill

“Strive to be a verb, not a noun.”

- Austin Kleon