59. LUKE BURGIS: Discerning What You Actually Want

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Luke: It’s like sort of, uh, rubbernecking at the accident on the side of the road. That’s not knowledge that is beneficial for us in any way, to just see something on the side of the road or something like that, versus the kind of knowledge that we want to acquire because it’s actually leading somewhere.

[00:00:18] Michael: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:19] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:20] Michael: And you’re listening to The Double Win Show.

[00:00:22] Megan: So today, we have a fascinating and kind of surprising in the direction that it went conversation with Luke Burgis, who, um, really talks about the idea that you better know what kind of success you want before you become successful, or you can end up achieving the wrong thing or finding it unsatisfying.

[00:00:41] And we had a deeply meaningful conversation about the nature of work, the nature of desire, of calling, of how to discern those things. I mean, it kind of went all sorts of different directions than we had anticipated, but it was so rich.

[00:00:56] Michael: It did, and he has such a, an interesting career path.

[00:01:00] Megan: Yes.

[00:01:00] Michael: And it took, has taken some, you know, turns here and there, and s- kind of surprising.

[00:01:06] Megan: Yeah.

[00:01:06] Michael: But I love it. It makes him who he is, and I think this is a rich conversation that we’ll all benefit from.

[00:01:12] Megan: Yeah, so Luke is the author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. That book has been translated, by the way, into 22 languages. Holy cow. And he’s been named a Financial Times Business Book of the Month with that book.

[00:01:26] He’s also the author of The One and the 99: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion, and he’s the co-author of Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person. So like I said, we talk a lot about calling. But he’s also an entrepreneur. I mean, this is, this is like a, a dyed in the wool business guy, startup guy, and he tells some really interesting stories about how his own failure in business was the beginning of really understanding why he’s actually here.

[00:01:57] And I think for anybody who’s failed, if you raise your hand and say, “I failed,” and I would raise my hand to that, his story of failure is super inspirational. And so he studied at NYU Stern, business fi- uh, he has a BS in finance and accounting. He, uh, studied at St. John’s Seminary and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, and he writes a weekly Substack and lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Claire, and his two daughters.

[00:02:22] Michael: Enjoy.

[00:02:26] Megan: Luke, welcome to the show

[00:02:27] Luke: Michael, Megan, good to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:29] Megan: We’re so glad that you’re here. Okay, I wanna start with the photo that you talk about, that 1936 photo, which has a sea of arms saluting Hitler, and one man, August Landmesser, is standing there with his arms folded, and it’s this iconic photo.

[00:02:48] Okay, what did he know that everybody around him didn’t, and how does that apply to our professional lives?

[00:02:57] Luke: Yeah, so when I first saw that picture, you know, I started really trying to get inside the head of this guy.

[00:03:01] Megan: Right.

[00:03:02] Luke: You know, we see it, and we’re like, “This is really impressive. Would I do that?” And then we realize he was doing this way before the age of social media.

[00:03:09] He had no idea that there was gonna be a photographer in the grandstands taking this picture of him so that we could be talking about him like he’s some kind of a hero, right, um, more than a century later. And I was like, so wh- he didn’t do it to perform. He didn’t do it so he could post it on LinkedIn and, and get praised for his actions.

[00:03:25] What was it about him? And then I started wondering, you know, did he do that spontaneously? Like, in the moment did he make that decision, or did he know something before he even showed up at the rally that day? And, you know, his story is tragic. I mean, he joined the Nazi Party probably looking for work.

[00:03:44] You know, he was just looking for a job, and they had the best job prospects, and it seems like he probably joined, you know, thinking that he could stay true to himself, let’s say, while also being part of this bigger thing, and then he quickly realized that that was a, a sorely mistaken assumption. And as I read more about his life and, like, what led up to the moment, right?

[00:04:05] What, what allowed him in the sea of men to do something frankly very dangerous, which would eventually get him killed? And I realized, like, he knew He had thought about it before he got in that position, and he knew that when he was in a crowd, when any of us are, are part of a crowd, we change. Our psychology changes, right?

[00:04:25] It’s incredibly powerful, the crowd psychology and the way that it operates on us. And he had most likely made a decision before he got there, like, “I’m done saluting. This party is coming after me and, and my relationship. They’re coming after everything that I believe in, and I’ve, and I’ve had enough.” And he made a decision before he even got there.

[00:04:44] And there’s something really important about that, right? To, like, know the way that we change when we’re in a group environment, especially when there’s a lot of coercion or conformity involved. So there needs to be some kind of a reflection on it, a preparation, a pre-commitment so that we’re not always operating by our default instincts when we’re part of a crowd.

[00:05:06] And this applies, you know, just even to our daily life, right? When we’re in the meeting, if we haven’t actually thought about how we’re gonna react to something, it makes it much more difficult to be intentional about it.

[00:05:16] Megan: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s really important. It seems like one of the biggest things, one of the biggest takeaways of that story is just to be aware of the dynamics, of the pressure of kind of the crowd, of the momentum of what’s happening.

[00:05:31] I think that applies to social media today. That applies, you know, any time you’re in a power differential, which certainly he was, right, in that context. Uh, it makes a lot of sense to me that we don’t examine that enough, and then we just get swept away and then realize at some point, this may not be exactly your language, but that we’re out of integrity and how awful that feels.

[00:05:52] The ship is too far out of the port.

[00:05:54] Luke: Absolutely. And, you know, I, I think that’s obviously an extreme-

[00:05:57] Megan: Yeah …

[00:05:58] Luke: example, right? We’re talking about the Nazi Party and this guy who, who had not saluted. But I think, like, sometimes the… we have to look at the extremes to tell us a truth about human nature and about our own lives.

[00:06:10] So when I saw that, I said, “Well, can I just look at the groups, the communities that I’m a part of, um, whether they’re healthy or not?” I mean, just like, what are the communities that I’m a part of, and in which way am I a part of them? Am I sleepwalking as a member of them?

[00:06:26] Michael: Mm.

[00:06:26] Luke: Am I experiencing tension as a member of them?

[00:06:29] And this applies from my church to my family to, you know, the neighborhood dads group that I’m a part of to my work, right? In which way am I being part of that community? And then some of them, there’s… maybe it’s causing me to sacrifice my integrity. Maybe there’s a bunch of little micro integrity sacrificing moments, and maybe those are the kind of groups that I might need to think about changing my relationship to, maybe even leaving.

[00:06:53] So I think the extremes in some case can tell us truths about the way that we exist in those kinds of environments where it can be uncomfortable to disagree or to do something different or to not go along.

[00:07:04] Michael: This is a little bit, on the same vein, but in Wanting, you talk about leaving a company you founded And not feeling loss, but feeling relief.

[00:07:14] So could you take us back to that and explain kind of what was happening for you and Why that made sense at the time

[00:07:20] Luke: Well, I think that ambition without a sense of self or a differentiation of self is just a highly sophisticated form of conformity, or at least it can be.

[00:07:32] Megan: Huh.

[00:07:32] Luke: And in my case, I was incredibly ambitious without really understanding who I was or what I wanted, and I chased very ambitious goals from transferring into what I thought was the best undergrad business school to getting a high-paying job on Wall Street, and then, uh, thinking I was escaping a job that I didn’t necessarily like and into the startup world, and then I kind of did the same thing there.

[00:07:57] You know, I was chasing metrics of success as an entrepreneur, and then I found myself doing the performance of the entrepreneur more than actually building companies that I, I wanted to build. I was performing the role of the entrepreneur and measuring my success based on the success of the people that I saw around me until I had a company kind of blow up in my face.

[00:08:18] And the relief that I felt because all of the conditions that made that ambition possible were taken away from me really in a single day when I found out that a big deal had fallen through and that I was gonna completely pivot, and it untethered me from my unhealthy mimetic desire. Uh, mimetic desire just meaning the d- the desires that I had taken on to my own from other people around me.

[00:08:43] I wanted what they wanted without really reflecting on whether those desires were leading me to a place that was actually going to lead to better relationships and ultimately be fulfilling. And the relief that I felt was the relief of being momentarily unshackled from needing to chase goals that I really no longer believed in.

[00:09:02] You know, at that particular time it was I needed a certain valuation to sell my company at, otherwise I wasn’t a successful entrepreneur. And it freed me from that goal for a minute, as jarring as it was, and allowed me the time and space to go back to the drawing board and saying, “Wow, like, what am I actually doing here?”

[00:09:19] The way that my company had evolved, it had evolved into something that I, I didn’t actually like to run anymore. I was, like, selling products that I didn’t believe in. And I said, “You know, I’m actually being given some kind of a gift here. I’m being the– given the gift of being able to reflect with intentionality on how I wanna channel my ambition and go back to the origin of where my goals came from in the first place and how I set them, rather than just learning how to…”

[00:09:44] I can get really– you can get really good at achieving goals without wondering whether they’re the right goals in the first place. And I took a little sabbatical, and, uh, it was frankly life-changing.

[00:09:53] Megan: Wow.

[00:09:54] Michael: Do you feel like it, it takes a crisis to have that kind of reflection, or can people be more intentional about thinking about their goals and thinking what they’re pursuing before they get to that point where everything, you know, the bottom has to fall out before they have an awakening?

[00:10:09] Luke: Well, for me, it probably did take a crisis, but I don’t think it’s necessary. It did for me too, but I’m just I certainly yeah. I definitely wouldn’t have taken three years writing a book about it if I didn’t think I think that it was possible to help other people see some of these things and surface the origin of their ambition and desires.

[00:10:26] I do think it’s possible to sort of see and, and to step back from the situations and environments that we’re in because we’re, we’re immersed in them. They’re so close to us. We’re the fish in water. And to be able to, to name, you know, a simple exercise is just name the models of your desire. Like, who are the people who have given you your own desires, right?

[00:10:46] Who are the peoples whose careers you track intensely with mixed feelings, right? It’s a, it’s a sign that they’re important to you for some reason. And when I did that in my own life and I saw, you know, the entrepreneurs that I was paying attention to on a daily basis, what are they saying? What are they doing?

[00:11:03] Measuring myself according to them. If I had been able to, to name them a little bit, I would have seen the way that my own ambitions were shaped in that way, and I would have gained a little bit of distance from that, and I think made better choices. But I didn’t have the vocabulary or, or, or, or the language or the ideas to even be able to do that kind of reflection because I was so busy all of the time.

[00:11:25] I did not have more of the balance that I ended up finding in my life when I was given the gift of, you know, having to step away for a few months. But I, I certainly think that being intentional about naming things, naming the major influences on our goals, for instance, is incredibly important.

[00:11:41] Michael: Do you think this is a one-and-done kind of thing, or have you found yourself at various points, like, say, under stress or when life gets really busy, of kind of drifting back to that Old way of being

[00:11:53] Luke: I find that it’s, um, a constant struggle.

[00:11:56] I think that the- Yeah, me too … the drifting happens all the time. It happened f- with writing a book, you know? It’s a, it’s a whole new world when we change domains. Um, you know, kind of the, the way that these things manifest themselves are just different. They’re a little bit different. So, you know, even if I can get relatively good at understanding the way that these forces affect me at work, maybe I don’t understand the way that they affect me as a father and as a parent.

[00:12:21] Mm-hmm. As the father of a couple of new kids. Now I’m introduced to this new world of the mimetic forces operating on me and, like, how I can be a, quote, “good dad.” You know what I mean?

[00:12:32] Michael: Right.

[00:12:32] Luke: It’s like- Yeah … and if I take that far enough, right, I, I just end up trying to do all of the things. Now I’m following the dad influencers.

[00:12:39] Like, where does that ever end? And, like, I’m in the same, I’m in the s- you know, the guy that gets up at 4:30 in the morning and, and goes, runs 15 miles. And I’m like, you know, this is, like, the same thing that I was doing as a startup entrepreneur. I can easily see myself doing it now as a new father.

[00:12:53] Michael: Yeah.

[00:12:54] Megan: It’s just the startup is your family. Yeah.

[00:12:56] Luke: Exactly.

[00:12:57] Megan: Wow. You know what this reminds me of, Dad? Luke, several years ago, we were working on an app for the Full Focus Planner. We thought, you know, the future was taking the Full Focus Planner digital, and, you know, that analog was passe, and we just, we wanted to make this app.

[00:13:13] And so we were seeking private equity funding for the app. And so we had to do all these things to get the business in a place where it would be attractive, and then we got our dog and pony show together, and we took it on the road, and we went to Texas, and we went to Virginia, and we went… You know, we were, like, doing all this stuff.

[00:13:30] And I can remember distinctly sitting with somebody in a meeting and thinking Oh, no, this might work. You know? Like, like it was like, what if, what if they actually cut us a check? Then what are we gonna do? You know? Thinking like, “I hope they don’t,” and I’m so thankful. We ended up, you and I talked about it after one of these trips, and we ended up saying, “Yeah, no, we’re not willing to make that trade.”

[00:13:55] Michael: Well, just to, just to add an interesting point to it, we literally only had one meeting. It was that first meeting.

[00:14:01] Megan: Right. Well, I’d had several meetings preparing for that- Okay, well- … that you weren’t a part of. Yeah.

[00:14:05] Michael: This is, like, the first real, live investors.

[00:14:07] Megan: Right.

[00:14:07] Michael: And we walked out of that meeting, and we looked at each other and we said, “Nope.”

[00:14:10] Megan: Absolutely not. You know? And it was, like, the best decision that we ever made.

[00:14:15] Michael: Although it cost us a million dollars in investment that-

[00:14:18] Megan: That’s true. We, we had inve- … we had to flush … we had invested a million dollars in the, the building of this app, which thank God, it would’ve been a lot worse than that because AI was just around the corner and would’ve rendered that thing useless in the way that we imagined.

[00:14:30] I mean, it was just… It was all meant to be. It was, like, a totally a God thing. But it’s like you go down this road and you think, “Yeah, what we want is, you know, we want big capital, and we wanna ultimately have this big exit from this business, and that’ll be amazing. Our lives will just blah blah blah.” And then you’re like, actually, everything that would come on the other side of that would not be a blessing.

[00:14:49] Like, we already have what we want. We just don’t wanna lose it, you know?

[00:14:53] Luke: Yep.

[00:14:53] Megan: And we had to kinda go all the way around the barn to realize that what we wanted was the thing that we already had.

[00:14:59] Luke: Yeah. That, you know, it reminds me of I’ve learned a lot about the world of philanthropy in the last five to seven years and the way that it works.

[00:15:06] And what you’ll often get is people with big checks to give out and whether it’s philanthropy or grants or something. And they want certain things. They have certain desires, certain things that they would like to see in the world. And me and my team saw that there was an $8 million grant for a particular thing.

[00:15:21] We’re like, “That’s a lot of money,” and we were told that we were a strong contender to get it. We put together a proposal, and then it got to the point where they really seemed like they were going to give us the grant money, and then I had to stop at the very end and say, “Wait a minute. If I take the money, I actually have to go do this thing for the next four or five years that I’m not even- Yeah

[00:15:38] like we hadn’t spent, we hadn’t spent enough time actually thinking about, like, whether the desire of the foundation was actually, like, what we were building, and we ended up- Yeah … backing away from it. It reminds me a lot of your story.

[00:15:48] Megan: Yeah. You know, it, it’s like the, the CFO that we had at the time, he used to say…

[00:15:52] He was, like, a real no-nonsense guy, and he said, “Take the king’s coin. Do the king’s dance.” And you’re like- Exactly. … “Yikes. No, thank you.” That puts it in stark contrast. I think I’ll pass. That was

[00:16:02] Michael: so good.

[00:16:03] Luke: Yeah.

[00:16:04] Michael: Oh, man.

[00:16:04] Megan: Wow. Okay, you just talked a little bit about naming models and that whole idea, which I think is huge, but you go on to talk about this idea of thick desires and thin desires.

[00:16:15] Tell us what that means and, and how we can think about that- In our lives with this whole conversation of success and what we want and goals and so forth.

[00:16:25] Luke: A thin desire is the, the name that I’ve given to a very ephemeral desire, something that we want today that we’re unlikely to want a year from now, five years from now, maybe not even tomorrow, right?

[00:16:39] These very subjective things that are formed often in these highly mimetic social ways. And when the context or the environment is changed, the desire itself goes completely away, right? We no longer have it. Probably the– one of the easiest ways to kind of determine whether a desire is thin or thick is like, does it persist through different seasons of life, through different environments, through different friend groups, um, through different relationships?

[00:17:04] A thick desire is precisely that. It’s the kind of desire that endures and persists, and those are the ones that I want to invest in because I know that it’s not gonna be taken away from me, um, in some sense. So obviously my family, you know, there’s, there’s a thick desire there, and it’s going to grow and develop like layers and layers as I, as I get older, and my kids are different ages, and that desire will evolve.

[00:17:27] A thin desire can’t really develop the, the, the layers, right? The, the depth, right? I almost think of it as, you know, if you went hiking in beautiful places like Utah, and you kind of see the different layers of rock that have formed over millions of years. A thick desire is capable of that. So even the thin desires can become thick, but you have to stay with them, and they have to have enough there.

[00:17:48] There has to be enough substance there to develop different layers and, and, and aspects, right? And I think parenthood is certainly one aspect of that, but so is our work. So a, a thin, a thin desire is… Now I’m– I’ve gotten better at sort of like telling when, when a desire is thin, when I sort of… I’d– I haven’t had time to really think much about it, but it kind of sets me on fire.

[00:18:08] I’m like, “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Let me go do that.” And then I sit with it for a week. It’s kind of one of the practices I’ve developed, you know. I, I really– unless it’s very time sensitive, I try not to act on anything unless I’ve given it quite a bit of time, and I see how I feel about it a week, two weeks, a month later, if I have that, that much time.

[00:18:26] Does it– How does it feel? Does it feel like it has gotten deeper, or does it feel like it’s slowly dissipating?

[00:18:31] Michael: This is probably why it’s so important just to slow down.

[00:18:33] Megan: Yeah.

[00:18:34] Michael: You know, I think, first of all, I’m really good at making decisions, and I’m really good at making them fast And some of the decisions are actually good.

[00:18:41] But I think when I feel under pressure, then I don’t sit with it to determine is this a thin desire or a thick desire. And, you know, sort of the telltale sign is, you know, I see something in my Facebook feed, and so I order it from Amazon. And then I get it, and it’s like, “Did I really want that thing?”

[00:18:57] Megan: Or you don’t remember that you ordered it.

[00:18:59] Michael: That may or ha- have happened- … a time or two.

[00:19:01] Megan: You’re like, “Wait, what did I order from”- I know … fill in the blank. I don’t even recognize that. And then you’re like you have this vague sort of deja vu like I… Oh, I, I think that was an ad I saw. I…

[00:19:12] Michael: But I tell you what, I’m doing it a lot less now.

[00:19:14] Megan: Yeah.

[00:19:15] Michael: Because I’m just, I’ve got…

[00:19:16] My life is not quite as hectic and busy.

[00:19:19] Megan: Yeah.

[00:19:19] Michael: So I’ve got a little time to think. Yeah. I just think, “You know, that probably is just gonna go right back in a box back to the sender,” so maybe I just won’t-

[00:19:28] Megan: Yeah …

[00:19:28] Michael: initiate.

[00:19:29] Luke: I… And I, you know, I forget what I want on a daily basis- Yeah … or what my desires even are.

[00:19:34] Megan: Huh.

[00:19:34] Luke: And I can tell you, and I’m not just saying this because I’m talking to you, I, I think I got a Full Focus Planner back in 2018 or ’19. Hmm. My friend Josh gave me one. And, you know, one of the things that I’ve kind of integrated in my, my own daily kind of journaling, if I write down over the course of 30 days, like what is something that I really want?

[00:19:53] I really wanna take a vacation to Italy. At the end of… And I write, maybe I write that every day for six days, and then it just disappears. And I look back 30 days later, and I’m like, “Huh, I really thought that going to Italy was, like, one of my thick desires,” and then all of a sudden I just completely forgot about it.

[00:20:08] And I might not have even remembered that I… It’s like actually amazing what happens if you kind of track the persistence of your desires over a long enough period of time. You don’t even remember what yours are sometimes yesterday.

[00:20:18] Michael: So true. But I will say, the going to Italy should be on everyone’s thick desire list.

[00:20:25] Luke: That is true. Well, hey, I just- … I just got back, brother, three and a half weeks.

[00:20:29] Megan: Oh, wow.

[00:20:30] Luke: Oh my God. I ful- I fulfilled that one. I fulfilled that.

[00:20:32] Megan: That’s

[00:20:32] Michael: good. Oh my gosh.

[00:20:32] Megan: Lasted longer than six days on your- This- … Full Focus Planner …

[00:20:35] Michael: Yes, yes. That’s awesome.

[00:20:36] Megan: It

[00:20:36] Michael: sounds so great right now.

[00:20:37] Megan: You know, that’s interesting just to think about how over time these things persist or not because I think a lot of times, you know, I was telling you before we started recording, Luke, that our audience, our community are people who are overwhelmed and overloaded.

[00:20:52] They just have too much on their plate and too much to think through. It’s just a lot. And part of that, I just had this realization, is that we want too many things. Not that we don’t… Too many things that aren’t the thick things, and that crowds out our schedule. Hmm. I mean, if you think about it, too many things we’re buying, too many things we’re trying to fit into our schedule, too many things that are other people’s priorities, too many things, just too many things.

[00:21:16] And if we were to slow that down and become more reflective, as you talk about a lot in your work, that we might feel a lot less overwhelmed and a lot less overloaded because we wouldn’t be trying to fit so much in without being intentional about should it even be there in the first place.

[00:21:35] Michael: Yeah.

[00:21:36] Megan: That’s a good- a good breakthrough.

[00:21:38] Like we, a lot of people go straight to productivity and organization and, you know, these kind of hacky strategy things before asking the, the most important question is, should I even be trying to integrate this at all?

[00:21:51] Luke: Yeah. I mean, the, the, the danger with mimetic desire, uh, for an ambitious person is that once you achieve a goal, you will immediately find another model.

[00:22:00] You know, this… ‘Cause the, the world is filled of models of desire, and when you achieve your goal, you will either assume that you chose the wrong model or you chose the wrong goal because you’re not going to be completely satisfied, and you will have no problem finding another one. So one thing that I’ve learned is filtering things through my thick desires, even when it comes to simple decisions like the, uh, you know, requests that I get to go do certain things, events and speaking.

[00:22:28] Um, one of my thick desires is spending time with my family. Yeah. So I even filter those, and I wa- I say yes to way too many things, and I’ve just learned to filter that through that thick desire. Well, where is it? Can my family come? And it’s just reoriented the way that I even make those decisions because I’m now connecting something that could be transactional to something that is a thick desire of mine.

[00:22:56] Michael: Can you talk a little bit about Tyler Cowen’s idea of open tabs? I love this. And that as a metaphor.

[00:23:01] Megan: This is cool.

[00:23:02] Luke: Yeah, yeah. Um, I really hope you don’t ask me which tabs I have open right now. You know we’re

[00:23:07] Megan: going to.

[00:23:07] Luke: Ah.

[00:23:10] Michael: You could

[00:23:10] Luke: ask us. Uh, I should have, I should have been prepared for that, ’cause I put it in the book.

[00:23:13] Um. Well, my, my friend Tyler Cowen has, one of his favorite interview questions is tell me what tabs you have open on your computer, on your browser right now. And, you know, he asks that for a couple of reasons, right? One, nobody’s really prepared for that question, right? So it gets them off script. If they came in with prepared scripts and things that they wanted to say, it gets them grounded in something concrete and real and daily life, and usually leads to really surprising conversations.

[00:23:41] So he really likes that to throw people off a little bit. But now it’s too late, ’cause he wrote about it, I’ve written about it, now everybody knows, at least people who read him and me. Um, so he’s gotta come up with a, a better one. But it also, there’s a huge difference between what we say we value and the way that, the things that we say we pay attention to, and what we actually pay attention to.

[00:24:00] Michael: Mm.

[00:24:01] Luke: And the browser tabs are a great example of what we actually pay attention to. I don’t know about you, but I spend, you know, eight hours a day probably on my laptop, and I spend a lot of time on those browser tabs. Um, so it’s- So do I … kind of a way to kind of cut through what people say versus what they’re actually doing, and the tabs don’t lie, just like the, you know, the screen time on the phone doesn’t lie.

[00:24:21] Megan: Okay. I, I really do wanna know, what are your open tabs? Well- Give me a few …

[00:24:26] Michael: the reason this is so challenging for somebody like me, because I think I have, and I’m not making this up, probably 60-plus tabs open.

[00:24:33] Megan: What?

[00:24:33] Michael: Yeah. And so part of it is- … I see an interesting- Oh my God.

[00:24:37] Megan: Seriously? I see like

[00:24:37] Michael: an in- I see an interesting link and I don’t wanna forget it, so I click on it with the intention of coming back.

[00:24:44] And then periodically I go through and I say, “Yeah, I’m not really interested in that, I’m not really interested in that,” and I just, like, close them down.

[00:24:50] Megan: So it’s like a metaphorical open tab. It’s not just… I mean, it’s like something you wanna think about later, as in a metaphor of a thing you wanna think about, and it’s literally an open tab.

[00:25:00] Michael: Yes. But I will tell you the ones that are open and I’m using, if you really wanna know.

[00:25:04] Megan: Okay, I really wanna know.

[00:25:05] Michael: Okay. So I’ve been working on this new webinar.

[00:25:08] Megan: Yep.

[00:25:09] Michael: This training.

[00:25:09] Megan: Yep.

[00:25:09] Michael: So that was probably the most persistent one that’s open.

[00:25:13] Megan: Okay.

[00:25:13] Michael: There’s usually some kind of AI thing, like I really wanna go through Anthropic’s courses on Claude.

[00:25:20] Megan: Okay.

[00:25:20] Michael: Certification courses, by the way.

[00:25:22] Megan: Hm.

[00:25:22] Michael: And so that’s open. What else is open? I’m, it’s hard for me to not censor myself and say, “Well, what’s virtuous and what’s not?” Probably Facebook’s open.

[00:25:30] Megan: Yeah.

[00:25:31] Michael: You know, in, in one tab.

[00:25:32] Megan: Yeah.

[00:25:33] Michael: Those are probably the three I’m bouncing around with right now. You

[00:25:36] Megan: know what would be a good version of this question, Luke, is, um…

[00:25:40] I’ll tell you mine in a second, ’cause that’s only fair. But, um- Yeah,

[00:25:42] Michael: you’re

[00:25:43] Megan: darn

[00:25:43] Michael: right it’s only fair …

[00:25:45] Megan: is- Is what are the last 10 topics of your Claude chat? You know, like the, the topics of your Claude chat. Mine, which is really close to what my, um, tabs would be, I have a whole medical project for my mother-in-law who’s sick right now, and so I’m in that.

[00:26:02] Like, I have a, I have a Kaiser Permanente tab open on my browser right now in a project in Claude. I have, uh, a dialogue going with Claude about long-term disability insurance. I was just… I was like, “Oh, gosh, I have a friend who’s about our age who is in a, a s- scary situation of being in the hospital and rehab for an illness for a long period of time in his 40s.”

[00:26:24] And I was like, “We don’t have long-term disability insurance. I’ve never really thought about that.” Mm. Probably should get that. I think I have some clothing tab open. You know, I might need to dress for a, an event that I was thinking about. I think I also have Facebook open. Definitely have Google Drive open.

[00:26:37] Probably have Instacart open ’cause I probably need something at the grocery store that, you know, I’m thinking about. But that’s mine.

[00:26:43] Michael: Yeah. Well, there you go.

[00:26:45] Luke: Yeah.

[00:26:45] Michael: Sorry to disappoint so many of you.

[00:26:46] Megan: Yeah. It’s incredibly boring, but, you know, true. I’m

[00:26:50] Luke: look- I’m looking at mine right now- Yeah. What- … and I’ve definitely got 60-plus open.

[00:26:53] Do you really? Top 10 sushi restaurants in DC-

[00:26:56] Megan: Okay …

[00:26:56] Luke: because my wife and I have a date night coming up. All kinds of AI tools. An Atlantic article. Yeah, it’s a total mess. I mean, it- My- It is. I- Wow … like, I just don’t know how to actually close tabs. That’s the problem.

[00:27:06] Megan: Now, I will say my husband, Joel, he probably has 100 tabs open.

[00:27:09] He- Yeah,

[00:27:10] Michael: he’s told me that before.

[00:27:10] Megan: I, I don’t even understand it. Like, when I go into his office, on his, uh, desk are probably 75 books Like, on the desk itself, which is to say nothing of the thousands that are around him, you know? Well,

[00:27:24] Michael: the crazy thing about the tab thing is, like, I literally could delete them all after I’ve opened them once, and they’re in my history.

[00:27:29] Megan: Yeah, but, but you don’t wanna forget.

[00:27:31] Michael: But I don’t wanna forget. Right.

[00:27:32] Megan: So these are, so these are representative, though, of the desires that we have at some level. I mean, we, we could probably tease out your list or my list or Luke’s list, and they would tell us something about ourselves.

[00:27:42] Luke: They are. I mean, I, you know, we live in this…

[00:27:44] I write in the book about this old vice called curiositas. The desert f- monks u- in, in Egypt in the 3rd and 4th century wrote about this, and it’s kind of disordered, a disordered desire for knowledge, right? It’s like knowledge that- Mm.

[00:27:59] Megan: Huh …

[00:27:59] Luke: we don’t actually need, right? It’s like sort of, uh, rubbernecking at the accident on the side of the road.

[00:28:04] That’s not knowledge that is beneficial for us in any way, to just see something- Yeah … on the side of the road or something like that versus the kind of knowledge that we want to acquire because it’s actually leading somewhere. And obviously, the internet has just made this particular-

[00:28:18] Michael: Mm …

[00:28:18] Luke: uh, challenge incredibly difficult, right?

[00:28:20] The amount of unnecessary things that I think that I need to know that I really don’t need to know.

[00:28:25] Michael: Wow. Well, there’s probably no better case for that than just the desire, which I have, to keep up with the news. And it’s just like- Mm … okay, so do I really need this? What does it do for me?

[00:28:35] Megan: Yeah.

[00:28:36] Michael: Really nothing.

[00:28:37] Ignorance can be helpful. This may be a left turn. Did you end up studying at the Vatican or going to work there?

[00:28:43] Luke: I entered seminary in my late 20s, um, Ro- Roman Catholic seminary when I was 29 years old. I walked away from, not the company we talked about earlier, but a different one, and studied philosophy and theology for five years, and three of those years I was in Rome at the Pontifical North American College, probably 200 yards away from the Vatican for three years.

[00:29:03] Michael: Amazing. Wow. What did you take away from that experience that’s informed your work today? ‘Cause I suspect it probably had a s- a big impact.

[00:29:10] Luke: Yeah. I mean, uh- Having s- founded several companies and then going to school to study philosophy and theology-

[00:29:18] Megan: Mm-hmm …

[00:29:18] Luke: in a, it’s kind of a strange order to do things in, in this very intense way, right?

[00:29:24] Where I wasn’t in a relationship or anything. It helped give me kind of a first principles look at… I mean, I started thinking about w- the nature of work-

[00:29:33] Michael: Hmm …

[00:29:34] Luke: in a way that I never had before, right? And I’d never actually reflected on the question of, like, what is work? Why do I work? Why do I like to work hard?

[00:29:41] What is it about, what is it about me or the nature of what it means to be human that we work, right? So I ask all of these kind of very fundamental philosophical questions that really informed kind of the, the, the things that I’m doing today, the way that I’m approaching my, my work and priorities. And it also really gave me…

[00:30:01] I mean, to be very practical, I mean, living close to the Vatican in such a beautiful place as Rome also made me understand, like, how much I take for granted and how much we take for granted on a daily basis, right? And, and, like, how hard it is to exercise gratitude, right? I found myself, like, walking down the…

[00:30:19] To, in order to get back to my dorm room, I had to walk directly in front of St. Peter’s almost every single day. And I would catch myself after about a year of living there not even looking up and noticing it whatsoever. And I was like, “It really takes some real practice to not take this place for granted and the, the amount of opportunities that I have here to, to, to just sink down and actually appreciate this.”

[00:30:41] Michael: Well, where I wanted to go with that is I wanted to know if you could differentiate between sort of the Christian notion of vocation or calling and when you talk about desire, how are those two related or are they?

[00:30:53] Luke: They’re very deeply related, and I sort of equate thick desire and our thickest desire with our s- vocation.

[00:31:02] Michael: Mm.

[00:31:02] Luke: And when I say vocation, I mean a personal vocation, right? The way that each person- A calling … a calling is uniquely called to do something in this world, right? And that I think each person has an unrepeatable calling, some-something that only they can do, um, with their unique history and situation and context.

[00:31:21] And I think our thickest desire, um, is oriented towards the living out of a personal vocation, right? I mean, um, God’s not here to play games, right? Our deepest desires are oriented towards the fulfillment of, of something that we’re, we’re, that we’re meant to do. So even though it’s, it’s not really talked about in those terms in wanting, thick desires is a signpost to a calling, um, which can be lived out in and through our work.

[00:31:51] But I, I sort of… My understanding of a personal vocation is not something that, that work alone can completely sort of, um- Mm-hmm … satisfy for us. It’s like, it’s something that we can live at every moment of our lives, right? Constantly being called so that we have the calling across every dimension o- of our lives, our family, our work.

[00:32:09] Everywhere we go, we’re in some sense living out our calling. Or it’s… And I don’t associate it with me doing one particular thing. Yes, sometimes I’m called to do some particular things, but I, I associate it with a thick desire to kind of be in the world in a certain way, something that endures and persists beyond any one particular season of life that I might have.

[00:32:29] Michael: Do you think that’s something that we ought to be able to articulate, what our calling is, or be able to put it into words, or is it more amorphous than that, more general

[00:32:41] Luke: I think it’s worth trying. I, you know, I think, I think it’s worth trying to articulate things. You know, we have language. Uh, it’s how we make sense of the world, naming things, you know?

[00:32:51] Mm-hmm. Like naming the animals, right? There’s, there’s something very, very important about na- about at least trying to. And that’s not to say that the way that we articulate it or try to describe it might not evolve. There’s always something ineffable, I think, about a, a vocation or a calling. That’s a good word.

[00:33:06] Um, so we’ll never be able to describe it fully, right? There’s, it’s, there’s always something, I think, uh, numinous or a bit mystical about it, but it’s worth trying, and I don’t think it has to be… It’s not like a, an essay. You know, I had, I had one person describe their sense of their personal vocation to me as living out the goodness of God, and they said, “You know, any time my whole life that I’ve encountered passages in the Bible like the good shepherd, where God is spoken of as good, they’ve affected me in a very particular way.

[00:33:39] And, you know, I, and I’ve, and anything that I’ve tried to do, manifesting the goodness of God has been something that has been a through line, a thread- Superb … that’s run through all of the different careers.” And I thought, that seems vague, but to him, he deeply believed that that was the way that he was sort of called, and it was as simple as that.

[00:33:58] Megan: You know, I think this topic of work, which we weren’t really gonna talk a lot about today, but here we are, which I’m thrilled about. Um, this topic of work for people, at least in America or in the West, you know, we think a lot about it as a thing we do to earn money first and foremost. It’s a way that pragmatically we’re providing for our families or ourselves, and the notion of calling is not something that we talk about a lot.

[00:34:24] You know, I think we, we talk about living our best life, like in kind of a secular context. We talk about living our best life or being true to ourself or, or other things like that, but I think the Christian understanding of calling is so much deeper than that, so much more meaningful and satisfying. But how does one go about discerning what their calling is if maybe their, their orientation has been more pragmatic or more More self-focused.

[00:34:49] In other words, not in relation to God as created to creator

[00:34:54] Luke: I don’t think there’s any substitute to prayer, right, and, and, and contemplation and meditating deeply on the movements, uh, within us as we go about doing different kinds of work, engaging in different kinds of relationships. Uh, there is some value to asking yourself, like, you know, what would I be doing now, you know, if I wasn’t being paid this much money, right?

[00:35:17] There’s value in that. There’s value in doing the deathbed exercise, right? Like, like, well, what would I wanna be investing in right now? Um, what would I wish, uh, that I had been investing in right now? But I do think that meditating on the, what I would call, like, the, the way that different things affect us at the level of thick desire is a very important tool of discernment.

[00:35:40] Like, does engaging in this particular work, um, give me this enduring sense of joy and fulfillment, right, which come from God? Um, or does it give me a fleeting sense of satisfaction? Um, and if you can find a pattern in those, let’s call them fulfillment stories, over a long enough period of time, you probably have the, the, I would call them, you know, the marks of the Holy Spirit and may- you know, probably a little sign of what you might be calling to do.

[00:36:08] I mean, the first time that I ever rolled up my sleeves and volunteered at a soup kitchen, it was just an, an incredibly powerful experience to me. I wasn’t quite expecting it. You know, I was expecting, like, I signed up, I’m gonna volunteer, and then I just had to ask myself, like, “Well, what does that say about you, Luke?”

[00:36:25] And I think if we can evaluate our experiences in terms of what they’re doing to us i- in our interior life, we’re constantly getting little hints and signs for what our personal calling might be.

[00:36:37] Michael: You know, it seems to me, you mentioned prayer, but I think of journaling as well, which is something I do coupled with prayer.

[00:36:44] But it’s, you know, to, to take the time, it seems like such a luxury today and a very not popular practice perhaps, but just trying to sort your thought- thoughts out by getting them on paper. That’s been enormously helpful for me for discerning my own calling. But I also would say, and I would- wanted to know what you think about this, I think just as other people observe my life and see things that perhaps I can’t see, you know, this could be a parent, it could be your spouse, it could be even your kids, even my kids.

[00:37:13] Megan: Even your kids.

[00:37:14] Michael: Even your kids sometimes. But, um, how do you think about that too, sort of the external validation of what you think your calling is? Because I w- I would never wanna be the kind of person who appears on American Idol thinking that God’s called me to sing, and Simon Cowell says to me, “You need to sue your voice instructor because you have zero talent.”

[00:37:35] Luke: Yeah. Uh, yeah, and I think I, I wanted to be an NBA basketball player when I was a kid, too. I’m five foot nine and have a decent little jump shot. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I do think that discernment is something that is done with others-

[00:37:48] Michael: Yeah …

[00:37:48] Luke: you know, in community. I’m– So I’m Catholic, and our idea of, like, you go to the seminary and the discernment is not individual.

[00:37:55] You know, you can’t raise your hand and say, “Ordain me now.” It happens– The discernment is done as part of the community, you know, over a period of many years, right? And in some cases, it’s like you might not be called to- Yeah … to be a priest. So, you know, it’s, it’s critical. We all have blind spots, you know, and I think one of the best things that I’ve ever done is join, like, a men’s group just to, like, help talk through things, or women’s group- Hundred percent

[00:38:18] if you have women listening. And, and I’ve– there’s been nothing more important in my life than to take the things that I’m wrestling with in terms of my own discernment, should I work on this? Should I work on this? That to a trusted circle of men who know me well and can help me know when I’m– when, uh, Luke is regressing back into the, you know, ambitious Luke that just says yes to everything, right?

[00:38:42] It’s just critical to have that. So I would say yeah, I, I think that oftentimes calling is spoken of in a highly individualistic way, and there’s part of it that is, right, because God speaks to us personally. But I think we, we should– we need to take that to others ’cause we exist in a social context.

[00:38:56] Megan: That’s really wise.

[00:38:58] Michael: There’s somewhere where courage is wrapped up in all this, and you talk about Paul Tillich and the four forms of courage. Could you just elaborate? On the role of courage in this whole conversation Yeah.

[00:39:09] Luke: I read Tillich for the first time just a few years ago, and I was struck that he was writing about courage, um, back in the middle part of the century as, you know, corporations were becoming mechanized, and he felt like people were becoming interchangeable.

[00:39:23] And he wrote a book called The Courage to Be.

[00:39:25] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:25] Luke: You know, the courage to be is just kind of an existential courage to, to, to show up and affirm existence and the goodness of being, the goodness of the people around you, you know, even when it’s hard, you know, just to, to kind of show up. We don’t often talk about courage that way.

[00:39:41] You know, usually, when courage is mentioned in the public square, we’re talking about soldiers. You know, we’re talking about a whistleblower. But he, he wrote about courage as really kind of a daily thing, right? As, as a, as a daily thing to exercise, and I don’t think we– I don’t think that I’ve meditated on that nearly enough.

[00:39:58] Okay? And then in the book, he distinguishes different kinds of courage, and he said, “There’s the courage to be that’s critical. It’s kind of an existential courage. We need to exercise the courage to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, right? Which might involve sacrificing our ego, the courage to take on a role, the courage to say yes to what someone is asking of us, even if it’s not what we might have chosen.

[00:40:22] There’s the courage to be a part of something bigger, and at the same time, there’s the courage to be a part as oneself.” All right? So to be a part of something without sacrificing your integrity, right? And that is a, a second layer of courage that he articulated. And to be able to do both at the same time, which is essentially the subject of my whole book, right?

[00:40:46] The one and the ninety-nine, how are we both one and part of something bigger than ourselves is what I’ve called, you know, the courage to be in communion. And being in communion means, you know, learning how to be a differentiated self with a calling while also being part of something bigger and learning– And sometimes that creates a little bit of tension, and our instinct is to flee any form of tension or any anxiety.

[00:41:10] We just wanna cut and run. And I think there’s a lot to be learned for sitting in the tension to be a part and to be oneself. And in fact, the tension is a sign of health usually. The tension goes away when we’re dead. You know, in this life, um, there’s not a perfect community. There will be tension, and how do we lean into that or where…

[00:41:29] and, and when don’t we lean into it? Obviously, in some cases like August Landmesser.

[00:41:33] Michael: That’s so good because I think it’s… there’s tempting to do one or the other, and like one of the most One of the oldest philosophical problems is the one and the many.

[00:41:42] Luke: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:42] Michael: Right? And, and in Christian faith, and I didn’t really mean this to be a Christian conversation so much, but, you know, this, this manifests itself in so many different ways, not the least of which is the doctrine of the Trinity.

[00:41:53] I’m Eastern Orthodox, so cousin to you. Mm-hmm. But, uh, but very similar kinds of things. And I think there have been times in my life when I’ve been probably too isolated, and probably times in my life when I’ve been too enmeshed in a community, and I like that differentiation between those two things that we have to hold in, hold in tension.

[00:42:13] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:14] Michael: You know, it’s not a tension to be resolved, it’s just… it’s something to be lived.

[00:42:17] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:18] Luke: Yeah. Yeah, and the Trinity is a communion of distinct persons. Yes. Perfect. You know? And, you know, where do we see that in, in the world? And, you know, which kinds of communities and groups, um, flatten any kind of distinctiveness, and which ones actually allow people to evolve and, and to be part of the whole, or to be part of the body without demanding that they be something that they’re not, or demanding that they sacrifice their integrity.

[00:42:41] So that’s just a, a… this question of, um… you know, there’s so many books that have been written about how to find your tribe, and, you know, in my life, I’ve, I’ve searched for my own tribes, and I’ve found a lot of different ones from, you know, work to seminary, and then I always realize that once I’ve found it, it’s like where the hard work actually really begins, where I need to learn how to be part of the tribe while also contributing myself, and-

[00:43:03] Michael: Yeah

[00:43:03] Luke: you know, and, and not, and not fleeing from the responsibilities of, of having difficult conversations or existing in it in such a way where I’m not just completely conforming to the point of being, it being unhealthy.

[00:43:23] Megan: So shifting gears a little bit, you talk about this kind of counterintuitive idea that rules or constraints for life are actually freeing, and you talk about the Rule of Saint Benedict as kind of an example of this. I think it’s easy to think, maybe even especially as we get older, I mean, in one way this is true when we’re younger, but I think as we get older, it’s like we want, we wanna have autonomy.

[00:43:45] We think we’ve earned it. We don’t necessarily want to live by rules. We think we’ve sort of paid our dues. Why should we reconsider that, and, and what are you really talking about, like, for a, a professional who might be listening to this show? What would, what would a rule for our lives look like?

[00:44:01] Luke: Yeah, I mean, living a rule of life, um, often has to do with rules for, you know, resolving conflicts in relationships, for instance, whether that’s your own marriage or in the workplace.

[00:44:13] And, you know, when we think of rules at work, we typically think of handbooks and policy manuals and operational things like the rule for getting X, Y, and Z thing done, right? That’s how we think of rules, and I think it’s given rules. And we learn rules get a bad rap. They get a bad rap in school, and they get a bad rap in most workplaces with m- like sort of a, a hall monitor way of enforcing rules.

[00:44:35] And I kind of wanted to go back to a deeper tradition, and I was like, well, what are some of the communities that have endured the longest in the world where people have to live together for a very long time and get along and grow in virtue? Uh, and what are the kind of rules that are concerned with virtue and the formation of the whole person and not just the execution of tasks and things to get done?

[00:44:54] And I found the Rule of Benedict, which has been around for more than fifteen hundred years. Like the, you know, if the Lindy effect means anything, um, the Rule of Benedict is something that we should pay attention to, right? It’s probably gonna be around, around for another five hundred. And the rule is focused on the way that, um, an individual monk can live in community with other monks and the kind of rhythms that guide their life, right?

[00:45:17] Obviously, these are monks, so liturgical rhythms and the rhythm of prayer. So there are things in the rule, like when the bell rings, um, the monk must be obedient to the bell and drop whatever they’re doing, even if they’re not done, and make their way to the chapel for prayer. It’s got all these interesting kind of rhythms of, of, of, of life, and a rhythm of life is very important, right?

[00:45:37] Even if you’re not religious at all, just having a, a rhythm to your week is critical, right? It changes our relationship to time. It helps time slow down. Uh, it gives it a different feel. And I read the whole r- the whole rule, and I thought, You know what this rule actually is about is how to be a self in a community, uh, and wh- and what to do when there is anxiety and tension and how to resolve those things in healthy ways, right?

[00:46:03] So it’s a rule for relationships. And the Bible contains these kinds of things, right? I mean, if, if you have a problem with somebody, go to them directly first. You don’t go tweet about it. You don’t put it on LinkedIn, right? Go to them directly, and then you go to the church, and then… You know. So there’s a, there’s a way of thinking about human relationships that I think the rule has a lot to offer us, and I’m not suggesting that it be adopted as an organizational manual because we’re not monks, most of us listening, I would assume.

[00:46:32] But there’s a lot of wisdom in it, and I, and I think developing a rule of life That is a layer deeper than the operational rules is critical. Like, my, I- my wife and I kind of have one in our own family with our daughters. Like, this is how we agree to handle situations when this is happening. When something gets thrown and a window gets broken, um, we’re not just instinctively reacting.

[00:46:54] Um, we have a process for dealing with that, and this is what the rule is all about. You know, how does the abbot resolve differences and conflict among monks? What happens when a new monk knocks on the door and wants to join? Surprisingly, you know, Benedict says, you know, you should stand outside of the abbey for a few days before he’s admitted entrance to, to test his desire.

[00:47:14] This is filled with these interesting anecdotes. So the, the rule has to do with these deep kind of human things, and I think we each probably need to write our own based on our own context. But I would encourage everybody to kind of think about, you know, what, what rules for dealing with conflict and anxiety in particular do I have in my own life?

[00:47:34] Am I operating with intention or am I operating based on instinct in the moment? Because if it’s the latter, and we don’t have something that’s kind of a habitual, kind of virtuous practice to fall back on, we can tend to make bad decisions.

[00:47:47] Michael: Well, and it seems to me that those rules are inescapable. You know, if we don’t– if we’re not thoughtful and create our own rules, whether they’re informed by our faith or something else, then we’re just gonna have these rules that are just kinda haphazard.

[00:48:02] Maybe we got ’em from our family, maybe we got ’em from our society and our environment, but something’s gonna govern our lives one way or the other.

[00:48:09] Luke: Absolutely. And the fa- the family is the first place that we learn rules, too.

[00:48:13] Michael: Yeah.

[00:48:13] Luke: Um, it’s why, why they’re so important and yeah, it’s, you gotta… They are gonna govern our lives, and it’s, it’s worth actually naming the rules that govern our lives, just like we talked about naming models earlier.

[00:48:24] You know, like, what rules do, do I live by? Um, and many of us have really never thought about that, but what, what is the rule, right? Is it my workplace conduct policy, um, or do I, do I actually have a rule that goes beyond that, that I try to live by myself?

[00:48:38] Megan: You know what is interesting to me about this is that in a lot of ways it’s the antidote to decision fatigue.

[00:48:46] You know, if we think about this- I can see that … the stress of these kinds of situations that you’re talking about, the hardest decision. I mean, this is exactly why organizations have policy manuals. Because when an HR situation comes up, it’s really hard to figure out how to handle it. Oftentimes they don’t present themselves neatly.

[00:49:03] There are all kinds of, you know, complexities, and you need a, a pre-planned response to the situation because it’s too difficult. We know this. It’s too difficult to be fair, to make good decisions in, in a highly stressful situation in a workplace setting, but we don’t think about that with our lives. You know, we’re, we have all these implicit rules like you’re talking about, and I think what you’re advocating for, Luke, is to make those explicit and, and really examine them so that, you know, this is like good, uh, dialectical behavioral therapy.

[00:49:33] You know, you pre-plan your, your responses to stressful situations so that you can handle them in ways that are functional instead of dysfunctional, and I love that. That’s so good. I, I haven’t thought about it in that, in that way before, but man, that’s a, that’s a big light bulb for me.

[00:49:48] Luke: Yeah, I mean, my, my…

[00:49:49] I mean, a simple rule that I have in, in, in my own workplace is, like, when there is maybe some tension or, you know, a, a difficult conversation needs to be had, we go to lunch right away. Just, like, that’s what we do. So like, I can sit there and, and ruminate on all the different ways to go about it, but just having actually a nice generous lunch that gets us a little bit outside of the work context is just my go-to.

[00:50:11] It’s worked for ov- over a decade now. Um, it’s just kind of my go-to. So when I start– And I forget it all the time. And I’m like… And I come back like, “Luke, remember, lunch. Like, lunch is your go-to for this thing.” And it, and it, and nine times out of 10 it just, like, leads to some kind of a little breakthrough.

[00:50:27] It just make– Or it makes the conversation easier. But it’s just a little one that I have for myself.

[00:50:31] Megan: Smart.

[00:50:31] Michael: So good. Well, as we move through life, there are so many times when, you know, relationships are damaged or whatever, and the ability to repair those and move toward that other person is such an important life skill.

[00:50:43] Kind of

[00:50:44] Megan: a meta skill.

[00:50:44] Michael: Yeah, kind of a meta skill Well, Luke, I’m sad to say we’re out of time. And this has gone very quickly, and I feel like you’re a kindred spirit. But if you were to leave people with something that they could take away from this conversation that could measurably impact their life going forward, what would you say that is?

[00:51:06] Luke: I think one thing that, um, anybody could do today or this week, similar to kind of naming models, is, you know, just make a list of, of the communities that you feel like you’re part of that shape you in some way or that you shape. Make a list of all of them, and inst- we’re going full circle right back to the beginning of the conversation, and think about the ways in which you are part of those communities, right?

[00:51:30] How do you show up? Where do you feel tension? The one where you’re sort of sensing kind of the, the, the most tension, do something this week, anything, right? Just one thing to show up differently within it so that you can learn something, right? The goal is not to leave, right? The goal is to just do one thing, to show up as y- what I call in the book as a solid self with the maximum amount of integrity.

[00:51:56] Um, think ahead of time about how you’re going to show up. Anticipate why you might be feeling the tension, and it could be ver- it could be a very small thing, right? It could be the way that you respond to a message on Slack, right? I’m not, I’m not suggesting, you know, show up to a board meeting and start jumping on the table here.

[00:52:11] Um, but just, just one, one thing, right? How you can just change the, the, the normal script a little bit so that you can learn both more about yourself and more about that community, and try to diagnose why you might be feeling that tension. And if you do that, um, it will probably lead you to the next step, and you might be able to figure out how to be part of that community in a more life-giving way.

[00:52:33] Michael: One last question. Where would you suggest people start who wanna learn more about you?

[00:52:38] Luke: Oh, I appreciate that, Michael. Um, lukeburgis.com, B-U-R-G-I-S. I think, uh, most of what I’m working on is, is there, and I’m the director of The Cluny Institute, so cluny, C-L-U-N-Y, dot org. It was a famous monastery built in the 10th century that has inspired me in a variety of ways.

[00:52:56] Wow. So you can find me there, too.

[00:52:57] Michael: Fantastic.

[00:52:58] Megan: Great.

[00:52:58] Michael: Well, thanks so much. Thanks, Luke. This has been

[00:53:00] Luke: rich. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

[00:53:12] Michael: I liked his demeanor.

[00:53:13] Megan: Me too. I found that he had very calming energy.

[00:53:16] Michael: He did. I felt so calm just talking to him.

[00:53:20] Megan: Yeah.

[00:53:20] Michael: But he… You could tell he’s very thoughtful, very contemplative, which is so interesting and, and the mix that I found fascinating was what he’s drawn from Catholic tradition, and particularly monastic tradition on the one hand, but a hardcore Wall Street business stuff too.

[00:53:37] Megan: Yeah.

[00:53:38] Michael: And I think that’s such a, an unusual mix, but extremely helpful for people of us who are trying to navigate through the world.

[00:53:47] Megan: Well, I think it’s easy, especially as high capacity people, as people who have goals, as people who wanna have a meaningful life and achieve things, you can be successful at achieving things and then realize that you don’t actually want the things you achieve, and what a terrible place to find yourself in.

[00:54:07] And so I think this conversation about desire and sussing out what is truly the thing you’re called to, what is it that are the thick desires of your life as opposed to the thin ones, is very important, especially if you have means, especially if you have any level of autonomy in your life. There’s a lot of options available to you.

[00:54:29] You’re probably more subject to influence in, of these mimetic desires, as he talks about them, you know, from outside of yourself than you might think. You know, you feel the need to keep up with other people or present a certain image or present success or pursue things because other people say they’re good.

[00:54:46] And, you know, nobody gets to the end of their life and wishes they had done more of what other people thought was important.

[00:54:53] Michael: So true. You know, I don’t, I don’t intend this as a promotion, but we’ve got a course called Life Focus-

[00:54:58] Megan: Mm-hmm …

[00:54:59] Michael: that I think runs so parallel to this.

[00:55:01] Megan: Yeah, I thought the same thing too.

[00:55:02] Michael: In helping people figure out what their mission, what their values, what their desired future is.

[00:55:08] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:09] Michael: But I… The thing I love about that course, and what I loved about it when we were doing it as a standalone event, is that it gives people the space to push sort of the, the stop button and just reflect on their life, not only where they’ve come from, but where they’re going, and to live more intentionally.

[00:55:26] Megan: That was one of my biggest takeaways from what he talked about, was just the need to slow things down before making decisions and see what sticks. Yeah. You know, that idea that he was writing in his journal or his planner some desire that he had, and the question was, is it gonna be durable? You know, am I gonna two weeks or, or two months later still want this thing?

[00:55:45] And if I don’t, it’s probably not worth having. And if we could just wait to take action… I say this as two people who are, you know, action-taking kind of people, and you guys are probably, too, listening. The older I get, the more I think there’s so much value in slowing things down-

[00:56:02] Michael: So true …

[00:56:02] Megan: and sitting with things.

[00:56:04] And that oftentimes- Speedy decision-making is driven by anxiety, in my experience. At least speaking for myself.

[00:56:11] Michael: 100%. 100%. And you can’t make quality decisions when you’re going at the speed of light.

[00:56:17] Megan: Yeah.

[00:56:17] Michael: You know, you have to slow it down, and you have to think about it. And that’s hard for me, because I tend to be a very quick decision-maker, somebody who’s borderline impulsive, sometimes is impulsive.

[00:56:28] And I think just whether it’s a big decision or a small decision, I’m trying to train myself to go, “Okay, that thing I wanna order, how about if I just give it a week?”

[00:56:37] Megan: Mm-hmm. “

[00:56:38] Michael: And see if it’s something I still wanna order.” Or that event that I wanna sign up for and attend, chances are 48 hours from now I’m not gonna feel the same way.

[00:56:46] Megan: You know, it’s funny, I will often send myself links to things, you know, recipes, things I might wanna order. Do you

[00:56:53] Michael: text yourself?

[00:56:54] Megan: I text myself. Me too. Yeah. I have, I have probably hundreds of links that I’ve texted myself. You know how often I’ve gone back to look for a link?

[00:57:01] Michael: Zero?

[00:57:02] Megan: Zero. I’m not kidding you.

[00:57:03] Literally zero.

[00:57:05] Michael: I would have to say the same.

[00:57:06] Megan: And, it- What does

[00:57:07] Michael: that tell

[00:57:07] Megan: us? Now, the good thing is, it gave me a thing to do. It made me feel like, okay, I’m not gonna forget this, kinda like we were talking about the tabs idea. It made it where I felt like I’m not gonna not be able to find this again if I really want it.

[00:57:20] It’s just that I never want it.

[00:57:21] Michael: Hmm.

[00:57:22] Megan: And that is fascinating, because how many ads for things do we see, for example, to buy, or invitations are we given that we eventually say no to or whatever, that mean nothing to us?

[00:57:33] Michael: No. Because they’re not organic to who we are.

[00:57:36] Megan: Yeah.

[00:57:37] Michael: They’re externally imposed or solicited, and when we really sit with ourselves and reflect on what we want, that usually presents a lot different answer.

[00:57:47] Megan: Yeah.

[00:57:47] Michael: But we can’t do that if we’re just kinda moving through life so fast that we don’t have time to reflect. I mean, one simple thing that Gail and I are trying to do at night now is just to sit down after work, usually outside when it’s not so hot, and, you know, just have a glass of wine or whatever and just talk about the day, and think about it, and just be more intentional.

[00:58:07] Megan: Yeah.

[00:58:08] Michael: Well, hope you guys have enjoyed this episode, and I wanna ask you to share it with a friend. If you’ve gotten value out, out of it, share it with somebody else. And if you feel so inclined, leave us a review on wherever you listen to podcasts, ’cause that does help get visibility for the show, and get this message of the double win out.

[00:58:26] So we’ll see you next time