Latest / Magic Thread Media / Choosing Heart Over The Transactional Life

Transcript

Choosing Heart Over The Transactional Life · Magic Thread Media

• 0:00
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Pay attention to what's going on in your heart. Is my heart breaking? Is my heart hurting? What's going on in my own heart? And with Gary, the moment I saw the eyes and the beautiful cloud he had in his eyes, I just knew that I was with someone of great wisdom and great experience, and that he would become one of my greatest teachers. I'm Dr. Mark Wittenberg. Welcome to the Ballet of Empathy, a Leadership is Love podcast. Here we explore the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, and the responsibility we carry to repair, to forgive, and to lead in service of something larger than ourselves. If you're willing to step out of your comfort zone into the stretch zone and possibly into the danger zone and practice the power of dialog, this space is built for you.
• 1:15
  Amy Lynn Durham: Welcome back to the Valley of Empathy with Dr. Mark Rittenberg, the show where we look at why leadership at its very core is an act of love. I'm Amy Lynn Durham, executive producer for Magic Thread Media, and as always, I'm here in the studio with Dr. Mark Rittenberg. We're living in this hyper efficient, fast-paced age of AI, but beneath all that convenience, people are feeling more isolated and disconnected than ever. We are becoming uncomfortable with raw human connection, and our lives are turning into mere transactions. So today we're moving past the transactional mind to look at the heartbreak of human connection and how we can actually heal this divide. March, let's dive right into the eye of the storm. You had a moment after landing late in a windstorm at the Detroit airport where you were caught up in this exact transactional urgent mindset. Take us into that night and tell us how a 15 minute walk with a stranger changed everything for you.
• 2:28
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Thank you so much, Amy. Well, it was.. I don't know if any of you ever been to Detroit Airport, but it's absolutely huge. I must have been built in 1900 or something, not particularly modern, but the main problem: nothing is signposted. And when I asked people about that, they said, "Well, we all know where everything is. I said, "Yeah, but how about the rest of us that are flying in there? They said, "Not that many people fly in here. But anyway, I'm having a meeting of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, about 3040 minutes away, the plane is late. Got through the windstorm. I'm going to be late for the meeting. There are 14 people waiting for me, and so I'm looking for a taxi, no Uber, no Lyft, a taxi, that will be the fastest way. And I'm looking around, and I finally, there's no taxi time, there's no ground transportation, nothing, nothing there, and I finally go over to the hospitality counter. Who's a young man with his back to me, and I
• 3:33
  sort of say, excuse me, pardon me, sir, not turning around, excuse me, in a pretty loud voice, so excuse me. Do you mind if I ask you a question? He turns around very slowly, and I look into his eyes, and I can see that he's disabled, and I feel so much shame in that moment that I actually shouted at a man who was doing his best. Clearly he was in a job doing his best, and I was in a hurry. I said, I'm so sorry, I am so sorry about my behavior. I was just looking for a taxi. Then he said very slowly, I will take you there, and I said, well, you don't have to do is point me in the right direction. I can, I really think I can find it. Then he said very slowly, but I want to take you there, and I mean, we are talking about 300 feet from where we are, two, 300 feet, and he is walking me and takes my arm for support, and it took us about 20 minutes. To cross the 300 feet and I'm thinking all this time of apologizing, but also letting him know how much I appreciated his effort, so we
• 5:16
  finally crossed the concourse and went out on the back of the airport where the Ubers were lining up to take people to various locations and I said my mother's name was Gary, he's 32 not married, and I said I can't thank you enough, and he turned to me and said, but I will wait till you go, I will wait till you go. I said, you don't have to do that, I'll be fine. And then he said, but I want to wait till you go, so about 1520 minutes passed by. We spoke a little bit about life. Somebody else joined the conversation, and the taxi drove up, and I was so moved by this whole experience. I no longer cared that I was late for a so-called marketing meeting. It didn't interest me. It was about Gary and me. Now, Gary and me were in the zone. Gary and me were in life. Gary and myself were in some kind of relationship that we didn't plan to be, and so I put on my hand as the blue and white taxi drove up and I said I want to thank you so much in the bottom of my heart and I took his hand
• 6:54
  and I shook it and he took my hand and put it back where it was attached to my body and threw his arms around me and whispered in my ear, thank you, thank you. On that day, Gary changed my life, a young man doing his best, doing a hard day's work the best he could, and my lesson, my huge lesson was learn about other people, everyone is not as lucky as you are, and people have different ways of accomplishing work, and your job, to myself, mr.
• 7:49
  Professor, was to slow right down and to connect with Gary, where he was, because Gary has the secret, but he doesn't know it. Gary has a secret. Gary's full of love. Gary is full of humanity. Gary is full of compassion. He wasn't angry at me for shouting. He wasn't the least bit angry. He understood he had a whole understanding of the dynamic that was happening at that time, and I spent the next several hours thinking to myself, I hope you've learned your lesson,
• 8:30
  Unknown: hope you've learned your lesson myself, because he was teaching me a huge lesson about the power of love and the power of life,
• 8:43
  Amy Lynn Durham: so impactful. Thank you for sharing that story to me. What I marvel at when you share these stories is the moment that you have the aha in the present, because I would imagine a lot of people would recognize Gary was moving a little bit slower without any judgment, and maybe they would say, "No, no, it's okay, I gotta go, like I'm rushed, it's okay, Gary. And then they move on, because they have to get somewhere, they feel really busy, and we are in a place and space, where we are frequently treating interactions as simple transactions. So I'm curious, if you can verbalize or put to words that innate thing that you have that caused you to pause in that moment, so we can take that leadership lesson and try it ourselves. What does that feel like? Where you stayed with Gary, where you got to know Gary, where you decided that it was okay if you didn't even make your meeting, that this human connection. Was more important. How do we discern that within ourselves as
• 10:04
  we're moving through our busy day?
• 10:07
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Beautiful question. And I think it's as strange as it may sound, it's about listening to your heart, listening to your heart, as we learn from our great mentor, the late Dr. Angeles Arion, with her four universal principles of life. The first one being show up and choose to be present. How can I show up all times when there are other living beings around me, and I am not too tired, and if I am tired, I find a way to be less tired, that when I've made a decision to show up for someone, I maintain that lifestyle, but her second one is, what happened here? It answered your question. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning, pay attention to what has heart and meaning pay attention to what's going on in your heart. What's going on in your heart? Is my heart breaking? Is my heart hurting? What's going on in my own heart, and with Gary, the moment I saw the eyes and the beautiful cloud he had in his eyes, I just knew that I was with someone of great wisdom
• 11:33
  and great experience, and that he would become one of my greatest teachers, and the teaching is slow down, slow down, everyone is not living at the same pace, everyone's not thinking in the same way, and so that's very much out of a story like that, where I've understood it's me that needs to do the work. Gary's fine, Gary is doing his best. Gary is giving 100% 110% every day. I need to do the work, and my job is to slow down and change the expectations, and it changed the aspirations.
• 12:27
  Amy Lynn Durham: Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Correct me if I'm wrong, that is the way of the healer,
• 12:35
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: the way the healer. Yes, that's Angie's principle, the way of the healer. Can we pay attention when, when we are embracing things from heart and meaning, and when we're not, and that when we suddenly receive a response from somebody that we needed something from, or the question we ask that person, is it coming from heart and meaning, coming from heart and meaning, or is it coming from another source?
• 13:12
  Amy Lynn Durham: In the Ballet of Empathy, a Leadership is Love podcast. In all of these episodes, we're going through the stories that will be in your book, Leadership Is Love, the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, and the medley of love, which is your, your healing recommendations. I'm curious, because we were talking about how do we stay attuned to that moment where we need to pay attention to heart and meaning, such a good way to frame it, where you said pay attention hard and meaning. What do you think happens to us as humans or our leadership when our obsession with timelines and metrics entirely blinds us to the humanity standing right in front of us.
• 14:08
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: What happens is that we don't allow ourselves to be truly free, allow ourselves to be the beautiful people we really are, deep inside the clock is more important. I have to go to the next appointment. I need to go.
• 14:30
  Unknown: That we don't somehow break the rules. We don't break the rules, because our life is ruled by rules, but sometimes the most important thing is to work on a thought that comes from heart and meaning, it comes from our own humanity. That I had a student in class once.
• 15:01
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: He spoke about the fact that his father was incarcerated 25 years ago and was getting out next Thursday, and that he himself had been in prison and was celebrating his 10th anniversary, and he looked at the class, including myself, looked right into our eyes, and he said, I did some bad stuff, I needed to help my mom. It was just the most incredible moment where he wanted us to know that about him, and that he'd broken some rules, and now he felt it was time to make amends. So he found himself in a rooming house near San Jose State on South Fernando Street. Didn't have much money, no positions, and he looked in the newspaper in the classified section, opened it up the Sunday paper. It was a double page ad that said wanted big brothers and pictures of gorgeous kids who didn't have dads for various reasons. Said I could make a difference in that child's life, I could really help. I have a good background, I have a good schooling, I could really make
• 16:29
  a difference. I wonder if they'd take me somebody that had served time for doing some bad things. So the next morning he said he called the number for an interview to be a big brother, and they said, Can you come down at 2o'clock He said, I went down there shaking, shaking, because I knew we'd get to the moment of what have you been doing the last few years, and I'd have to say I spent them in jail, and sure enough, the moment came, and he started to shake like a leaf, like a leaf, uncontrollably, and he said, You need to know that I did some time for stealing some goods from people who didn't deserve that. I'm deeply sorry, but it's part of my record. And the fellow who was in charge of the hiring of the Big Brothers, uh, huh, you served some time. Me too. Me too. He said he felt like he'd come home. He felt like he'd come home. He felt like that this individual was representing an opportunity for the power of forgiveness, that he would now have a way to forgive himself,
• 17:59
  because that was the main stumbling block at this time, and he began that forgiveness work, went down and began to work the next Monday as a big brother, and he turned to class and he said, there are a lot of kids out there who need our help, and if anybody here would like to become a big brother or big sister to some children who have lost their way in the world. I will personally sponsor you. I will be there for you and be there for the kids. The power of compassion, the compassion, the service, doing the right thing, the act of kindness. Just about a year later to find out what had happened to the group, Big Brothers Big Sisters. Think there were 14 that day that signed up a year and a half later. There were 13. They stayed with it. I spoke to them. They said this work is addictive, helping another human being become all that he or she can be. This is addictive work, and I'm happy to be addictive to the power of the human spirit. That's very, very much heart and meaning,
• 19:23
  Amy Lynn Durham: so around this rule breaking you shared both sides, where he may have broken some rules that he did to take care of his mom, and then the big brother, big sister broke some rules, maybe to let him mentor and help someone else live a better life, and I think it's an incredible illustration of yes, rules are here for a reason, but sometimes there's. A greater calling, and we need to question why the rules there, and not just follow them like a robot, and that I think leads us into Sam at the Biltmore Hotel. Share that story that's in your book about Sam, where he completely bypassed some rigid corporate credit policy. These are all breaking the traps of the transactional mind,
• 20:28
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: exactly, and they're all about breaking the rules and doing the right thing, paralleling Bercy Haas School of Business principle, going beyond yourself, sometimes being going beyond yourself requires breaking the rules. So I went to school in San Jose, and the most popular young man in school was definitely Sammy Shore, good looking six foot four, the basketball player, all the girls, no problem, big lineup, rest of us struggled, but he and I were good friends. He was in the drama club, I was too. We ended up going to UC Berkeley together. I went overseas when I was 20, so my junior year abroad to live university, and I didn't see Sammy for a whole year, and then we just lost touch. Somehow we'd come back home, living in Boston and New York for this time, Paris, London, all sorts of exciting places, but when I finally landed a job as a visiting artist at Harvard University to do with a play I had worked on in Jerusalem, I thought a lot about Sammy there. I
• 21:58
  would wonder what happened, because his plan was to go to law school and open a firm and be successful and have seven kids and the whole thing, asked a few people they hadn't heard from him, they thought he'd moved out of the area anyway, I'm now at Harvard and the way that they work it is that they give you a lot of perks and a tiny bit of money, so you still have to raise the money for your project, and I was doing a project about an artist who painted her life in paintings during World War Two, extraordinary artist named Charlotta Salomon, born in 1917 and these paintings were just extraordinary because they told the story of her life as a young girl growing up in Berlin, and when the movie changed one night, when Kristallnacht happened, the night of broken glass, and how Berlin was no longer safe for Jewish people, she painted all that. She wrote all that by putting tracing paper over the paintings. I worked on the play for two years because she didn't survive World War Two.
• 23:25
  She was unfortunately killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, but she had the presence of mind premonition something was going to happen, and three weeks before she was captured. She took all the paintings, all 2000 to a Christian doctor in a town called Delfon Sourmeo, Deux France by the sea, south of France, and he was out delivering a baby, the doctor, Dr. Moriodis, and she just left a note to say, say to Mavi, this is my whole life, keep it safe for me, keep it safe for me. She perished, the painting survived, and they came forth into many different people's hands, and they were finally published in a book in 1980 with the words of the tracing paper that had been put over the paintings, which is a dialog for a play. So I've now won the best new play for the Jerusalem Festival. I've worked two years in a bomb shelter, and the police invited to Harvard, and I'm very excited, but I have to raise some money, so we go down to Providence, Rhode Island, the Biltmore Plaza Hotel, and in
• 24:53
  those days we used slide projectors, and I know nothing about electricity, I know nothing about if. Even change a light bulb. I'm just hopeless. I plug in these slide projectors, and every fuse in the hotel blows. We're now in darkness in this elegant hotel, and the donors are there, and they want to see the paintings, and the hotel is in darkness, people running around with flashlights, and suddenly out of nowhere comes this six foot two figure with a flashlight and flashes it on me and him and says I don't believe that you're here and I said Is that Sammy he said it's Sammy and suddenly the lights went back on, and we saw each other, and he said, "My God, it's been 30 years, but you still don't know how to work electricity, do you? But help me out, I have to do a presentation. We have to raise 10,000 and that would be great. Anyway, the lights went back on. We raised 12,000 and he said, 'Come on, I'm the hotel manager, let's go have dinner. Beautiful lobsters, all kinds of
• 26:14
  incredible shellfish.
• 26:16
  And so we go, and we have this beautiful meal, bottle of champagne, laughing, talking just like old times. We know all the same people from when we were eight. And then something came over me. Maybe I had too much to drink, I don't know. I suddenly said to him, "So, my man, what happened? He said, "What are you talking about? I said, "Well, you know, Sammy Shore, Bold Law School, Hastings Law School, only the best. And it turned out you never became a lawyer. He became a hotel manager, which is fine, but it's, it's quite different. He said, 'Yeah, it is a lot different. I said, 'So, what happened to your dreams? And suddenly he blew up at me. He blew up, and he said, 'Would you just stop it right now? Just stop what you're talking about. I'm getting really angry. I did what I did because I wanted to do some good things for good people. I said, well, lawyers also do good things. He said, I just am going to ask you to just stop it right now. And everyone's looking at us in the
• 27:30
  dining room, everyone's looking, everyone can hear it, and it's a terrible moment where you're, you have a fork in your hand and you're eating off a plate with nothing on it, and finally I realize the evening's over. I need to go. So I get up and say, Sam, it's great to see you. I hope it won't be such a long time next time. He runs after me. He said, Look, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have blown up. Said, No, it's fine. I shouldn't have brought that up. That wasn't fair. He said, I am so sorry. Will you please forgive me? Will you please forgive me? And I said, sure. He said, I don't believe you. Will you forgive me? I said, what does that mean? Said, that means that you'll come down here for a weekend at my expense will hang out like old friends and catch up on all the old times and the new times that have happened. I'm not letting you go unless you promise you will come down in the next month. It's holding on to my arm. I felt okay. This is all the other unexpected anyway. So, I'll say
• 28:45
  yes. So, we made a date for three weeks on the Friday train. He'd pick me up. He called me three times to Cambridge, Mass, between that moment and my arrival. Say, I just want to make sure you're coming. I need you to come. I need you to be there. And so I came down to Rhode Island, the Biltmore Plaza Hotel. The play was over now. It had gone up. Big success at Harvard, feeling great, riding high, and we had a wonderful weekend, swimming and laughing, eating. Talked about the people we knew, talked about our friends, talked about a few people who were no longer with us, no longer on the planet. And I'm staying over till Monday morning, and I admit now that I told a little lie where I said to him on the Monday morning, you know, Sam, I don't really know what a hotel manager does, maybe I could watch you in action, he says you won't find it very interesting, I promise you, so why do. Just like to just hang out in your office. I won't take up in his face. I won't say a word. If
• 30:06
  you want to do that, my man, that's fine. But we've had a great weekend, and I hope there'll be many more. And suddenly this red light goes off on his desk, which is the manager's emergency light, and the intercom says, mr. Shore, mr. Shore, there's an emergency. There's an emergency. Would you please come to the front desk? Please come to the front desk. Sammy runs out of there. I can barely run, but I run after him, and lo and behold, in the reception, there's an elderly little Irish man, maybe five foot one, banging his fist on the reception table and saying, "I want to speak to the manager, I want to speak to the manager, and Sammy said, "Sir, I'm the manager, takes off his hat, puts out his hand, and said, My name's Jim O'Hara, mr. Shore.
• 31:10
  In five weeks' time, my little bride and myself will celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary, and we got married in your hotel, sir, and I came down here to make a reservation, so that I can bring my little bride back to the bridal suite that we shared on that blessed night. Sam said, Well, I'm sure you can if you pay for it, sir. What's the problem? He said, mr. Sure, life has been good to me, but I don't carry credit cards. I do everything in cash, so if you'll tell me what that will cost. I brought quite a lot of money with me, and I am a man that pays my way, I pay my way. So Sam's kind of looking him up and down and wondering what's going on. I'm practically pulling out my own checkbook, and he says, "mr. Harold, do you ever.. how much, whatever it was, 1920 1921 how much you paid in those days? He saw it was the days, mr. Shore, bridal sweets, breakfast for two $8.25 He said, and we had the time of our lives. So Sammy is looking down and sort of hitting the buttons on the
• 32:39
  computer and seeing what the vacancy is, and suddenly he gets very tall and says, mr. Harrod, I hear your story, and I feel a lot of empathy, but I'm running a business here, and if you wish to stay here, you may, but you're going to have
• 33:00
  Unknown: to pay in full since there's no credit card, and the payment in total will be $8.25 a night times three plus tax, and this beautiful 85 year old man, he starts to cry. The receptionist is sobbing uncontrollably. Sammy comes out from behind the counter, comes over to him, and these two men are in an unbelievable brotherly embrace. I'm looking around, seeing business being done in this massive, elegant hotel lobby with two human beings in center, expressing appreciation and gratitude for the other, and how Sammy knew to say what he said, but he saw me in the corner and motioned me to come over closer, and he said, and so now I hope you understand why I did what I did. Said, don't worry, Sam, I get it. Boy, do I get it. And he said, and before you go back, my friend, to your precious
• 34:30
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: university, I'd like you to read something on the train. Just wait for me five minutes and I'll have it. And what he handed me was the poem success treated to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but actually written by a young writer named Bessie Stanley, and she won the award for this poem to. Very, very simple has a lot of different parts to it. It says what is success is to laugh often and love much. Success is to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children. Success is to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation. The last two lines say the whole thing. Success is to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived this to have succeeded, and I think about this so often when I think about heart and meaning, and the opportunity we have to commit the act of heart and meaning, changing lives, saving lives. It's in front of us
• 36:09
  every day, and that's truly Amy. What paying attention to heart and meaning is, how can I be a force for good? How can I be a force for kindness? How can be a force that embraces life and blesses life versus contempt and criticism to simply know that one life may be easier because you've lived and how successful that makes you, so that's very much the essence of that story.
• 36:46
  Amy Lynn Durham: I think it's an extraordinary illustration of paying attention to heart and meaning and breaking the transactional life. I marvel at the stories that you have, because I think that some of us might feel like we don't have these incredible experiences or these incredible stories. One, I think we do, and two, if we don't, I think my takeaway from today is to go out and create these stories, right, because a lot of the stories that you share are because you said yes, because you paid attention to what has heart and meaning, and this beautiful experience all of a sudden formed because of that, so I want to move now to some healing recommendations. I'm already kind of leaning into them, you know. Make your own, pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Is there some sort of piece of advice or homework you can give us until we resume to break the transactional life and collect our stories.
• 38:06
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Well, all the great books and all the great people, ranging from a Nelson Mandela to Gandhi to the Omer that Jewish people read at this time of year, the celebration of the harvest, and they all have lessons, but some more articulate than others. So, in Mandela's final speech, which I've probably spoken about on the podcast before, where he's saying the significance of your life will be determined by the acts of goodness that you commit to other people, and when we choose to do that without a promise of reciprocity or anything else that takes us away from the transactional period you're talking about, and it's more I'm going to create a beautiful moment for another human being. They may appreciate it, they may not, it doesn't matter, because you committed the act of heart and meaning, and that's what's so important, so important in the way of determining what it means to do the right thing, to do the right thing, and of course, my reference to Carl
• 39:41
  Rogers in past podcasts was the same thing, said do something good for someone today, don't look for payback, don't look for reciprocity, just put your goodness into the world and. See how it makes you feel doing something for someone who you know needs to be lifted up right now needs to be lifted up, and you were the fourth that actually did it.
• 40:15
  Amy Lynn Durham: I'm thinking it might be fun to hear what everyone was inspired to do from this episode, so is there any, you know, three micro things that we can utilize as creative jumping off points as we move out there and break this transactional life we're living and pay attention to heart and meaning,
• 40:40
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: and such a beautiful, heartfelt question, so what does it mean to do something for someone who is not expecting it out of the blue, you just decide this is a person I would like to actually leave an act of heart and meaning, and I think the second thing is to reach out to someone who's, in your view, has been quite cruel to you and has actually maybe double-crossed you or betrayed you, and to do something that would, in fact, almost set the stage for a new beginning. Doesn't matter if they accept it, doesn't matter if they say thank you. None of it matters. What matters is I've been thinking of you, and I care a lot about you, and this is what I'm going to do. So, there's the first one, a stranger, second one's not a stranger, this is the person who betrayed me, who hurt me, and the third one is the gift of self love. What gift can you give yourself that will be acknowledging the wonderful human being you are, and you're in the process of becoming? I
• 42:16
  think we think that we have to give it all away, but there's no point in giving it all away unless we continue to build ourselves up, and so give yourself even something as simple as from three to five tomorrow afternoon I'm going to be on my California hammock reading a book I've been meaning to read for years with a beautiful cold drink next to me and celebrating my very presence and celebrating the future work I'll be doing in in the world in repairing the world stranger the betrayer and self,
• 43:02
  Amy Lynn Durham: well, we have our homework, and we have a month to do it, so I can't wait to hear what the feedback is from everyone. Mark, do you want to offer some final words to your listeners of the Ballet of Empathy until they tune in next month?
• 43:20
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: I'd like to say to thine own self, be true, be true to yourself, be true to your beliefs. Life's too short to be in the masquerade party. Be the authentic self and be your real self and quoting from Shakespeare's The Tempest, at the very end of the play, the character Prospero says, We are such stuff that dreams are made of,
• 44:01
  Unknown: we are such stuff that dreams are made of, and our little lives are rounded by sleep,
• 44:12
  Dr. Mark Rittenberg: and what I love about that is that each of us is a miracle. Each of us is a miracle, and empathy is a choice, compassion is a choice, honesty is a choice, and loving others is a choice. It's all a choice. No one's stopping you from doing any of this. It's a choice, and my guidance is, let's all make that choice.