Reclaiming The Now And Building A Better Future With Greg Bennick

 

In this episode, Elizabeth Bachman sits down with Greg Bennick to explore strategies for how to build a better now. Greg delves into the importance of focus, kindness, and using creative metaphors to navigate life and business challenges. He offers practical advice on how to stay grounded and make meaningful progress, even when the world feels overwhelming. Join us for a conversation that will leave you inspired to take immediate action towards a better future.

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Reclaiming The Now And Building A Better Future With Greg Bennick

Introduction And Welcome To The Episode

Greg Bennick, my friend. I’m so happy to have you on the show. Welcome.

Thank you. I’m happy to be here. This is great. I really appreciate your time and this is going to be fun.

There are lots of things that we can talk about. Before I get into the many questions I have for you, though, tell me who would be your dream interview? If you could interview someone who’s no longer with us, who would it be? What would you ask them? Who should be listening?

Without any doubt, no hesitation whatsoever, there was a man named Ernest Becker, and a lot of people didn’t know the name Ernest Becker. Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist, a sociologist of sorts, and definitely a deep thinker. He explored philosophy. What he did ultimately was explore why human beings behave the way they do. He won the Pulitzer Prize in the early ‘70s for a book called The Denial of Death.

In that book, he explored our relationship with our own mortality from the perspective of given that there’s finite limit in our lives, now what do we do? It was a really fascinating book, but more importantly, he went way deeper than just that book. I’ve been writing a biography about him and I am fascinated by his work.

If I had the chance to sit with him, I’d ask him, “Given the world we live in, a world that is increasingly complex, and given what I do, which is explore how we manage our way through and keep our focus in a world that is increasingly complex. Given, Ernest, you’ve read every single book and studied every single thinker that has ever basically lived, help. What can you tell us about this reality and this experience?” That was question one. I would sit back for two hours and let him talk. Then maybe question two would be any other thoughts? Basically, be it, but Ernest Becker would be the interview without a doubt.

I’m going to go research that.

If anyone has questions about Becker ever, I’m always happy to talk about his work, and that includes you as well. If you find things and if you don’t, let me know. That’ll supplement not being able to sit with Becker, who died on stage.

Greg, you use juggling and coin collecting to give business advice. I love this. You have a performing background. I have a performing background, actually a performing background that became a directing background. We come from the arts. How does this fit into business advice?

This is great. This may be my favorite show’s question ever. People don’t often ask about coin collecting, but I use it as a metaphor and juggling as a metaphor as well. I always tell audiences that the tricks that they might see are not indeed tricks. They’re metaphors for life lessons. Here’s a case in point. Let’s say I’m on stage and I’m talking about focus and I have a PowerPoint presentation and there are 375 slides and I’m boring my audience to tears. Would you rather watch that or would you rather watch me walk out on stage and have a machete and two bean bags, juggling those and talking about the importance of keeping your eyes on the knife?

What is the most important mission-critical thing that’s ahead of you right now? It’s the knife metaphorically. When you’re watching me juggle a knife, all of a sudden, ideas about focus that can be applied to your business or your life make a lot more sense. Juggling is a metaphor that I use for the way it feels to be us day to day in the world. We’re always feeling like we’re juggling. We’re always feeling like we have too many objects in the air at once. It’s impossible to know where to put our focus given all the pulls on our attention every single second.

Juggling isn’t just a trick; it’s a metaphor for life. We’re always juggling too many things—focus on what matters most. Share on X

Juggling is a great metaphor. Coin collecting is really interesting. Now, that’s often a statement not said by people that coin collecting would be fascinated, but what I collect and what I have collected, researched, studied, and written about for decades in my hobby life are what are called error coins, coins that are mismade, off-center, double-struck. The question becomes, does the entire US mint shut down in the process of making a billion coins if it makes one incorrectly or if it makes a hundred incorrectly? No, of course, it doesn’t.

Likewise, if in the midst of figuring out processes and ways to be more efficient and ways to be more exciting in our work, if we do something wrong along the way, does the entire process shut down? Of course, it doesn’t. I use the error coin as a metaphor, just like the juggling, as a metaphor for a greater lesson about focus or keeping our attention on a process or staying in a process when maybe it goes slightly astray. We got to pull it back to center. Error coins and juggling are great metaphors and fun metaphors for those things.

I love it because the human brain retains stories and metaphors much more than we retain facts. Even if this is what I work with my clients all the time, it is talked about. What’s the metaphor? What’s the story that’s going to relate to them? I love that juggling is something that everyone can watch and relate to. I like to explore with you as I was listening and I was thinking about practice because coin collecting means informing yourself. Juggling, you’ve got to practice.

It’s true.

I used to joke when I met a juggler. I said for years, I have jokes. I said, “Yes, I took a juggling class once. I was the comic relief because I couldn’t ever get one ball from one hand to the other.” That’s my quick, easy deflection. I never figured out how to juggle, but it occurs to me now at this stage in my life that if I had chosen to actually practice so that if I threw something, it went where I wanted it to go, which was something I never really needed to do, so I never really learned, maybe I could juggle. Talk about the value of practice.

It’s immense. Here’s the thing. Let’s say you and I sat down in the same physical reality rather than virtual. In fact, we can do it virtually as well. I absolutely teach people in virtual sessions. I love the fact that the world is still a bit virtual. I still get requests for virtual events from time to time. That’s really nice because I think the virtual is fun. The point is, let’s say we’re in the physical world and I handed you an object, a bean bag, and I said, “Let’s learn how to juggle. You threw it across and it landed on the ground and you stopped.” That ends the process.

The Importance Of Practice And Trajectory

That’s it, there’s no more, but if you work at it, and I don’t mean just work at it until it’s perfect, but work at throwing and trying to catch if you so much as catch that object once, that progress is a self-esteem boost, it’s a confidence boost, and through practice, we gain self-confidence and self-esteem and we feel as though we are onto something. We feel as though we’re engaged with something. We feel as though we’re on a trajectory. Practice keeps us on a trajectory. When we’re in business, whether we’re in life, whether we’re in our personal lives, when we stay on a trajectory, we’re going to find that results come from that.

Practicing even small things builds self-confidence. It’s not about perfection but about staying on a trajectory of growth. Share on X

That then increases our confidence and increases our sense of self-esteem. Your background in opera is a perfect example. If you asked me today to sing, it would be a disaster. I once took lessons from an opera coach when I was singing more and I was terrible. What I found was that going back week after week after week kept me on a trajectory, and I made little improvements along the way.

Over time, those incremental small improvements with down days and some up days led to increased success, for lack of a better word. When we’re on a trajectory, we’re going to find successes along the way. Even if we don’t find, for example, with your example, the success of juggling fifteen balls at once or whatever it might be, you’re going to find successes along the way if you stay on a trajectory.

I love that because I grew up in the theater since I was five. You rehearse and then you improve. Maybe the metaphor is you learn how to consistently throw one ball from one hand to the other consistently and then you add another ball.

There’s another way of looking at it, which is that you could take one and just throw one, and that’s all you do. Find that to be meditative, find it to be contemplative, and find it to be an exploration. I couldn’t do this, but now I can, and I’m better at it now than I was yesterday. I’ll be better tomorrow. That becomes a metaphor, too. When I go into events, whether it’s associations or companies, and do a keynote speech, I’m not offering a juggling coin-collecting show.

I’m offering a presentation about keeping our focus and presentation, ultimately, about getting better and more efficient in fun and exciting ways with the things we do each day. With that in mind, juggling and coin collecting might be a really great metaphor for people to learn, but it doesn’t mean that I’m coming in with a juggling show. It doesn’t mean that if you’re practicing juggling, you’re learning to be a juggler. What you’re doing is a learning process and you’re learning consistency. You’re learning to stay on a trajectory. That is going to increase your successes.

I love that. Learning consistency. That’s the one that I didn’t apply at that time. If I had wanted to, I could have stayed over in the corner and just figured it out. This is probably time to talk about your new book, Reclaiming the Moment, where you’ve got seven strategies for reclaiming the moment. What are they and how do they work?

The book is called Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now and it’s out on August 20th, 2024 on Wiley.

Which means it’s out now by the time you hear this, dear listeners, yes.

We’re talking before it comes out and readers will read this after it comes out and it’s going to be available wherever books are sold. The idea behind it was, when we feel thrown off track by the world, what are some things we can do, some perspective shifts we can make to get back on track and feel that we are centered, grounded, focused, and ready to work and explore once again? I explore some things that I think about and some things that I do. For example, when the world has me feeling pessimistic, and that’s true for many, if not all of us, that we feel that way from time to time.

When the world has me feeling pessimistic, this isn’t going to work. I don’t know. The world is too intense. What do I do? I focus on the possibility of kindness so that I can be more kind to myself and the people around me. It sounds so simple, but it is essential because human beings are social creatures. We need one another. We cannot be aggressive and combative constantly. We need to focus on kindness. I think it’s an essential quality in human beings. When we focus on kindness, all of a sudden, we start to see possibility in one another and we feel more possible in ourselves.

As a result, less pessimistic. Believe in the possibility of kindness. I mentioned one of the strategies before, keep your eyes on the knife. It’s a juggling metaphor. Again, what’s the most mission-critical task in front of you? What’s the thing that matters most is that if it falters or fails, it has the greatest impact. Keeping your eyes on the knife, that thing is going to give you a sense of purpose. With that sense of purpose, there’s going to be an uplifting psychological affect and that’s going to push you through in an increasingly complex world.

 

Cultivating a revolutionary mindset is the third. It doesn’t mean that you run through the streets in riot format. It means that you think about things in new ways. It means you think about the potential for situations in new ways that you see beyond what’s immediately in front of you and you expansively use your mind. Leaping into the dark is the next one that goes along with the last. It’s about creativity. It’s about exploring creative approaches to situations and stepping into the unknown because when we do not step into the unknown and instead stay outside of a situation looking in, we’re never going to get to where we want to be.

Engaging with laughter is the next one. I think it’s really important to be laughing with those around us and laughing at and with ourselves so that we can stay grounded in this reality rather than just be lost, which is easy to do in a world that is complex in that way. The last two are developing relationships with other people. We come into being as ourselves more through relationships. What I mean is the more we engage with other people, the more we learn about ourselves and the more we grow into ourselves. The last one is to start a reverberation effect. I had been thinking for a long time about ripple effects and how a ripple effect is a nice idea. Drop a stone in a pond, and it ripples out and dissipates, but I thought that what’s a lot more interesting is the reverberation effect.

When we engage with the world when we share an idea and somebody gives us an idea back and we’re open to it and then somebody else gives us some input and we’re open to it. All of a sudden, teamwork and relationships, creativity, thinking with a revolutionary mindset, keeping our eyes on the knife, and being kind to one another, come into focus as we all reverberate with an idea and develop it and have it just transform and grow. All of these things create more space and more potential for us to be living and engaging with the world more fully.

It puts it all together. Talk to me a little bit more about engaging with laughter. There are people who will say, “There’s nothing to laugh about at my office.” Things like that, or “How can we laugh when there’s climate change happening and not enough water, etc.” How do we engage with laughter?

It’s essential, meaning that we have to figure out a way. I’m not entirely convinced, even though, yes, climate change is real. Listeners, hi, even though climate change is real and even though the world is increasingly intense, politically, socially, and on and on and on, we have to find ways to be at least a little lighthearted at times amidst that. We cannot possibly get through our lives entirely seriously all the time. We have to engage, meaning engage with life and engage with other people with laughter.

Meaning, we need to feel that sense of uplift that we get through looking at the world with a deep breath. We cannot possibly just hammer through life relentlessly. We’re just not built that way. Humans are not built that way. We are insecure, frightened, terrified creatures, all of us. I don’t care if you are deadly serious and a CEO. I don’t care who you are or what you are.

We are all insecure, frightened, terrified creatures. We need the uplift that comes from laughter and lightheartedness. We need to connect with one another. If the office is too deadly serious to even laugh, then that itself is ridiculous. We need to recognize that. We can work there, we can exist there, and we can spend a career there, but it’s pretty ridiculous that the situation is such that we are not even able to smile at our own experience there. That’s something to consider as ridiculous even.

Looking at the world from that perspective, sometimes we’re in ridiculous situations. Even that acknowledges that we, this guy, are in ridiculous situations sometimes. How can I either explore this as ridiculous, make it less ridiculous, make it more, connect with other people about how serious the office is, that sort of thing? It’s ultimately all about connection with ourselves and other people. Engaging with laughter is a way to do that.

Not being mean. One way of laughing is to laugh at someone else.

We’re always going to be able to poke fun at one another. If you and I stayed on this call for six hours, we’d eventually make fun of something. You’d make fun of something in me. Poking gentle fun is different than cutting people down. We are all harm-causing creatures. We’re inherently harm-causing. I mean, by the very merit of our existence and the way we drive around and the things we do, we are causing harm to other people. In fact, through our focus on one person, I’m sure that we’re causing harm to somebody else by not engaging with them. There’s always going to be harm. We’re always going to be at the root of that. How can we diminish that?

How can we reflect on and move forward into spaces where we’re doing less of that? That’s the world I want to live in. Sure, we can talk about being cutthroat and business-like. We can talk about being competitive. That’s fine. It’s old, I’ve heard it, and I’m not realistically as interested in that as I am, the potential for us to be kind to one another or kinder in the midst of being harm-causing creatures. It’s way more interesting. It’s actually fascinating. Whereas being competitive, it’s been done. That’s fine. We can read a thousand books on being competitive, how to be more competitive, and how to one-up one another and dominate one another. I’m bored even saying that much about it. Kindness is way more interesting.

I also like to think about the difference between being kind and being nice because being nice is trying to be like, “I grew up, be a nice girl and be a nice girl. Don’t make waves. Don’t complain. If you’re going to make waves, you do it within the appropriate framework.” Do you explore the difference between nice and kind?

The Difference Between Being Nice And Being

It’s interesting to bring that up because when I’ve spoken to young people about this, I explore the difference between the two. I don’t explore it in the book, but I definitely do when I speak to young people because being nice is to follow an assumed rule set about our conduct. It’s different than kindness, which is generative. Kindness comes from within and is shared and explored and develops and grows. Being nice means that I smile and say, “It’s so nice to talk to you today.” Then all those sorts of things, but I think that there’s more substance behind kindness. I think kindness runs a bit deeper than just the pleasantries with which we offer one another in the midst of this society. I think that kindness runs deeper. It’s more valuable and more fuel for a better world.

Focus on being kind, not just nice. Kindness runs deeper and fuels a better world. Share on X

It brings you out of your own preoccupation, which is part of what I like, and makes it about others. I call it strategic empathy. As you put yourself in the shoes of your listeners, how can you be kind to them in a way that will matter to them?

That’s absolutely right. It’s interesting because you come from an arts background and I have an arts background as well. We know that when we’re on stage, there’s a relationship between us and the audience. It’s opera, if it’s performance, if it’s speaking, if it’s coaching, if it’s training, there’s a relationship that happens, that grows and is developed.

When we’re connecting with other people and really listening to them and paying attention to them, there’s a different growth that happens. I mentioned it earlier, but kindness really is fuel for a better world. It’s fuel for a better world because it engages and ignites people in a different way than challenging them than being combative with them. It’s a better approach that is more nurturing, inspiring, and energizing. It does all the things that competition does.

At the same time, it allows people a sense of self in the midst of that. It’s really quite awesome. Anyway, it’s been an amazing exploration for me. I’ve been talking about this for quite a while, but especially over the last four years since the pandemic started, five years essentially almost coming up, thinking about ways that we can, in the midst of a complex world, be better to one another and why? Why do that? It’s a great exploration to pursue.

Out of all of these, where would one start? What’s the most important strategy to start with?

I would say kindness to yourself and kindness to others. That sounds like a soft skill. People in business oftentimes have been. It goes back and forth between hard skills and soft skills. That sounds like a soft skill of kindness. It’s essential. The world that I want to live in is a world where we are kinder to one another. Our tendencies are toward aggression, violence, and intensity, and that’s “fine.”

The point is that we can always gravitate towards that, and we can always gravitate towards intensity, anger, and whatever else. I think that kindness is a bigger challenge for insecure, frightened creatures, and I think that that’s the direction we need to go. When we focus on kindness, or rather, when we embrace the possibility of it in challenging situations, we open ourselves up in new ways to new possibilities. I think a lot starts with that. I’ve learned that in my own life, and that’s why I suggest it to other people, too.

When we embrace the possibility of kindness in challenging situations, we open ourselves to new opportunities. Share on X

From kindness and what you get you learn more about other people, you make the whole atmosphere.

How Kindness Enhances Leadership And Teamwork

That’s right. Corporations, companies, businesses, and associations ask me all the time to talk about teamwork, but what they’re really doing is checking off a box. We need to have something about teamwork, communication, and leadership. Can you hear the inspiration in my voice when I say that? Communication, teamwork, leadership. That’s fantastic. All those ideas are important, but let’s not check them off as boxes. Let’s explore the generative root ideas and motivations that lead to better teamwork, leadership, and communication.

When we start with kindness, add focus, collaborate, think, and develop relationships based on some of the ideas in my book, we’re certainly going to have our teamwork and engaged teamwork. We’re going to have compassionate and clear-thinking leadership. We’re going to have open communication and that is honest and real. All of a sudden, teamwork, communication, and leadership get way more interesting than just checking off boxes.

Greg, tell us a story. I know you’ve been doing this for a long time, but how did this help a company you were working with? How did this solve a problem?

I was working with a company, let’s just say an internet company on the East Coast, a big internet company. They were having a problem with people thinking in too regimented a fashion. They were having people follow rules, which they wanted. They were having people follow processes, which they wanted, but the net of that was that people were doing exactly those things, checking boxes down the list and there was no interaction. There was no connection. People were just checking boxes.

One thing that I did in the span of a multi-day seminar and multi-day interactive training and workshops and whatnot, along with the keynote, was to have people sit down and try to think of impossible situations for themselves that they couldn’t possibly get out of and couldn’t possibly work their way through. For example, saying to them, what’s something that could happen here at this company that is theoretical, hypothetical, that you cannot imagine happening. I had everyone think of that. Then I said, “Small groups, pick one of those things and figure out a way to make it happen.

Let’s say you have no budget. Let’s say that you have no limitations. Let’s figure out a way to make that happen.” We did it for fun. We did it for the sake of laughter. We did it for the sake of exploring with a revolutionary mindset and finding new possibilities. We did it for the sake of leaping into the dark and facing a situation that was seemingly impossible along the way. We did it for the sake of being kind to one another, actually listening to one another, paying attention, and then having ideas reverberate.

The net, net was that people walked away from that exercise going, “Maybe that is possible.” That thing we thought was impossible. We just brainstormed on it for 45 minutes and all of a sudden we came up with all these potential ideas. People were engaged. They were energized. They thought about possibilities in new ways.

Ultimately, that’s what we’re getting after here is what possibilities, what space do we create for growth when we reclaim the moment and start to build a better now? That’s exactly what happened there. Those people were inspired and engaged by thinking about impossible things in new ways and then interacting with one another with the idea being, how can we make those impossible things possible? Lots of potential came from that.

I could see being totally inspired spending a Saturday with you and being totally inspired and then I open up my computer Monday morning and I’ve got five fires that have to be put out and all this and I go right back to the same old patterns. I have to tell you that focus has been a lifelong challenge for me. I probably should have stayed with that juggling lesson when I was 19 because I am very easily distracted. How do we keep this going in manageable chunks to make this really part of the practice of living?

Monday morning comes around. You come back to your desk, open up the computer, and lose your mind because there’s just too much there. You’re freaking out. You don’t know what to do. You start thinking to yourself, “I can’t deal with all these emails. This is going absolutely nowhere. I have no idea how I’m going to even get through this day, this moment, this hour. How do I respond to this one email without having my calendar open? My calendar program isn’t working. I need to call IT. The IT person is out to lunch right now. I cannot even believe it. Why are they out to lunch? It’s Monday morning at 9:00 AM. It’s too early for lunch.” You start spinning.

You’ve been in my office. You’ve been in my head on a Monday morning, Greg.

You start spinning. Step one is kindness with yourself. Return to that. Reclaim the moment. Rebuild a better now and that allows us to create the future that we want. It doesn’t have to be the future where we retire in 30 years on the French Riviera. The future that we want could be 20 minutes from now. We’re not going to get there unless we reclaim the moment and build a better one now. With that idea, you start with, again, I’m pitching my own ideas, but the idea of being kind to yourself, kind to the situation, keep your eyes on the knife.

What’s the most mission-critical of those five emails? There has to be one. Pick one and go, even if you cannot decide. What I mean is sometimes the mission-critical email is the one that says, “Answer this or you lose your job, answer this or the world falls apart.” Sometimes, you can’t tell; just pick one, pick one, go with it, and then pick the next one after that. As somebody who’s been engaged with creativity, that given a production that somebody puts in front of you and says, we want you to put on this opera, whatever it might be. It’s La Boheme.

They wanted you to do this La Boheme. It has to happen. It has to happen in the next four months. Go. You don’t just put on the opera. That doesn’t happen this afternoon. There are a number of things that have to happen along the way in terms of casting, in terms of who’s the score, in terms of, you get it. We have to do the same sort of triage when we’re overwhelmed Monday morning at 9:00 AM. Monday morning at 9:00 AM, the triage that we do is to think what’s the most mission-critical and keep your eyes on the knife task. If we cannot figure it out, pick one.

Get it done, go on to the next, be regimented in our thinking in that way. Also, at the same time, realize that you can get it done. You can get these things done as long as you engage with laughter, of course, but also with other people. You’re making connections. If you think in terms of the connections, the potential on the other side of leaping into the dark, the darkness being those five emails you cannot possibly respond to. If you allow yourself to have perspective shifts, you’re going to be able to get through those five emails. Those five emails are not the end of your life or the end of your existence.

They’re a hurdle. If you can get over that hurdle and continue down the path by picking one by remembering to be kind to yourself, by thinking with a revolutionary mindset, by leaping into the dark and just going for it, answering that first email and getting it out of the way, you’re going to make it through those emails. There’s no question about it. You’re going to make it through. I think that this is a process. I think that the things that I write about in the book are not like, do these things and you’re good. It’s a process, like learning to juggle, for example.

It’s a process. I think that Monday morning at 9:00 AM, you have to step first into that process and be on the trajectory we talked about earlier. I’m going to make it through these five emails. That’s the knife right now. I’m keeping my eyes on it. I’m getting through these five emails. Once you do, I promise you there’s going to be another hurdle. It doesn’t mean the end of your existence. It just means resetting, reclaiming the moment, and going again.

Which of these is hardest for you?

Maintaining Focus And Avoiding Distraction

It depends on the day. There are some times that, like your perfect example before, engaging with laughter is hard when you feel completely overwhelmed, but it always feels so good once you do, meaning that once you take a step back and breathe a little bit and laugh about how overwhelmed you are, that’s a great feeling. I would say oftentimes for me, keeping my eyes on the knife is the most challenging. What I mean is I want to be talking to you. I want to be planning the next conversation that I have. I want to be thinking about what I’m going to be doing in twenty minutes. It’s like, “No, right now, this is mission critical. This is where I’m at.”

I think that for anyone who deals with distraction, keeping your focus is something that is a challenge. I know it’s a challenge. You’ve mentioned it as well. That’s the one that I’m continually working on, which is keeping my eyes on the knife. What is the knife? What is the most important thing that’s flying in front of me right now? How can I keep my mind, eyes, brain, and intentionality on that thing so that I can accomplish it and engage with it in the most effective way possible? That’s the hardest one, I would say.

It makes me think of a time sitting in a rehearsal hall in Seattle. Actually, you’re in Seattle. One of the things I used to train a lot of assistants, I was got more experience, and the thing that they either had it or they didn’t have was the ability to anticipate. There’s something there. There’s a balance juggling of keeping your eye on the now and then knowing what’s coming. I remember sitting in a rehearsal hall and thinking, she’s going to need the bouquet in a minute, glancing over the bouquet wasn’t there. I was an assistant.

I was like an assistant stage manager, a fourth assistant from the left kind of person. Jumped up, ran over to the prop table, and put to the bouquet where the singer could get to because she didn’t have time. She had to be able to know it was there, pick it up, and still keep singing. The prop person had forgotten to set it out and just put it there and everything went along smoothly. There is a piece of the now where you also have to sort of keep track of where you are in the greater whole, the arc of the project, the greater whole of it. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.

Put it this way. Does doing this podcast mean that you and I, again, retire on the French Riviera? No, it probably does not, but what it is, is part of something greater, which is sharing ideas, making connections, thinking about things, maybe in new ways, and connecting with other people. Hopefully, people will watch and listen to this and get in touch with you and me. Does it create new possibilities that lead to our wallets being packed full of thousand-dollar bills? Maybe. What it probably does, though, is it puts better content, and I don’t mean that in a social media sense, but better content into the world. It fills the world with more. I like that idea, with value.

Delivering value.

Absolutely, with more value, with more things that matter. With that in mind, I think that this is a proverbial drop in the bucket of the universe. I don’t think that historians are already writing about our conversation right now, but I think that we’re contributing to something more, something better, something more valuable and that’s the way that we have to think about that, I think, is our contribution, is it valuable to us? Is it meaningful to us?

If so, do that thing, pursue it, and make that contribution because it’s all part and parcel of something much greater. I mean, the one thing that we have to do each day, each hour, isn’t necessarily the thing we’re going to hang our hat on, but some total, the cumulative effect of all those things actually might be. I think that’s my thoughts.

That’s a great way to end and because I know you’re a pro, do you have a line that you end your speeches with to inspire us?

Final Thoughts And Conclusion

I say, “Thanks for coming. See you later. Bye.” The line that I often use is if you want to build a better future, we have to build a better now. Some version of that, the idea being, let’s make this happen now. Let’s keep our eyes on the knife. Let’s focus now. Let’s think about kindness and having a revolutionary mindset now. Let’s make this relationship and this connection better now because it means that a few moments from now, a year from now, things will be better because the trajectory we want to be on starts now. With that in mind, I say if you want to build a better future, build a better now. People seem to be inspired by those ideas.

 

Greg Bennick, this has been such a pleasure and so much fun. Just one of the conversations that was deeper than I had expected.

I’m so glad I like that.

Me too.

We combine deeper and fun. That’s a great idea.

You weren’t even juggling while we talked. We’ll have to do this in person someday. Thank you so much for having been our guest.

Thank you.

Readers, this has been Speakers Who Get Results. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to the show. Leave us a good review on Apple Podcasts because that’s the one people track and tell your friends. I’ll see you on the next one.

 

Important Links

• Greg Bennick
• Ernest Becker
• The Denial of Death
• Reclaim the Moment: Seven Strategies to Build a Better Now
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/gregbennick/
• Apple Podcasts – Speakers Who Get Results

 

About Greg Bennick

Greg Bennick knows about focus. Though reading about his life, you wouldn’t know that. He has been a keynote speaker for decades, a thought provoker, a professional comedic juggler and a punk rock vocalist (yes you read that correctly), a TEDx Speaker, a humanitarian and philanthropist, and an influencer devoted to transforming the world by inspiring personal and social change.