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Chuck Garcia: Stoicism and The Moment that Defines your Life
2 Plays22 days ago
In this episode, I chat with Chuck Garcia, the founder of Climb Leadership International. Chuck coaches executives of Fortune 500 companies on public speaking and emotional intelligence. He is an Adjunct Professor in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Engineering and teaches in their professional development and leadership program. Chuck is also a passionate mountaineer. He is the author of the book A Climb to the Top: Communication & Leadership Tactics to Take Your Career to New Heights, and more recently, his latest book, The Moment That Defines Your Life: Integrating Emotional Intelligence and Stoicism when your Life, Career, and Family are on the Line.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Donald Robertson
Hello and welcome to Stoicism, Philosophy as a Way of Life. My name is Donald Robertson, and today's guest is Chuck Garcia, the founder of Climb Leadership International. Chuck coaches executives of Fortune 500 companies on public speaking and emotional intelligence. He's an adjunct professor in Columbia University's Graduate School of Engineering, and he teaches in their professional development and leadership program. Chuck is also a passionate mountaineer. He's the author of the book, A Climb to the Top.
00:00:30
Donald Robertson
communication and leadership tactics to take your career to new heights. And more recently, his latest book, the moment that defines your life, integrating emotional intelligence and stoicism when your life, career and family are on the line. Hello, so how are you?
00:00:47
Chuck Garcia
Hello Donald, I'm very well, how are you?
00:00:50
Donald Robertson
I have a very well to. So let's dive right in.
Chuck Garcia's Journey into Stoicism
00:00:55
Donald Robertson
And I thought a good place to ask is the traditional question, how did you become interested in stoicism in the first place?
00:01:04
Chuck Garcia
Well, I can say that it was unexpected. I also want to preface this by saying that my first week in college, I enrolled in a philosophy class. I couldn't stand the professor. He wasn't teaching. He was talking. He intellectualized philosophy, and I thought I never wanted to talk about it again.
00:01:24
Chuck Garcia
And then in the dining hall I bumped into a couple of guys who were taking philosophy and I had not a clue what they were talking about and I felt stupid. So I state that because I was already predisposed that once I got into my adult life that that is all going to be a waste of my time.
00:01:42
Donald Robertson
And.
00:01:42
Chuck Garcia
Now I'll get to why it happened.
00:01:45
Chuck Garcia
I was, for many years, the public spokesman for a very well-known company in the financial industry called Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg was the founder of this company. He is one of the world's richest men and I was very fortunate to be under his tutelage for many years. As a public spokesman, I traveled around the world stepping on stages and conference events all the time.
00:02:09
Chuck Garcia
I was scheduled to speak on September 11th at 9.20 in the morning on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
00:02:18
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:02:19
Chuck Garcia
Two months before this event actually took place, a fellow speaker on that conference program named Scott was scheduled at 3.20. He had a conflict. He got me and the conference producer together, and he asked if it's OK before we lock down the schedule. Chuck, I'm busy at 3.20. Can you take my 3.20 slot? I will take your 9.20 slot.
00:02:47
Chuck Garcia
It just so happened I had gotten a request for another speaking engagement that morning. So to net this out, Scott was scheduled to speak at 9.20. I was scheduled to speak at 3.20. Now if you know historically what happened in the World Trade Center, the plane hit the North Tower at 8.59 that morning.
00:03:07
Chuck Garcia
Scott and 16 of my friends sadly perished. I didn't. That simple twist of fate, Donald, that firm call that came, is why I'm alive today.
Life-Changing Events and Self-Discovery
00:03:22
Chuck Garcia
Because if Scott hadn't had a conflict, I would have been in the building at 9.20, speaking in front of 300 people, and I would have died.
00:03:34
Chuck Garcia
I was unaccounted for and presumed dead for several hours because I was in another location. I had indicated to all my Bloomberg colleagues that I was finishing my day at the World Trade Center.
00:03:48
Chuck Garcia
I did not indicate where my day was starting.
00:03:51
Donald Robertson
Silence.
00:03:51
Chuck Garcia
My colleagues made a mental loop. They knew I was speaking at this event that I must have been dead. Something happens to you, at least it did to me Donald, when I got back to the office and the cell phones were dead so I couldn't call anybody. And I looked at my name on the on accounted for and presumed dead list. And the other three names on that list were in fact in the building and crashed and died and they were 24 years old.
00:04:21
Chuck Garcia
When I asked myself, why was this not my day to die? I did not have an answer. I went on a torrent of self-discovery, which ultimately led me to become a mountaineer. I needed to get the hell away from everything and how could I not answer such a simple question?
00:04:43
Chuck Garcia
So, to net this out, I got into philosophy in this in this journey of self-discovery. I was looking for guidance to answer a simple question that I was incapable of answering until I discovered Marcus Aurelius' is The Meditations that you describe so aptly into how to think like a Roman emperor, and I am a different individual because of that.
00:05:14
Donald Robertson
Well, it's quite a story. ah great it's great Yeah.
00:05:16
Chuck Garcia
I live it every day.
00:05:20
Donald Robertson
It's quite a story, I think. You know, you're absolutely right. the And it's kind of something that people don't really talk about as much as they should, perhaps. The brushes with death and bereavement
00:05:32
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:05:34
Donald Robertson
can really be genuinely life-transforming experiences. And in ancient philosophy, even in some modern philosophies like existentialism, there's quite a lot of emphasis placed on this idea.
00:05:40
Chuck Garcia
know
00:05:46
Donald Robertson
But somehow people don't talk about it as openly as they should. I remember I was giving a talk once and I just suddenly thought in the middle of it, I was kind of vaguely talking about the stoic contemplation of death.
00:05:58
Donald Robertson
And out of nowhere, I thought, hang on a minute, How many of you guys in the room have actually had a brush with death? How many of you have been in a dangerous situation or had a health scare or something like that?
00:06:13
Donald Robertson
And I think about half the time. I asked them. I said, hang on, let's just do it kind a quick show of hands. like umve i've never really I've got no idea what percentage. I think about half the people in the room probably put their hands up.
00:06:22
Chuck Garcia
Hmm? Hmm?
00:06:23
Donald Robertson
you know And they said they'd had some kind of experience. And then I asked them, was it Was it what you thought it was going to be like or was it kind of differently? How did it affect you?
00:06:34
Donald Robertson
And most of them started talking about how it made them reevaluate their priorities.
00:06:39
Chuck Garcia
Indeed.
00:06:40
Donald Robertson
Kind of something is primitive, simple in a way as a brush with our own mortality, I think can actually straight it's strange that that would be the thing that propels us into doing philosophy.
00:06:52
Chuck Garcia
But you came at it from a different lens because I'm holding your book, how to think like a Roman emperor. And you opened the book, you led with the headline. When I was 13 years old, my father died. And you explained, what a great way to open it because you had me at that. I was like, okay.
00:07:11
Chuck Garcia
When you talked about the consequences of your twisting and turt and turning and you said, I played cat and mouse with the police. I got into trouble. It was a bad seed. But it was interesting how that led you to talk about the death of your father and you described your father as a decent man. The Freemason who worked hard, who had grease under his nails and came home every day. He didn't have money, but he helped you to think differently with the Freemason influence.
00:07:41
Chuck Garcia
In my case, Donald, and what you're describing to your audience, there was there was an individual who underwent a brush with potential death. Your journey that you described, it was a result of a death that wasn't yours. It wasn't even a brush with death for you. Your dad died. All dads died. My dad died when I was 24 of cancer.
00:08:06
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:08:06
Chuck Garcia
But that didn't lead me to stoicism. My dad died and I went about my business the next day, sad.
00:08:08
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:08:12
Chuck Garcia
But interesting how you and I and all the people that we talk to, we come at it from a very different context of what death means to us and who's affected that causes us to change.
00:08:26
Chuck Garcia
and I think in your case, the father you loved. In my case, my dad was dead. He never saw what I became. and I'm sad for that.
00:08:33
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:08:34
Chuck Garcia
He would have been very proud. but I think the influence that each of us has when we are removed and are able to see an event that touches us I didn't know how deeply the human mind was capable of journeying, trying to answer what seemingly such simple questions. And philosophy, you state it in your book, The Love of Wisdom. I didn't have wisdom. I had plenty of money. I had a beautiful family, but I was the dumbest guy in the room because I couldn't answer this existential, simple question, why was I born? And so that's, i i I felt driven to figure out how to answer it. And this philosophy of stoicism, my goodness, why did I dismiss it in my earlier days?
00:09:37
Chuck Garcia
Because I was too demoted and didn't have the experience that provoked me to look for the answers.
00:09:44
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:09:44
Chuck Garcia
That's wisdom to me. You and I have been on journeys to find something. My God, that is magical.
00:09:52
Donald Robertson
It's the cornerstone that the builders rejected. There's a stone in the builders rejected that became the cornerstone.
00:09:56
Chuck Garcia
That's right. right
00:09:57
Donald Robertson
think Right, you know, I'll tell you a little anecdote about stoicism. It's not normally part of the undergraduate philosophy curriculum. It's what one of the very few, nope, it never has been like, it's one of the few major schools of philosophy that isn't usually covered in most universities in the undergraduate curriculum.
00:10:06
Chuck Garcia
Really? ah
00:10:09
Chuck Garcia
Wow.
00:10:16
Chuck Garcia
Wow, what a surprise.
00:10:18
Donald Robertson
Yeah, so I studied Plato and Aristotle at university and I loved that.
00:10:22
Chuck Garcia
Right.
00:10:23
Donald Robertson
I enjoyed my philosophy, but I felt
00:10:24
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, it's good.
00:10:26
Donald Robertson
I didn't really answer these kind of questions that you're referring to for me.
00:10:30
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:10:30
Donald Robertson
So I was still looking for something else and I asked some of my friends and colleagues that were academics why academic philosophers aren't more interested in Stoicism or or weren't at that time anyway and they said to me because the Stoics really just take arguments from Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers and think about the practical application of them to daily life.
00:10:57
Donald Robertson
So why would anybody be interested in reading that? They said. And from an academic point of view, I can kind of see their point. Like they're interested in the theory, not the practical application.
Stoicism: Academic vs Practical Applications
00:11:09
Donald Robertson
But I thought, wow, it's the practical application of it daily life that I and most other normal people are particularly interested in.
00:11:09
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:11:19
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:11:20
Chuck Garcia
well While you you made a very insightful comment in the first chapter of your book where you heighten the contrast between the academic approach and the practical approach, and I'll never forget forget how you stated it, and I'm looking at this as a continuum, you referred to in ancient Greece, Rome, wherever that may be, that the philosophers were warriors of the mind, and I love the way you stated that.
00:11:20
Donald Robertson
And it That really struck me as they were, I could see why they were saying that, but at the same time that they were missing perhaps the most important thing.
00:11:52
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:11:54
Chuck Garcia
But you said in the modern world, what are the academics do you call them the librarians they catalog it they put the books up they talk about how intelligent and how learned they are but your point is teaching them to practice it so it actually doesn't bother my mind cuz I teach in university so I'm trying not to offend anybody here.
00:12:12
Chuck Garcia
But your point was so cogent. it It's a philosophy that is sufficiently accessible that gives us a blueprint for how to put it into practice immediately.
00:12:26
Chuck Garcia
The warrior of the mind.
00:12:26
Donald Robertson
and
00:12:28
Chuck Garcia
Donald Stoicism taught me to be a warrior of the mind. My academic that I sat there for that week bored to tears was a librarian who was of very little value to me because he didn't make it.
00:12:42
Chuck Garcia
practical When you and I read write our books and we read our books, we're only rooted on the fact that we're trying to help people. And we're not helping them in theory.
00:12:53
Chuck Garcia
We're helping them to develop the practice and why academics don't focus on the practice woggles my mind.
00:12:53
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:13:00
Chuck Garcia
That's all they should be practicing. but but that When I teach and I teach in a wonderful university, I am 100% rooted on what I can do to help them become more successful because that's what they care about.
00:13:15
Chuck Garcia
And interestingly enough, I use emotional intelligence and stoicism.
00:13:16
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:13:19
Chuck Garcia
They think it's rather indirect until I help them recognize, no, it's not indirect. This is going to help your behavior, which will make you more valuable.
00:13:28
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Well, maybe that leads on to another question I have for you, which is stoicism didn't used to be as popular as it is now. It's kind of gone through a few phases, but growth spots over the past 50 years or so actually, but it really started to grow and grow from about the year 2000 onwards.
00:13:44
Chuck Garcia
you know
00:13:50
Donald Robertson
And it's now, as the young people like to say, it's a thing. Stoicism is a thing.
00:13:54
Chuck Garcia
It is a thing. Good point.
00:13:56
Donald Robertson
hey and like ah It's like almost a whole genre, a sub-genre of self-improvement.
00:13:57
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:14:02
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:14:03
Donald Robertson
And it really wasn't like 20 or 30 years ago. It was like a little academic niche.
00:14:06
Chuck Garcia
like
00:14:08
Donald Robertson
There weren't many popular books on it. And now there there are loads and loads. There's podcasts, there's articles and stuff.
00:14:13
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. yeah
00:14:15
Donald Robertson
But with ah with its growing popularity, which I think is a good thing, there are some ah disadvantages. And one of them is that Sometimes you get, I mean, I know for sure, I've met people who have told me that they've written books about stoicism or designed courses about stoicism.
00:14:37
Donald Robertson
um I've done videos about stoicism and haven't actually read Marcus Aurelius or read any.
00:14:42
Chuck Garcia
No! Oh, that is sacrilegious!
00:14:44
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:14:47
Donald Robertson
How weird is that, right? So surprise, surprise, what happens is that you get some misconceptions like, yeah,
00:14:54
Chuck Garcia
Yeah!
00:14:56
Donald Robertson
So I don't know, what do you feel like? Do you feel that there are, when you first, you'll notice that when you first talk to students about, have you heard of Marxist relations and Stoicism? Do you come across any misconceptions or misunderstandings of about Stoicism?
00:15:09
Chuck Garcia
Oh, all the time. In fact, I think even for myself, when I pictured the stoic before I actually opened my mind to get educated, I think I suffered from the main misconceptions most did. You picture the guy in the rain, it's pouring, he doesn't have an umbrella, and he's just sitting there and his mind is just, oh, it's raining, this sucks. But he's not crying, he's not laughing, he's just indifferent to it all.
00:15:35
Donald Robertson
That sounds just like Scotland. Oh hey, making me homes yet?
00:15:38
Chuck Garcia
Actually, yeah, but you guys had Adam Smith. You had a lot of other people you can talk to. What I'm saying, Donald, is when I went on this torrent of self-discovery and I read the meditations, or actually, not so true.
00:15:52
Chuck Garcia
I first read the, there are many books that interpret the meditations. and And my first foray was, I forget the name of the author, this is an American guy who lived in London.
00:16:04
Chuck Garcia
And I said, oh my God, this is really cool. And and I have it in my library.
00:16:08
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:16:09
Chuck Garcia
I'm not doing justice to his name. but he But he began to catalog and interpret what Marcus Aurelius was telling us.
00:16:14
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:16:17
Chuck Garcia
then I read the meditations, which is harder to get through because it went from Greek to Latin to every other language. But I say that only in that I thought Stoics were unfeeling until Marcus Aurelius was like, oh my God, that's not it at all. Of course they feel the moon blooms. We creatures. We're alive. We breathe. We're not meant to unfeel.
00:16:44
Donald Robertson
And.
00:16:45
Chuck Garcia
But when we talked about the dichotomy of control and how you make up your mind to determine the significance of the event, that's not stoicism with a small s, that's stoicism with the capital S. And I began to see the difference between this philosophy and the discipline practicing of of developing the mindset You approach the event of your dad's death of my simple choice to fight to answer the question, why was it not my day to die? You can't answer them by being indifferent. I don't believe you could.
00:17:29
Chuck Garcia
but to rely on the wisdom and the brilliant way you wrote How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, where we were in the shoes of Marcus Aurelius from the time he was born to the day he died. That was such a brilliant ending, Donald. But when he closed his eyes, and I'm not going to live anymore. And that's okay. I loved your your your opening and closing.
00:17:54
Chuck Garcia
That stoicism to me, it's that approach where Marcus was on the battlefield and he was betrayed.
00:17:55
Donald Robertson
i like
00:18:02
Chuck Garcia
And you said in the book, leave the hatred to the haters. That's not going to be me. And I think that's where I began to see the magic of stoicism in this brilliant man who wrote this book, not, we think, intending for anyone to read it until 1558.
00:18:21
Donald Robertson
Well, I agree.
00:18:23
Chuck Garcia
Someone's getting his hands on it and says, what do we have here? So to me, Donald, and why I'm stating this was such enthusiasm, of course I misunderstood it. I was clueless. In fact, I was the dumbest guy in any room because I didn't know what I was talking about. Now I can say with great enthusiasm and passion, my goodness, how I've missed. Why?
00:18:50
Chuck Garcia
And now I am making it my life's mission to ensure that idiot me when I was 18, that every one of my students I am going to make this, I'm going to bring Marcus to life.
Teaching Stoicism and Managing Behavior Under Pressure
00:19:02
Chuck Garcia
I'm going to take an incredibly practical approach and I'm going to help them in ways they never could have imagined.
00:19:02
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:19:09
Chuck Garcia
And it starts by not intellectualizing stoicism, but helping them understand how it helped me so I can help them.
00:19:18
Donald Robertson
I think the ancient Stoics believed, well we know this because I believe Seneca says this explicitly at one point, that the best way to learn the philosophy in their mind wasn't from reading books or lectures, but from observing somebody who was a real person and was actually putting it into practice.
00:19:34
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:19:35
Donald Robertson
And you know one of the reasons that I chose to focus on Marcus Aurelius is that I would argue with people about whether stoicism meant eliminating all of your emotions and becoming like a rock or a stone, or I'd refer to things that the stoics had said in their text that contradict this. But sometimes when you argue with logic and evidence, you don't necessarily make that much headway. And I found it was easier to persuade people that they were mistaken, and about Stoicism, they thought it was like being unemotional, like a robot or something like that.
00:20:10
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:20:11
Donald Robertson
I found it easier to demonstrate that to them but just by pointing at a famous stoic like Marcus Aurelius and saying, look at Marcus Aurelius and how he lived his life and the type of guy he was, does he seem like, does Marcus Aurelius seem like a robot?
00:20:17
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:20:20
Chuck Garcia
Right. Right.
00:20:25
Chuck Garcia
Oh, anything but.
00:20:25
Donald Robertson
i Yeah, does he seem, you know, to have a heart of stone?
00:20:29
Chuck Garcia
No.
00:20:30
Donald Robertson
Not at all.
00:20:31
Chuck Garcia
No.
00:20:32
Donald Robertson
So that was an easier way to prove to them that they were misunderstanding what the philosophy was about. I found by showing them an example.
00:20:38
Chuck Garcia
Right. Well, I think we in our modern world, we look to leadership by example.
00:20:40
Donald Robertson
and Yeah.
00:20:45
Chuck Garcia
We look to the people, who do we look up to? How do they behave? But also one of the points you made in your book is we look to the people that we admire, but we also have to learn what not to do. What do we not admire?
00:20:55
Chuck Garcia
What are the behaviors that we find abhorrent? And what are the behaviors that we find most attractive?
00:20:58
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:21:01
Chuck Garcia
And as I think about, well, first, ah let let me comment.
00:21:01
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:21:05
Chuck Garcia
I cannot believe that one could write a book, I guess it's true, that one could write a book on stoicism and not either have read or been influenced by the meditations.
00:21:16
Chuck Garcia
It just boggles my mind how they can call themselves, right I don't know, I'm trying not to insult anybody, I just can't fathom it.
00:21:18
Donald Robertson
Oh.
00:21:21
Donald Robertson
Oh, it happens. Yeah. Oh. I think actually part of what's going on, the the culture of it is that a lot of people now, well, you're teaching at university, right?
00:21:34
Donald Robertson
So you maybe you've seen this, people's attention, young, maybe, I don't want to stigmatise the youth, but like, I guess there's a generational, like,
00:21:35
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, Columbia, yeah. No, let's go ahead. He can knock him.
00:21:45
Donald Robertson
Some people's attention spans are becoming kind of short. Do you not meet you not me a lot of young people now that just tell you they haven't got the attention span to read a book?
00:21:48
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:21:54
Chuck Garcia
Well, I know they don't because I teach them, but I'm not going to buy that as an excuse to someone who can say that they know about the philosophy of stoicism.
00:21:54
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:22:01
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:22:01
Chuck Garcia
I don't care how old they are. Let's say they're 22 and they're my undergraduate student. If you came to me and you told me, hey, I'm going to write a book on stoicism, and I ask, oh, great, how does Marcus Aurelius fit in?
00:22:12
Chuck Garcia
And they say to me, who's he? I said, that's not a tension span, Donald.
00:22:15
Donald Robertson
I don't know.
00:22:19
Chuck Garcia
That's ignorance.
00:22:21
Donald Robertson
Well, they think they're getting like their information about it from podcasts and videos.
00:22:25
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:22:26
Donald Robertson
They're getting their kind of like third time the information from it and they think that's sufficient to then write a book or a video or something themselves about it.
00:22:26
Chuck Garcia
And YouTube. Yeah.
00:22:34
Chuck Garcia
Right.
00:22:36
Donald Robertson
they're not They don't think it's necessary to go and now with AI, I think they probably think, well, I could just ask AI.
00:22:41
Chuck Garcia
everything
00:22:44
Donald Robertson
and And then I don't have to read the
00:22:47
Chuck Garcia
Well, I appreciate where you're coming from. i'm I'm going to agree to disagree with you. ah there There's no excuse for a shortcut when you're talking about stoicism. It's like asking, you've been to Japan?
00:23:02
Chuck Garcia
have you tried but up if you go to japan if you go If you go to Japan, you really appreciate what it takes to make a piece of sushi.
00:23:02
Donald Robertson
ah no I haven't actually. No, I haven't been.
00:23:09
Chuck Garcia
They they do it in in with an incredible care and discipline. But I say that because it boggles my mind for someone who says they are a sushi chef and have never experienced a culture of Japan.
00:23:24
Chuck Garcia
I'm not discounting their how well they do it. I'm simply saying, I think there are certain things that we as subject matter experts, I i will set attention span aside, but I will never set aside that we have to first identify that we're not ignorant to a subject before we call ourselves an expert or i guess anybody could offer a book but i'm simply saying when i look at subject matter experts in any field they are drawn from or at least they have been on a journey where they learn from the great people who did something before them in that subject matter and that's the ones i admire.
00:23:51
Donald Robertson
well
00:24:07
Donald Robertson
I think we're actually in agreement there. So I wanted to ask you what do you think, given that there's a kind of watering down sometimes of stoicism of the misconceptions of actually in the ancient world, people had misconceptions about stoicism, not an entirely new phenomenon.
00:24:11
Chuck Garcia
with
00:24:16
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:19
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, i'm sure.
00:24:22
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:22
Donald Robertson
as it Why should anyone care ah about stoicism? Why do you think if this philosophy, not all 2000 year old philosophies are still relevant today, why is this one
00:24:27
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:34
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, yeah.
00:24:36
Donald Robertson
So important. So why do people, why do guys like you suddenly get into socialism today?
00:24:39
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:41
Donald Robertson
What is it that you're getting from it?
00:24:43
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:43
Donald Robertson
That you're not getting from modern self-help necessarily or some of the other sources that we might have access to?
00:24:47
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:24:51
Donald Robertson
What's what's special about socialism? What's important about it?
00:24:53
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. Well, let me preface this by saying, I started my journey through a modern social science called emotional intelligence. And I read a book by Daniel Goldman that we all know and love. And it talked about the social science that was new to me, but it was very intriguing.
00:25:11
Chuck Garcia
And it was reading about emotional intelligence. And when I started to teach it, there was something missing. It's one thing to teach one to become more empathetic, but I don't believe emotional intelligence addressed the practice of our behaviors. And I state this, and now I'll get to why and to answer your question.
00:25:34
Chuck Garcia
I have come to the conclusion throughout 30 years on Wall Street and almost 10 years of teaching brilliant engineers and scientists. While I can say, and this is my conclusion, feel free to debate it, we overestimate the importance of intellect and we underestimate the importance of temperament in our lives and our careers.
00:25:56
Donald Robertson
Pardon.
00:25:56
Chuck Garcia
I have been around brilliant people billionaires on wall street and so many people on wall street come with the finest academic pedigrees they have the highest sat scores they have one hundred joke point point averages and yet i am BAM! It was all the embargo that their behavior. I have seen brilliant people act like complete and total jackasses that believe they got a pass on their obnoxious behavior because of their brilliance.
00:26:31
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:26:31
Chuck Garcia
I got to a point, Donald, in my leadership career at these wonderful companies I represented, Bloomberg and the world's largest investment manager, BlackRock, I would not let someone take that pass when they acted like a jerk. And I think the sad part when I started ah to peel back the layer is why were people behaving that way? They didn't know any different.
00:26:55
Chuck Garcia
And when I came across the philosophy of stoicism, I recognized that so many people that were in my gravity, an event occurred, whether somebody died or their shoelace was loose. Oh my God, this is tragic.
00:27:11
Chuck Garcia
Well, I appreciate that it's your shoelace and I recognize it's important to you, but I'm going to disagree on the tragic, but they couldn't get past it because it happened to me.
00:27:11
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:27:23
Chuck Garcia
Oh my God, my nail broke. This is just disaster. It's the perspective that is lacking in our behaviors, and I'm not going to blame anyone. I'm going to take a shot at the education system for promoting the importance of you get an A in your class. You cram, exam, and you memorize your latest success.
00:27:46
Chuck Garcia
What I love and why I think everybody should study philosophy of stoicism especially, you can't cram, exam, and regurgitate your mood of good behavior when bad things happen. Immediately, you are expected to be spontaneous and extemporaneous in the fact that you're going to behave in a way you can't predict.
00:28:09
Chuck Garcia
I have not. Now, there may be a better way. I haven't found it yet and maybe you you maybe you and I are on the same page. I found what is lacking in education both in the professional side of where I coach and the the college where I teach is helping people to develop a blueprint of behavior, especially when the pressure changes everything.
00:28:31
Chuck Garcia
And I see brilliant people crushed under the weight of pressure and great expectations. They had a plan, they've got the brooms, not bad communicators.
00:28:40
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:28:40
Chuck Garcia
The pressure turns on, they feel the heat, and they completely melt. They didn't have to, but they did not, Donald, have the way that we taught science, technology, engineering, and math.
00:28:52
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:28:52
Chuck Garcia
many people dismiss the stuff we're talking about as irrelevant, to I think it's the complete opposite. I am here for the people who pay me to help them. My job is to help them to become more valuable. I do not need to help their intellectualism or their intellect, but God knows I am of enormous help to them when I teach them the tenets of stoicism and help them to breathe,
00:29:21
Chuck Garcia
count to three to not talk can you imagine that trying to get a wall street to shut up Oh my God, there's a better way. The stop talking, start counting, the concept of the combat breath. Hmm, I can take my time. I don't have to talk. I can just stop talking. Well, what's happening in that time? You're clearing the mind. The educational assistant folds the mind, dialed what you and I are trying to inspire people to do is to clear the mind.
00:29:53
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:29:53
Chuck Garcia
Never did I take a class in college that taught me to clear the mind. They just kept feeling it and the traffic jam confused me.
00:30:01
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:30:01
Chuck Garcia
So that's why I just think there's an entire method that is so valuable that we teach people to clear it. And you often hear people say that had a moment of clarity.
00:30:13
Chuck Garcia
And what happens after moments of clarity?
00:30:14
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:30:16
Chuck Garcia
Big decisions are made from a much better place. Because if our mind is a traffic jam and we stay caught in the adversity, we exercise bad judgment.
00:30:21
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:30:25
Chuck Garcia
So this is about good judgment, bad judgment. Stoic philosophy is a phenomenal tool to help you exercise good judgment.
00:30:32
Donald Robertson
I like that.
00:30:34
Chuck Garcia
I know i hope that that that answers that.
00:30:38
Donald Robertson
I like the cut of your jet. i like I like that way of putting it. I like the the fact that you said pressure changes everything. I think or it's such a simple thing that people underestimate. that Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face by life.
00:30:50
Chuck Garcia
Right. Right. Of course.
00:30:52
Donald Robertson
Everyone, we all think that we're rational and wise and we cannot we can see.
00:30:58
Chuck Garcia
no
00:30:58
Donald Robertson
so we We read our self-help books, but then I see clients in therapy will say the same thing over and over again, which is, you know, they we they do a lot of self-help, they've had a lot of therapy and stuff like that.
00:31:08
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:31:09
Donald Robertson
But then when the pressure mounts, suddenly their brain goes into a different mode of functioning.
00:31:13
Chuck Garcia
No doubt.
00:31:14
Donald Robertson
And all of that wisdom and all of those good intentions somehow disintegrate and they end up doing silly things that they regret afterwards.
00:31:16
Chuck Garcia
It's gone.
00:31:22
Chuck Garcia
But but look ah look at what you and I do in our books. We're redefining what it means to be wise. You said that.
00:31:28
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:31:29
Chuck Garcia
You you talked about philosophy, the level of wisdom. Okay, well what does it mean? I'm not wise because I know more about what happened in the French Revolution than you. In school, I was required to know when Napoleon ate dinner and what day he died because that was on a test.
00:31:44
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:31:46
Chuck Garcia
I don't give a damn when Napoleon died. I just need to know what he did and why it mattered to the world. Yet, you and I, in in in what we try to do, which is why I was so enamored of your books, I also read your Socrates book, because your your your Roman Empire book, Socrates was the path, it was the runway to two questions.
00:32:00
Donald Robertson
hu
00:32:08
Chuck Garcia
Where do I go in this Athens place or this place to buy goods? Where do I go to learn to be a good man? And somebody didn't have an answer. I love that how you did that in your book, Donald. And I thought that was such an explosive moment. Where do I learn to be a good man? You mean there's no store for that? No, there's no, well sure, Zemo, Zemo, or yeah maybe there's these guys hanging out on the Agora or in in the stellar porch.
00:32:36
Chuck Garcia
And I think that's what you and I can do to help people recognize that your behavior matters. And if school isn't teaching you how to modify or at least how to mitigate bad behavior, I just think stoicism for people that practice it because I'm on my own guinea pig.
00:32:54
Chuck Garcia
My God, what a difference it made in how I behave and how I react.
00:32:54
Donald Robertson
Uh-huh.
00:32:59
Donald Robertson
Now Chuck, you've mentioned my book quite a few times, right?
00:33:01
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:33:01
Donald Robertson
I think it's about time that we talked a little bit more about your book.
00:33:05
Chuck Garcia
I appreciate that.
00:33:05
Donald Robertson
So the one that you wrote more recently, The Moment That Defines Your Life, which has mentioned stoicism and emotional intelligence has been vital.
00:33:09
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's it's done as soon as it's all over it. Yeah.
Integrating Stoicism in Life and Work
00:33:16
Donald Robertson
hu So tell us a bit more about the book and how does stoicism fit into how would you explain to listeners what that book is about.
00:33:16
Chuck Garcia
It's all done. Yeah.
00:33:20
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:33:24
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. let Let me, to our listeners, let me put it into a context because there is a sequence that occurred. My first book is called A Climb to the Top. I am a mountaineer. I became one when I discovered the philosophy of stoicism. I've climbed mountains all over the world.
00:33:41
Chuck Garcia
And I did that because I needed to get on a journey of self-discovery, didn't know exactly how, and it appealed to me. And I had read before the 9-11 incident that I described two books that were quite important. One of them was Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and it was just a phenomenal read, and and it was stoic in its way. it It didn't say it, but there was a lot of stoicism in what happened in Auschwitz to the survivors. And I read a book called Indith and Air by John Krakauer, which described a disaster on Mount Everest.
00:34:11
Chuck Garcia
So, I state that because my first book, A Climb to the Top, is uses mountaineering as a metaphor for how to climb careers but using the communication skills that I developed over my many years as a public spokesman for these Wall Street companies. It was through my discovery, Donald, that eight years had passed since I published that.
00:34:31
Chuck Garcia
I felt this journey of stoicism changed me significantly. It changed the way I looked at the world. It changed how I taught emotional intelligence, where I began to blend in the way you blended stoicism with CBT.
00:34:46
Donald Robertson
No.
00:34:48
Chuck Garcia
My parallel is I blended stoicism with emotional intelligence because I coach and teach EQ, but the more I get into philosophy, the more I found room to find
00:34:51
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:35:00
Chuck Garcia
the integration of the two. So I wrote The Moment That Defines Your Life to be the emotional companion of my first book. My first book was tactical. It was teaching people to communicate. My second book is emotional. I went from the mind to the heart.
00:35:20
Chuck Garcia
And in the emotion of wanting to describe, because I was so excited to bring to the world after eight years of teaching it, how can I write a book to help my followers understand the blueprint of stoicism?
00:35:36
Chuck Garcia
I needed to lead with emotional intelligence, but as I began to write the book, it became very clear. This is not a book on EQ, although it's certainly in in it. This is a book about my journey into stoicism, and I describe it right from the get-go, right from the moment I talk about what happened to me on 9-11.
00:35:58
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:35:59
Chuck Garcia
And Donald, I had to think about just the way your approach is. I've read two of your books. The two I've read are very different books. And and i I want to say, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor was so damn brilliant in its capacity to be able to put us into the shoes of Marcus Aurelius. You told the story of an individual, and I followed it with great care and precision.
00:36:21
Chuck Garcia
When I wrote The Moment That Defines Your Life, I wanted to include narratives, not just mine. I didn't want this to be about me, but I featured it eight other individuals who also went through a journey that was rooted in adversity. In some cases, a couple attempted suicides. In some cases, it was a death of a loved one. But in most of in most cases, it was a rape from sexual abuse from the time someone was nine years old.
00:36:51
Chuck Garcia
So, all so many people in my gravity, when I told them I'm thinking about writing a book and here's my approach, everyone who I asked to be a part of it, would you give me the honor of telling your story? And as I told their story arc, it is the philosophical context of stoicism of how they work through the adversity.
00:37:12
Chuck Garcia
So that's when I move on to something. I need to get this down. And the moment that defines your life, if you think about the the power of that title, both for me, for myself, two moments to find my life. One was, one led me to the mountains and one was on a mountain.
00:37:31
Chuck Garcia
and the other people who I wrote about in the book, they too had a defining moment, and I tie that defining moment of working through the adversity of that moment by by relying on the foundation of stoicism.
00:37:48
Donald Robertson
That may sound like an odd question, Chuck, but I just kind of wondered, what do you do you think there's any kind of connections for you personally between stoic philosophy and mountaineering?
00:37:59
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, yes. In fact, the last chapter I am actually doing a TED talk this year in Luxembourg on this, I finished the book, my last chapter of the moment that defines your life describes what happened to me at 17,000 feet on a mountain in the Caucasus Mountains called Mount Elbrus.
00:38:16
Donald Robertson
Uh, huh.
00:38:20
Chuck Garcia
It took about 11 days to get to the summit, we get to the summit, how far of hugs all good 18,500 feet above sea level. where we start to descend at 17,000 feet. We had unclipped from our harnesses because we were independent at that point taking a break. I took a step. My crampon stepped on an exposed piece of granite. I slipped and fell over the mountainside and started tumbling down the mountain really fast.
00:38:50
Chuck Garcia
I finally figured out as I was sliding down the mountain, I was either going to die or not. I didn't know. I took my ice axe and my crampons. I figured I was going down the mountain face down. I turned around and you're trained for that in mountaineering. You're trained for self-arrest. It's just, it's a part of the mindset. So immediately I understood what was going on. I smashed my ice axe and crampons into the side of Mount Elbrus and here I was hanging on for dear life.
00:39:17
Chuck Garcia
What do you think happened in those three minutes before someone came to my rescue? If I had let go, I would have been dead. I would have fallen 16,000 feet to my death. Here's the tie to stoicism. What did I do? I didn't sit there fretting about, oh my God, I'm going to die. To the contrary. It's like, all right, here I am. What's my next move? What's my next second? What's the second after that? And all of a sudden, I'm hanging onto this mountain. It was stoicism that got me through that panic. I didn't panic.
00:39:46
Chuck Garcia
In fact, I thought about Marcus Aurelius. If he fell off this mountain, what would he do? He'd be hanging out, telling jokes. That's what I did. And and the song, the Eminem song, Loser Self, came into my head during that time.
00:39:55
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:39:58
Chuck Garcia
I had to put my mind in another place. So I'm sitting there hanging on 17,000 feet above sea level, wondering, is anyone going to come to my rescue? I didn't even know if my guides knew I even fell off the mountain.
00:40:10
Chuck Garcia
I screamed, falling, but I didn't know whether they knew.
00:40:10
Donald Robertson
and
00:40:13
Chuck Garcia
So Donald was It was stoicism i'm so grateful for that what do you do when you're hanging off a mountain about to die well a couple years later i had to ask a question. I'm not eleven ones and not my day to die. This is the second time in my life i asked when is it not my day to die i should be dead on that obris.
00:40:35
Chuck Garcia
And here I was, clearly in my mind. I didn't panic. I was totally calm. Everyone else would have said, oh my God, you you would it you must have been freaked out. Those who know me knew I. Chuck, you got this. But if you didn't know me, if you didn't know my practice and the way I am, oh my God, that's terrifying. No, it was. But thank you, Marcus Aurelius. I love him. I just want to hug the dude because when I read your book and I read the meditations,
00:41:04
Chuck Garcia
this is the luder of the modern world and look at how much't behave why are we surrounded by so many assholes
00:41:08
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:41:12
Chuck Garcia
but i'm not going to be one of them and i'm going to help people not to be one and that's hard to do
00:41:18
Donald Robertson
Well, that's as they segue into my next question, Chuck, which is how do you think stoicism is relevant to executive coaching?
00:41:27
Chuck Garcia
yeah
00:41:28
Donald Robertson
So when you're out there helping people, how does stoicism figure in that?
00:41:30
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. you We are right back to something we discussed a couple of minutes ago about pressure. The people that I coach, I coach in a lot of very big companies with people under the weight of pressure and expectations. They are brilliant, no question. And as Daniel Goldman says, CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise, pause for dramatic effect, and fired for their lack of emotional intelligence.
00:42:00
Chuck Garcia
When they get fired, they don't get fired because they're bad business people. They get fired because their behavior is no longer tolerable in this modern world. so Where I get hired, Donald, I train. I'm frank right now, perfect example, chief data scientist for a very large money manager. This guy is brilliant, and he'll tell you that.
00:42:19
Chuck Garcia
But wow, his behavior is questionable. When something happens and he gets just a little bit of pressure turned up on that oven, all of a sudden he starts snapping at people. 20 years ago, 30 years ago on Wall Street, you could do that. Those days are gone. You just can't do that. Someone's going to rip out a phone and put you on Twitter on X and in five seconds. So how does it tie into executive coaching? It's everything I talked about. It's the missing element in their education.
00:42:45
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, they're brilliant. They can calculate the square root of a number faster than any of us. But what happens under the pressure? They behave like jerks. Those CEOs have told me, Chuck, I am so afraid of reputational damage from this brilliant executive. Help me to mitigate the reputational damage due to their behavior.
00:43:06
Chuck Garcia
That is the essence of what I do because these brilliant guys under the pressure are behaving badly. What I do, Donald, I actually spend half my time teaching executives to do something. That's a climb to the top, how to how to give a speech.
00:43:21
Chuck Garcia
And I spend half my time helping executives not do something. And that's not to behave in a way that insults or off-puts people and how to be a good leader with candor, but to treat people you would ordinarily yell out with respect and how to command credibility, trust, and respect by being Marcus Aurelius. That's what he did when he was betrayed. That's what my clients learned to do.
00:43:50
Chuck Garcia
And I cannot emphasize how important stoicism and EQ is to this.
00:43:56
Donald Robertson
Marcus Aurelius led by example.
00:43:58
Chuck Garcia
No doubt.
00:44:00
Donald Robertson
I think that's one of the key things that characterizes him, which is unusual for a Roman emperor.
00:44:02
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:44:06
Chuck Garcia
twelve um and emperor and so Yeah, the five good ones, he was the best. But I think we learn from that because when we look at Leaders Donald, when I make a leadership assessment, when I'm hired, I do what's called a 360-degree review. I talk to about 10 different people in the purview and the gravity of the executive. ah How does he behave? And you get a whole lot of candor. But what I'm saying is those two styles that I see.
00:44:30
Chuck Garcia
And and'll um I'll put my hands up. If you're listening, you don't have a visual on a continuum. You have the leaders who command and control. Think of the Army Navy, you're giving orders. On the other side of that spectrum, you have collaborate and connect. That's very googly. That's very high tech. Feel a lot of love. Everybody respects each other. It's all good. and' I'm not making fun of it. I'm simply saying it's a very different approach.
00:44:51
Chuck Garcia
What I try to do is find out where the executive that I coach is on that continuum. And if he or she is very commanding, we want to keep the commanding, but we want to take out the controlling. We want them to feel and find somewhere in the middle where they are viewed as being both commanding and collaborative and connective.
00:45:09
Chuck Garcia
If you can find that kind of leader, that's Marcus Aurelius to me. He was commanding everybody, respected him. But he was collaborative. He wasn't afraid to ask the opinion. And he wasn't not, he even said and in when Egypt, the guys in Egypt, the guy betrayed him.
00:45:26
Chuck Garcia
He didn't chop, well, someone else chopped his head off, but Marcus Aurelius didn't, he could have killed a whole lot of people on that path. didn't well more He He was selective about it. Any other looner would have just killed them all.
00:45:38
Chuck Garcia
Eh, just got them all, kill them all. He didn't. What a great leadership ex example. How commanding he was to make a decision that was contrary to expectations. That's what I do in coaching Donald.
00:45:51
Donald Robertson
Well, I've got another strange question for you, Chuck, which is, I suppose you're climbing a mountain like you do, right?
00:45:54
Chuck Garcia
Of course.
00:46:00
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:46:02
Donald Robertson
Do you think that anger is helpful or unhelpful during mountaineering?
00:46:08
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:46:08
Donald Robertson
like Are there any situations in mountaineering where anger could actually be constructive or helpful?
00:46:13
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. Well, let me first state when it comes to anger, anger is an honest emotion and there's nothing wrong with that. I think everyone should be able to express that they are angry. It's not the angry that leads us to bad judgment. It's the Marcus Aurelius. It's how we react.
00:46:31
Chuck Garcia
To choose, do we take anger? So think about the difference between, hey, I'm angry, okay, well, I've been angry, I'm angry, my wife, my two kids, we've all been angry at each other. But that doesn't give me license to treat them like they're dirt. And I think in mountaineering, I have been through two through two different incidents. One I described earlier, another I fell through a crevasse in Ecuador, it's 16,000 feet up, down I go, I'm hanging for dear life, but it was all good.
00:47:00
Chuck Garcia
Anger is a very good thing because the philosophers, particularly the Stoics, taught us how to channel the anger to resolution rather than channeling the anger to create more or to format more anger.
00:47:17
Chuck Garcia
What usually happens in anger is anger is something that goes outward. People pick up on your anger and now you're both angry.
00:47:25
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:47:27
Chuck Garcia
Well, what if we had a model where I'm angry about something because somebody betrayed me, but Marcus Aurelius was at a decision point. I kill my suitor. like now And what Marcus Aurelius said, I'm going to leave the hate with the hating, with the hate haters. but Let them do the angry ones. And I think we use anger as an honest emotion to take our time and on mountaineering When we are in a jam, we rely on the combat breath. So if you got a man in combat and he's all he's losing all his wits about him, he stands and he takes a breath because he's got a rifle and somebody's shooting at him. He's no good unless he can compose and clear the mind. That Donald is when you're angry on mountaineering, you're burning a lot of energy, but you don't want it to be needless. If you know how to channel the anger, you've now made that anger productive.
00:48:24
Donald Robertson
So. I think the last question I wanted to ask you, and it's maybe a good place to to leave things, is what do you think, if somebody say somebody's listening to you, track in they or they they've read your book or they they've heard you speaking
Stoicism in Leadership Development
00:48:39
Chuck Garcia
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:40
Donald Robertson
and they and they think maybe i maybe stoicism is is worth looking into you know a little bit further.
00:48:48
Donald Robertson
What do you think is the best way for people to kind of begin learning about stoicism um and start that journey and begin applying it to their lives?
00:48:51
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:48:59
Chuck Garcia
I'm going to take at the risk of sounding like I'm sixty almost 65, but I i teach 28-year-olds. and so We opened up this program with, what about these short attention spans?
00:49:14
Chuck Garcia
okay Why aren't people reading anymore? All right. youre Well, that's true.
00:49:16
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:49:17
Chuck Garcia
Some are not. There are plenty of people that are. I know you collaborate with Ryan Holiday and he's he has YouTube and and it's very effective. So I would say I'm a reader.
00:49:27
Chuck Garcia
I don't go to YouTube. I know it's there. I just don't want to sit there doing that all the time because I love the joy of reading and I learn much more when I read something over and over again.
00:49:38
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:49:38
Chuck Garcia
And I've read your your how to think like Roman emperor twice. And and and the second time around was even more fulfilling because i I caught things I didn't catch on the first one. So my recommendation to people, I think everybody, I'm not suggesting you have to go out and read meditations.
00:49:54
Chuck Garcia
It can be difficult to get through, but I think the best starting point to really have a fulfilling way, go find all of those people that interpreted meditations and try before you'd start diving deep into the mind and psyche of Marcus Aurelius.
00:49:58
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:50:08
Chuck Garcia
Listen to what or when you're reading. Just get a cup of coffee, drown out all the noise and distractions. Think about what is being communicated in the way that we behave.
00:50:20
Chuck Garcia
And I think for purposes of career growth, think about how you show up. What stoicism does, it helps us to gain a clarity of how we show up and how we communicate.
00:50:31
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:50:32
Chuck Garcia
So if you're a reader, I'm going to recommend three books. the The meditations, I'm going to state, but I'm going to put that in the context of meditations or the people that help you understand meditations. Either way, that's good, because i've I've done both. The second thing I would do is your book, How to Think Like a Woman Emperor, because if you're brought into Marcus Aurelius, what you do that is so unique is you bring this into the life and death and everything in between of how he became what he was. And I love that. I loved your approach.
00:51:05
Chuck Garcia
I would say the third book is the wild card. Certainly, I'm not here to plug my book necessarily because my book does does a lot on stoicism, but it takes it takes a more personal, modern narrative of people's journeys. But I would say if you read the first two books that are meditations in your book,
00:51:27
Chuck Garcia
By the time they get to your book, if they're not brought in, to oh if nothing else, to the curiosity of, where else? What else is on this river? What what else is around that corner? If you're using the mountain metaphor, wow, how high can I climb?
00:51:41
Chuck Garcia
because when you're reading good books on stoicism i gotta say i've read a couple bad ones they were just oh my god they were i i don't know what they were saying they were just spinning round and round summarizing everybody else not an original thought in it i hated those books they wasted my time with the really
00:52:00
Donald Robertson
and yeah Get ready for all the AI-generated books on stoicism coming your way by the way.
00:52:04
Chuck Garcia
overall right
00:52:05
Donald Robertson
right
00:52:06
Chuck Garcia
I don't know, but I just think we don't look at stoicism as something that is a math formula and pat ourselves in the back when we're capable of solving for X. That's not what this is. But to many of my students, that's how their education is. If I solve X, I got it right. You got it wrong. I must be smarter than you.
00:52:29
Chuck Garcia
I encourage people to think differently about the journey and to put yourself into the mind of the stoic because our behavior matters.
00:52:33
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:52:40
Chuck Garcia
It matters a lot how we show up, how we treat our spouses, what we say to our colleagues in the morning. This is something, Donald, I teach called executive presence.
00:52:51
Chuck Garcia
I teach people how to walk into a room, believe it or not, as crazy as it sounds. Part of it is recognizing before you go into the room of the pressure cooker where there's 10 people who are trying to eat you up.
00:53:04
Donald Robertson
Mm hmm.
00:53:04
Chuck Garcia
You clear the mind and recognize, what am I walking into? This is Marcus Aurelius, the warfighter. I am walking into that battle where you read and And any good book on warfare, they're talking about the best warriors of ones that clear the mind. They're not the ones that are angry. They're the ones that are calm and cool under the weight of fire, the grace under fire. So I just think that to those who are interested, pick up the interpretation of meditations. If you are not a reader, it's a piece of cake. You go to your site, you can go to Robin's site. there's There's no lack of videos and podcasts talking about it, but it's going to feel like an ocean. I think that's overwhelming. I say pick a spot. Pick the interpretation of the meditations, and if it if it speaks to you, keep going. and and well yeah my My guess is you'll never stop. I think you and I will never stop. That's just who we are.
00:53:59
Donald Robertson
Oh, yeah, it's a well, there are 10 students.
00:54:03
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, pick one up, stop, pick up another one.
00:54:06
Donald Robertson
Well,
00:54:08
Chuck Garcia
It's going to be different. and Pick up a another one. I've read a dozen of them now. I've gone deep in this and I'm really glad I did because ive I keep learning it.
00:54:18
Donald Robertson
but I recommend that they go out and check out your book.
00:54:20
Chuck Garcia
I appreciate that the moment that defines your life.
00:54:20
Donald Robertson
you're single
00:54:22
Chuck Garcia
yeah I'm very proud of it. It's done exceedingly well. i'm i'm i'm You can see the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and how grateful I am for that. There's so many people, and I don't know who they are.
00:54:33
Chuck Garcia
They came and said, thank you, Chuck. You gave us a blueprint. You helped me. you I think the best thing that I saw in the reviews, you provoked a change and in recognition that the stuff you're talking about does matter.
00:54:45
Chuck Garcia
I just never knew how to do this. No one ever taught them this
00:54:53
Donald Robertson
Well, I'm digressing a little bit, but you made me think of something that I think is worth mentioning. There is a large market for people that are interested in self-help books and philosophy books and stuff like that.
00:55:09
Donald Robertson
But I think often when we talk about stoicism, it reaches a demographic of people that maybe haven't read any books on philosophy before. So it's probably some of the people that are reading your books, maybe they're interested in executive coaching, maybe they're interested in emotional therapy, maybe they're interested in mountaineering even.
00:55:23
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:55:25
Chuck Garcia
Yeah.
00:55:26
Donald Robertson
i But a lot of a lot of your readers are probably going to be people that have never read the stoics before and didn't know anything about it.
00:55:32
Chuck Garcia
Oh, in fact I...
00:55:34
Donald Robertson
And then you've You've curated it for them in a way, and you're acting as they're introducing you their introduction to stuff. So I find that quite exciting.
00:55:44
Chuck Garcia
Oh, agree, Donald. i have I have been on stages all over the world. Millions of people have seen me. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm simply saying and they associate me to someone who gets on a stage and knows what he's doing. That's just, I know how to work a crowd. I'm not an entertainer. I'm a teacher. That's what I become.
00:56:03
Chuck Garcia
So people associate me when I get in the classroom in a Columbia, I love my Columbia experience. My students walk out, God, this guy taught me something. It was practical. It was accessible.
00:56:14
Chuck Garcia
He gave me a call to action and he encouraged me, inspired me to do something I wouldn't have done.
00:56:17
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:56:19
Chuck Garcia
But I state that because I think you and I have a calling here where where our capacity to help people realize something that nobody ever told them was important.
00:56:32
Chuck Garcia
The skeptic immediately dismisses it, but people see me through the lens of leadership communication.
00:56:39
Donald Robertson
Okay.
00:56:40
Chuck Garcia
That was my career on Wall Street. That was all of the stepping on stages. So I don't come at stoicism the way you did. You come at it from, you discuss the cognitive behavioral therapy, and I really appreciated that approach.
00:56:54
Chuck Garcia
i have no right I know what it is. I can't speak of this thing that you practice. ah I'm not trained in it. I'm trained in something else. I'm trained in the art and science of leadership, but I don't claim to be able to teach every leader everything.
00:57:09
Chuck Garcia
I can teach them two things, how to communicate and how to be more emotionally intelligent stoic, I'm going to combine them together. So I think in my case, I'm not viewed as the subject matter expert on stoicism, i and I shouldn't be. You should be. But the way what I brought to people was the unexpected. All these other leaders talk about, be all you can be, blah, blah, blah, all the platitudes. I don't. I said it's a lot more work than that.
00:57:39
Chuck Garcia
You got to read this stuff to become focus on becoming something. Whatever that is, it's not going to happen by accident. Stoicism, for me, the people that have read my books, I'm helping them to focus on becoming something, something unique, somebody valuable, but it won't happen by Intellect alone i'm encouraging them to bring white green development with them because the educational system focuses almost solely on left brain i will throw in an ethics course every day nobody pays attention to it.
00:58:19
Chuck Garcia
What you and I do is we take right brain development, communication, empathy, collaboration, those things that didn't appear on a resume but are incredibly important in the working world. And and that is exciting to me because I can help them take a different approach to their development.
00:58:36
Donald Robertson
Fantastic.
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:58:37
Donald Robertson
Well, I think that's been another great discussion. I've really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for joining me, Chuck.
00:58:40
Chuck Garcia
Tim, it was an honor, Donald. Thank you. And I have to say to to to your listeners, ah you you have written you've written several books, but how to think like a Roman emperor is among the best I've ever read. And now when people ask me for my reading list, your book is prominently displayed. It is that good. So thank you. It is an honor to meet you. I am so grateful to have collaborated with you.
00:59:05
Chuck Garcia
I felt like I knew you a little bit from your book, but now to see you and and and in the flash to you and I to be able to discuss this wonderful topic, um I am incredibly grateful.
00:59:14
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:59:15
Chuck Garcia
Thank you, Donald.
00:59:16
Donald Robertson
Well, likewise, it's been a pleasure. So we hope that you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did.
00:59:21
Chuck Garcia
Oh, I've been telling my wife, my friends, I've been singing the book to to everybody.
00:59:21
Donald Robertson
and lesson
00:59:28
Chuck Garcia
But when I told them, um you're kind of and and I have to say, let me give a shout out to my friend, she gave me a book for Christmas and it's because i I talk about all this stuff all the time.
00:59:34
Donald Robertson
oh
00:59:36
Chuck Garcia
And I didn't know it was coming. And I said, oh, Donna Roberts' book. Oh, but this is my first book of yours. And then I read Socrates. But I said, and because she knows how passionate I am about it. I don't think she expected my reaction.
00:59:48
Chuck Garcia
but i told her I'm going to be on your shows. Oh, my God, that makes perfect sense. That is so cool. So it's it's it's just a wonderful for us to be able to talk about the subject matter that we care so deeply about and remind ourselves to be humble and kind.
01:00:01
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
01:00:03
Chuck Garcia
We are here to help other people. That's what this is.
01:00:07
Donald Robertson
And talk about our hobby.
01:00:09
Chuck Garcia
yeah in mountain nearing Yeah, what the heck?
01:00:09
Donald Robertson
Passion. and
01:00:11
Chuck Garcia
Yeah, it is me.
01:00:11
Donald Robertson
fast and
01:00:13
Chuck Garcia
It's not just a passion, it's a hobby. It's who I am.
01:00:16
Donald Robertson
yeah Yeah. Well, thanks everyone for listening. I guess it's goodbye from me, Donald Robertson, and from my guest, Chuck.
01:00:20
Chuck Garcia
Thank you.
01:00:24
Chuck Garcia
Thank you, Donald. and i Thank you to the listeners.
01:00:26
Donald Robertson
Thanks.
01:00:26
Chuck Garcia
We appreciate your time.
01:00:28
Donald Robertson
Thanks. Bye, everyone.