Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
Speaker 2: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 2: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 2: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 2: I am delighted to welcome Daniel Coyle to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: Daniel is the author of the brand new book Flourish.
Speaker 2: He is also the author of the best selling books
Speaker 2: The Culture Code and The Talent Code.
Speaker 1: Daniel, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Laura. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very excited to have you and introduce you to
Speaker 2: any of my listeners who haven't read your work. So
Speaker 2: why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 3: You know, I was raised in Alaska, and that as
Speaker 3: a writer is always a good spot to live because
Speaker 3: you see things from a bit of a distance. Man,
Speaker 3: it's like being raised in a foreign country. I've ended
Speaker 3: up writing out what was going to be a doctor,
Speaker 3: took a left turn into journalism at the last minute,
Speaker 3: science journalism, and ended up spending a career writing about
Speaker 3: how people kind of the mechanics beneath magic, like why
Speaker 3: super talented people are that way, or why great cultures
Speaker 3: are that way. And I've lately turned my attention into communities,
Speaker 3: like why do certain communities like flourish? Why do certain
Speaker 3: individuals within those communities flourish and grow?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what is exactly flourishing?
Speaker 2: I mean, because it's a broad topic and sort of
Speaker 2: a big word, what would you how would you define flourishing?
Speaker 3: It's joyful, meaningful, growth, shared and the thing, the deep
Speaker 3: thing to understand about it is that like that's kind
Speaker 3: of how we're built. We're pre wired, and we require
Speaker 3: other people, We require being in community to bring out
Speaker 3: the best in ourselves. We kind of have gotten a
Speaker 3: little bit stuck in this culture as thinking about ourselves
Speaker 3: just as separated individuals, like I need to work on
Speaker 3: myself myself, myself, and that's true, that's totally true. But
Speaker 3: to really get to that next level and to really
Speaker 3: unlock the parts of yourself that are the deepest, the
Speaker 3: thing that matters is being connected with others. Another way
Speaker 3: to put it is like all flourishing is kind of mutual,
Speaker 3: and if we think about our lives and think about
Speaker 3: our journeys and the people who have brought us here.
Speaker 3: We're not doing it alone, right, There's there's specific conversations,
Speaker 3: there's specific relationships, relationships maybe like people have with this podcast,
Speaker 3: where it's like they're consistently consistently opening up new pathways
Speaker 3: for you. And that's what I found in the places
Speaker 3: that I visited, These flourishing places, Like there was this
Speaker 3: little town in Vermont that's produced like eleven Olympians, right,
Speaker 3: and they're continually nourishing each other and nurturing each other.
Speaker 3: And so these places are like like these marvelous gardens, right.
Speaker 3: Or a business. There was a business in Michigan. It
Speaker 3: was a tiny deli. It's grown into this ninety million
Speaker 3: dollar community of businesses. And in all those places, they're
Speaker 3: finding ways to get a toun done and be incredibly productive,
Speaker 3: but also kind of balancing that with relationships, with learning
Speaker 3: from others, with connecting with others. And so community is
Speaker 3: kind of the key to the whole thing. And the
Speaker 3: challenge that I think I think about a lot is
Speaker 3: how do I bring community into my life When I'm
Speaker 3: not in community? How do I like stay connected with
Speaker 3: others and make that happen in the mornings and the
Speaker 3: evenings all the time to kind of create that level
Speaker 3: of energy, because in the end, it's not smartness only
Speaker 3: gets you so far. It's like, this is about this
Speaker 3: is about energy, growth, joy and meaning and those come
Speaker 3: from relationships. It's hard to get those on your own.
Speaker 1: Well, what drew you to this topic?
Speaker 3: You know? I ended up getting to a point in
Speaker 3: my life. Both my parents passed away in kind of
Speaker 3: quick succession, and that sort of wakes you up and
Speaker 3: it makes you see that this whole thing is short.
Speaker 3: And I had spent my life kind of studying people
Speaker 3: who were super super talented and groups that were super
Speaker 3: super high performing, and I saw that they were all
Speaker 3: kind of climbing this mountain, and those mountaintops when they
Speaker 3: got there are kind of lonely, windy, empty places, Like
Speaker 3: there's so many successful people that are kind of sad, right,
Speaker 3: like we've all met them, Like they have everything, but
Speaker 3: they're not fulfilled. And so it got me interested in
Speaker 3: to get off the mountaintop and get into the valleys
Speaker 3: in the gardens, like what are these places that are
Speaker 3: growing people? You know, what is this There's a neighborhood
Speaker 3: in Paris that has transformed itself from like this really
Speaker 3: disconnected modern place to something that feels like a little village,
Speaker 3: like everybody knows each other and everybody's connected and growing.
Speaker 3: And that's where I've spent the last five years hanging out.
Speaker 3: And there's the old saying, like every writer writes the
Speaker 3: book that they need, you know, And that was the
Speaker 3: book that I needed at that time. And it ends
Speaker 3: up being kind of all about that process of joyful,
Speaker 3: meaningful growth shared and that was kind of a surprise.
Speaker 3: I had kind of always bought into the idea that
Speaker 3: you can do it alone, and this book has really
Speaker 3: brought in the truth that the power of community is
Speaker 3: really transformative. The power of community, and so how do
Speaker 3: we get that community into our lives in a regular way.
Speaker 2: Well, that is a good question in which we should
Speaker 2: then start to address, because somebody hears isn't like, yes,
Speaker 2: I would love to be part of a garden. I
Speaker 2: want to be in this flourishing community. But we may
Speaker 2: not have magically been dropped in this community in Paris
Speaker 2: or this town in Vermont that you know is raising
Speaker 2: up all these Olympians. And so if we find ourselves
Speaker 2: in sort of a more normal situation and we you know,
Speaker 2: have some community, but maybe not as much as we want.
Speaker 2: What are some things we should start to do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of it has is rooted in the
Speaker 3: way we pay attention to things. And what I found
Speaker 3: these places doing regularly very almost like it was like
Speaker 3: a physical workout. Is they really embraced ritual. These places
Speaker 3: really embrace ritual is a way to connect, but also
Speaker 3: is a way to kind of ground yourself, your individual self.
Speaker 3: Your modern life is like this incredibly fast race. You're
Speaker 3: like chasing, you're hunting, you're playing this game. And they
Speaker 3: had a way of using ritual to slow down and stop,
Speaker 3: and for me, that was that that was the big takeaway,
Speaker 3: Like ritual is super powerful to take just a moment
Speaker 3: to slow down to do something that's not productive. Because
Speaker 3: that's really the weird thing about rituals, Like we focus
Speaker 3: a lot on habits in our life, like we want
Speaker 3: to build good habits. Habits kind of automate your life, right,
Speaker 3: they make things quicker and better. But rituals animate your life,
Speaker 3: you know, Rituals give it connection and energy. And so
Speaker 3: these places did the unusual thing. They were incredibly reductive
Speaker 3: because they had the ability to stop, which is just,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of beautiful encounterintuitive. We don't think that
Speaker 3: in order to kind of get the most of our
Speaker 3: lives that the key thing we need to do is
Speaker 3: to kind of learn how to stop and let go.
Speaker 3: And that's what they were really good at doing. I
Speaker 3: met a guy he studied it, I think it was
Speaker 3: the Harvard Divinity School, and he had developed a little
Speaker 3: ritual that he did every morning that really grounded him.
Speaker 3: And he would be when he'd be brushing his teeth,
Speaker 3: he would just say to himself this quick mantra, which
Speaker 3: was every day contains joy and suffering, and this day
Speaker 3: is no different. And it kind of makes everything a
Speaker 3: little It shifts your attention a little bit, it shifts
Speaker 3: your perspective. And you know, I met that Deli that
Speaker 3: I mentioned in Michigan. The guy had a great He
Speaker 3: would just teach his people SBA he called it, which
Speaker 3: was stop, breathe and appreciate, you know, just little moments
Speaker 3: of mindfulness that lets you let you zoom out and
Speaker 3: connect with what really matters. So those are like ways
Speaker 3: of building sort of a sense of connection that allow
Speaker 3: you to get out of your own narrow attention and
Speaker 3: into kind of a broader attention. And the strange thing
Speaker 3: about it that ended up kind of really making it
Speaker 3: stick is when you look into why that is, the
Speaker 3: mechanics of what that is, it turns out that we
Speaker 3: don't have just one attention system. We have two. We
Speaker 3: have task attention, which is what we're in most of
Speaker 3: the time, super narrow. I need to get from A
Speaker 3: to B, I need to get the kids picked up,
Speaker 3: and I need to get that presentation done. But then
Speaker 3: we also have something called relational attention. Relational attention is
Speaker 3: really broad, and it's how we create meaning and connection.
Speaker 3: And so when when they were saying that little it's
Speaker 3: almost like, you know, task attention is this narrow spotlight
Speaker 3: that's job is to see the world as this flat
Speaker 3: puzzle we should solve, and it makes us kind of
Speaker 3: anxious to be in task attention all the time because
Speaker 3: the world is just this game that we're constantly catching
Speaker 3: up with. But relational attention, which is where community happens.
Speaker 3: Relational attention is like, Huh, what's that mysterious thing over there?
Speaker 3: I want to check that out? Or who am I
Speaker 3: connected to down deep? Or what is their joint suffering
Speaker 3: in the world every day where am I seeing that?
Speaker 3: And it grounds us and it gives us stability and
Speaker 3: calm and peace. And so those moments of ritual are
Speaker 3: really ways of like lighting the lamp of relational attention
Speaker 3: and letting us let go of that narrow task attention
Speaker 3: that makes us always feel like we're chasing after something
Speaker 3: and never getting it.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: more about ritual when we get back from our first
Speaker 2: ad break. Well, I am here talking with Daniel Coyle,
Speaker 2: who is the author of the brand new book Flourish.
Speaker 2: He is also the author of The Culture Code and
Speaker 2: the Talent Code. We've been talking about ritual.
Speaker 1: Now, there's an.
Speaker 2: Interesting thing here of like find group ritual, right, because
Speaker 2: that's part of you know, our relational energy here. And
Speaker 2: I mean you mentioned the Divinity professor who starts with
Speaker 2: his own personal ritual.
Speaker 1: I wonder if somebody's listening to this and like I
Speaker 1: would like some sort of.
Speaker 2: Group ritual in my life, what can they do to
Speaker 2: start setting something like that up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be the smallest is the easiest, right,
Speaker 3: And one thing that I've done for myself lately is
Speaker 3: just try to make one little reach out a day
Speaker 3: to somebody in my life, you know. And it may
Speaker 3: be it may be tiny, maybe a text to a
Speaker 3: guy who used to play football with in my neighborhood.
Speaker 3: It might be something to an old neighbor, but one
Speaker 3: simple reach out a day. My wife and I do
Speaker 3: this silly thing too in the morning when we have coffee.
Speaker 3: We take a second and we just clink are cups
Speaker 3: together and we say clank or we say cheers. Right,
Speaker 3: it's so dumb, right, But in that moment of like,
Speaker 3: it's not productive, it doesn't create anything. It just creates
Speaker 3: this moment of like the small connection. And so finding
Speaker 3: those small connections and the rule when you find them
Speaker 3: is they don't need to be productive. They actually should
Speaker 3: not be productive. Like if you have a tradition with
Speaker 3: your kids of always going to Chipotle after soccer practice
Speaker 3: or whatever, or having this particular stupid movie that you
Speaker 3: watch together every year at a certain time that everyone
Speaker 3: dislikes having something silly, actually is where ritual can begin,
Speaker 3: because it's it actually needs not to be productive.
Speaker 2: We had go ahead, sorry, well, we were going to
Speaker 2: talk about the difference between sort of habit and ritual.
Speaker 2: Then because I mean one of the issues is when
Speaker 2: we do things over and over again, they often do
Speaker 2: become automatic and more mindless. So is there a way
Speaker 2: to make something that you are choosing to do over
Speaker 2: and over again stay in the mindful category.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I think the thing that it should contain,
Speaker 3: the thing that I've seen it contain, is an element
Speaker 3: of beauty to it. You know people who I know
Speaker 3: a person who every time they sit down to write,
Speaker 3: they light a candle. Now, lighting a candle doesn't help
Speaker 3: you write better. There's no use, there's no utility there,
Speaker 3: but there's a beauty to that. Right. Stopping is that
Speaker 3: there's a morning walk that's very traditional and Buddhist thought,
Speaker 3: where you go walk and you go see the sunrise. Right,
Speaker 3: that's the habit. But the thing that distinguishes it is
Speaker 3: that presence of beauty, that presence of something bigger than yourself. Right.
Speaker 3: The difference to a ritual a habit is that a
Speaker 3: habit helps you, helps you get through your life more
Speaker 3: cleanly and efficiently. It gets things done. A ritual, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, connects you to something bigger than your life.
Speaker 3: It makes you just for a second. And so that's
Speaker 3: the key if you have a ritual that makes you
Speaker 3: disappear a little bit, whether that's you know, watching a
Speaker 3: sunrise or reading a particular bit of passage of poetry
Speaker 3: that wakes you up in that way, the key is
Speaker 3: that it's not useful and that it contains something big
Speaker 3: and beautiful. It can be anything.
Speaker 2: So you have an image in the book which I
Speaker 2: think you borrow from one of the people you interview
Speaker 2: about red, yellow, and green doors. Can you talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's an idea from a psychologist at Columbia called
Speaker 3: Lisa Miller, and her idea is and it's very powerful.
Speaker 3: It is rooted in our attention. In that attention, we
Speaker 3: go through life kind of in narrow mode often and
Speaker 3: we're looking where alert for green doors that are open
Speaker 3: and red doors that are closed. Right. Green doors means
Speaker 3: to do this right, there's an opening there, go that's
Speaker 3: an opportunity. Red doors means there's not an opportunity there.
Speaker 3: But what this idea points out is that the key
Speaker 3: to fulfillment and flourishing is looking for the yellow doors,
Speaker 3: the ones that aren't necessarily go and they're not necessarily stop,
Speaker 3: but they appear out of the corner of your eye
Speaker 3: and their opportunities to explore, opportunities to try something new,
Speaker 3: opportunities to have a conversation with someone that you might
Speaker 3: not normally have a conversation with, and switching your attention.
Speaker 3: And it's very hard to do. It's really tricky to
Speaker 3: sort of wake up and say, wait a minute, was
Speaker 3: that a yellow door? Can I give that a try?
Speaker 3: But it really is transformative because it knocks you out
Speaker 3: of that narrow task attention into that broader relational attention.
Speaker 3: And it's the way life actually is. You know, life
Speaker 3: is not a machine. We sort of think of it
Speaker 3: as a machine. But machines are about being predictable, reliable,
Speaker 3: doing the same thing every time. And that's not life, right.
Speaker 3: Life is actually alive. Life is this complex journey. And
Speaker 3: when you look reflect on your own life, or talk
Speaker 3: about anybody about their life, any remarkable life, what you
Speaker 3: find is that it ain't a straight line. There's all
Speaker 3: kinds of twist. It's a squiggly line. If you were
Speaker 3: to take a piece of paper and chart out the
Speaker 3: journey of your life what got you to this point
Speaker 3: right now, you would not be drawing straight lines. You'd
Speaker 3: be drawing oh and then I failed at this, but
Speaker 3: it opened up this doorway over here. And then I
Speaker 3: failed at that, and it opened up this doory over here,
Speaker 3: and then I happened to meet this person and opened
Speaker 3: up this door over here. We're all enmeshed in this
Speaker 3: bigger ecosystem, and it's all curved, just like you know
Speaker 3: a tangled vine or any ecosystem. It's curvy lines, and
Speaker 3: yellow doors are the junctures in those curvy lines, like
Speaker 3: yellow doors are the moments when new pathways open up
Speaker 3: for us to explore. And so taking a moment every day,
Speaker 3: and this could be a ritual in fact, say what
Speaker 3: yellow doors did I notice today? Or what yellow doors
Speaker 3: might be in my pathway today? Who knew? Can I
Speaker 3: talk to? What skill could I test out? Can be
Speaker 3: a really powerful practice, And I could say for myself
Speaker 3: it's kind of changed. It's brought me into connection with
Speaker 3: groups of new friends. I got an invite a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago to go indoor climbing. Always hated heights.
Speaker 3: I don't like climbing. It seems finicky and funny and difficult.
Speaker 3: But I thought like, huh yeah, yellow door, Like I'll
Speaker 3: give it a try. And now like three years later
Speaker 3: they're some of my best friends in the world. So
Speaker 3: it brought me in touch with new pathways and people
Speaker 3: and connected me to a new community. And like again,
Speaker 3: being smart can only get you so far. Like community
Speaker 3: and connection and meaning is what is what life is
Speaker 3: made of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talk about being open to serendipity around here
Speaker 2: because I mean, the truth is, if you already knew
Speaker 2: about something, you would be doing it right as a
Speaker 2: you know, talented, ambitious person. If you knew about it already,
Speaker 2: you would be doing it. So you have to leave
Speaker 2: yourself open to the things you don't know, which could
Speaker 2: be challenging because you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: bad ideas in the world and difficult in demanding people.
Speaker 2: So you know, people put up boundaries for good reasons,
Speaker 2: but you know you have to make sure that the
Speaker 2: good stuff can still get in front of you even
Speaker 2: if it doesn't have an explo invitation.
Speaker 3: That's right, and even if it doesn't feel very good
Speaker 3: at first. You know, there's there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: about you know, it's it's annoying to fail and stuff.
Speaker 3: It's annoying to try things at first, it's difficult and painful,
Speaker 3: but when you begin to see that difficulty and pain
Speaker 3: as part of a larger squiggly line journey of your life,
Speaker 3: and you begin to reflect on how you got here,
Speaker 3: and there definitely was difficulty and pain in that way,
Speaker 3: Like you know, all that stuff is part of the journey,
Speaker 3: and embracing that really helps open up new pathways.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we're going to take one more quick
Speaker 2: ad break and then we'll be back with more from
Speaker 2: Daniel Coyle. Well, I am talking with Daniel Coyle, who
Speaker 2: is the author of the brand new book Flourish, also
Speaker 2: the author of the books The Culture Code.
Speaker 1: The Talent Code.
Speaker 2: So Daniel, let's talk about your own personal schedule. This
Speaker 2: is obviously a show about time management and productivity.
Speaker 1: So what do your days tend to look like?
Speaker 3: You know, as writer and as the father for sort
Speaker 3: of unpredictable and chaotic woulby words that come to mind
Speaker 3: at times, And so every day can bring something totally different.
Speaker 3: It might be a conversation with somebody like you, It
Speaker 3: might be researching, it might be interviewing, it might be
Speaker 3: running kids around. But so each day I find that
Speaker 3: like I have to kind of ground myself into what
Speaker 3: the real meaning of that day is and take a
Speaker 3: minute beforehand to kind of figure things out. So I
Speaker 3: sit down with my coffee and I take a three
Speaker 3: y five card, really small, and then I end up
Speaker 3: kind of making notes while I drink coffee about what
Speaker 3: the day might contain.
Speaker 2: And how are you choosing that? Are you basing it
Speaker 2: off like a longer term priority list on your calendar?
Speaker 2: I mean, what are the inputs for that three by
Speaker 2: five card.
Speaker 3: Each project has got its own set of rhythms and phases.
Speaker 3: So if I'm in a research phase, then I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about that. If I'm a writing phase, I'm thinking about that.
Speaker 3: If I'm having a conversation with folks like you, I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about that. So it's kind of variable, but each
Speaker 3: day has got its own I find what's powerful is
Speaker 3: to sort of find time to sort of zoom out
Speaker 3: and try to see things fresh and staying off technology
Speaker 3: seems to really help that. Just having that little card
Speaker 3: to write on with there's not much space. It's really intentional,
Speaker 3: like I don't have a big sheet of paper or
Speaker 3: anything like that. It's like the little card makes me say,
Speaker 3: if I could write today on a match book, like
Speaker 3: what matters today? What really matters I've got a friend
Speaker 3: who's got a better one where he's got a little sheet,
Speaker 3: but it's divided up. He's got you know, the family,
Speaker 3: what's the family thing, what's the work thing, what's the
Speaker 3: individual improvement thing? So I could be way better at
Speaker 3: it than I am. But that idea of like trying
Speaker 3: to get it on a match book is sort of
Speaker 3: liberating because it's easy to feel overwhelmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, do you have any sort of morning routine
Speaker 2: of are you writing on the index card and you're
Speaker 2: having your coffee? Are there any other elements of this
Speaker 2: that tend to be the same day to day?
Speaker 3: You know, I do this weird little ritual thing where
Speaker 3: I put some saline in my eye and then I
Speaker 3: kind of think for a second that I want to
Speaker 3: see clearly. Seeing is really important to what I do,
Speaker 3: And so it's just stupid, but it's like it's still
Speaker 3: powerful for me to be like to ground myself and
Speaker 3: like I need to see things accurately. Like if I
Speaker 3: don't see things accurately, it's going to be a tough day.
Speaker 3: And I've definitely in my life gone down a ton
Speaker 3: of rabbit holes because I haven't seen things accurately. So
Speaker 3: that's that's very meaningful to me. And the other thing
Speaker 3: I've been trying lately is an idea that I write
Speaker 3: about in the book, which is Morning Pages.
Speaker 1: Have you come across that before Julia Cameron?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely brilliant, And it
Speaker 3: was hard for me to do because I like my
Speaker 3: writing to make sense and come together, and she, of
Speaker 3: course is telling you just go just say whatever's on
Speaker 3: your mind, write that down very quickly and spend fifteen
Speaker 3: twenty minutes three pages, kind of sort of purging yourself
Speaker 3: of everything that's floating around. And I found that to
Speaker 3: be again really powerful because it shifts my attention in
Speaker 3: the same way as that did for the you know,
Speaker 3: as these sort of practices do. I end up writing
Speaker 3: about Julia Cameron in the Flourish book because it's such
Speaker 3: a powerful way of shifting our attention, and our attention
Speaker 3: is at the very very core of how we spend
Speaker 3: our days and our lives, and so learn it's helped
Speaker 3: me learn to sense am I in the narrow mode
Speaker 3: right now? Or am I not in the narrow mode?
Speaker 3: And so it's almost like learning about fitness, like before
Speaker 3: you understood that you jogging made you feel better, or
Speaker 3: lifting weights made you feel better. We didn't have a
Speaker 3: clue about that. We just sort of felt like it
Speaker 3: was healthy to be whatever size you were, and however
Speaker 3: big you were, and you said that was fixed. We're
Speaker 3: learning about our attentional health in exactly the same way,
Speaker 3: like right now. There's super interesting research and I write
Speaker 3: about some of the book, but this idea that we've
Speaker 3: got these two modes and we can choose and we
Speaker 3: can tell when we're in each one, and learning how
Speaker 3: to do that, learning to say, whoops, I'm focused, I'm spotlight,
Speaker 3: I'm narrow, I'm task attention right now, and then saying
Speaker 3: I need to do something to let go, to help
Speaker 3: me let go and really see, really create some meaning here,
Speaker 3: really try to understand what's happening that I find that
Speaker 3: to be like transformatively powerful. To sort of say, your
Speaker 3: attention is not one thing, it's two things. Dial into
Speaker 3: which one you're.
Speaker 1: In right now, and we need both.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are moments where you got to I
Speaker 2: mean you've got to execute something that has to get done,
Speaker 2: and that's the focus is very good. Maybe coming up
Speaker 2: with the ideas or thinking something differently might be for
Speaker 2: the other form of attention.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and to build on that. It's best when you
Speaker 3: have the one serving the other, Like I'm going to
Speaker 3: pay attention to the big picture, but then I'm going
Speaker 3: to do the narrow thing that helps serve that. And
Speaker 3: that's the pattern that I see in a lot of
Speaker 3: flourishing lives. It's like they're using their narrow attention to
Speaker 3: create relationships. They're using their narrow attention to nurture community.
Speaker 3: They're using their narrow like it's beautiful rather than the
Speaker 3: opposite where they're they're just trying just simply focused on
Speaker 3: the narrow thing, but using that to like serve your neighbor,
Speaker 3: using that to serve the relationships in your life that matter,
Speaker 3: doing concrete things to nurture the garden of your life.
Speaker 2: So I always ask my guests, what is something you
Speaker 2: have done recently to take a from great to awesome?
Speaker 3: Wow? What is something to take a day from great
Speaker 3: to awesome? We did it for Christmas. My kids know
Speaker 3: that I love games, and so they kind of invented
Speaker 3: these games a while back that we've continued to play.
Speaker 3: And they're absolutely goofy like. But when we're together, we'll
Speaker 3: we'll we'll sometimes have these these quick Olympiads, right, just
Speaker 3: a quick Olympics and it's like running around the kitchen
Speaker 3: island as fast as you can, or you know, skateboarding
Speaker 3: somewhere or whatever. But they're they're all goofy. But there's
Speaker 3: an awards ceremony, there are prizes, and when that happens
Speaker 3: on a day like that is just just totally playing
Speaker 3: with a group of people that you've known and now
Speaker 3: they're kind of becoming adults. And it's even getting more
Speaker 3: similly than it used to. That took a day from
Speaker 3: from great to awesome. So just like the Family Olympics
Speaker 3: was an absolute blast.
Speaker 1: All right, Family Olympics. I love it. What's something you're
Speaker 1: looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3: You know? I am looking forward to I do some
Speaker 3: work with the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. I've consulted with
Speaker 3: him for about the last ten years, and so, like
Speaker 3: you know, baseball's kind of designed in this rhythm, it's
Speaker 3: kind of designed to break your heart, you know. And
Speaker 3: now spring training is just around the corner, and like
Speaker 3: that idea that this here comes this new season. As
Speaker 3: a writer, you're alone all the time, and this work
Speaker 3: has kind of like saved me in terms of providing
Speaker 3: this community really of people that we're trying to win games,
Speaker 3: and it's totally delightful and fun. So I find myself
Speaker 3: thinking about that a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, baseball is a lot of time.
Speaker 3: Exactly each game.
Speaker 2: Less time than it used to be. I mean the
Speaker 2: upside of the pitch clock true, still epic.
Speaker 3: It's epically long, which makes you kind of like, it's
Speaker 3: so useles. Let's talk about rituals. I mean, they've figured
Speaker 3: it all out right. It's all about like, how do
Speaker 3: we hang out together for like four hours or if
Speaker 3: you're a player, much longer and enjoy each.
Speaker 1: Other and so for one hundred and fifty one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty times a year.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, it's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, it is. But baseball is amazing. So, Daniel,
Speaker 1: where can people find you?
Speaker 3: Danielcoil dot com is a good place to start. The
Speaker 3: new book comes out February third, and that should be
Speaker 3: available all over the place, So that's that's a good
Speaker 3: place to go.
Speaker 2: Sounds good, well, Daniel, Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
Speaker 2: about this or any other episode, you can always reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
Speaker 2: the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
Speaker 2: me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
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