The Chris Cuomo Project - Walk and Talk: Being Present

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

In a candid and honest Walk and Talk, Chris Cuomo shares the importance of staying present throughout your life. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I learned something over the last year or so. Much of my life had been about how to confront situations. Forget about TV. That's easy and obvious. But in my personal life, it had been how do I deal with being judged well for the wrong reasons, wrongly for the wrong reasons, confronted, expected to debate, expected to fight, expected to stand up for my father, my family, my brother, myself. And in all of those pursuits, I always understood that aggression had to be met with aggression, not necessarily violence. I've always been just barely smart enough to understand the surrender of true strength. But sometimes, you know, I'd be attacked. So it was different.

But obviously relatable. You really shouldn't want to fight unless you have to in any regard. And yet I did. And yet I have. And yet I did. And yet I have. And yet I would. And there was a fundamental misunderstanding on my part of what strength is. Now, obviously, your mind could very quickly leap to the power of nonviolence, Dr. King. But I'm not even discussing anything nearly that heroic, that brave.

Okay. What I'm saying is we think that strength is in doing. And sometimes it is. Sometimes it is. You do the hard things first. You get up. You take care of your responsibilities. You do the work you need to do.

You do the chores you need to do. You take care of yourself the way you need to do, even if you don't want to. That's doing. Right, right. But very often in times of crisis and conflict, we think about what we have to do when really the strongest choices, the most difficult resolve is not the choice of what to do, but what not to do. And I'm not talking about the simple suggestion of walking away from a fight. By the way, assuming you can, that's almost always the right choice as someone who is now a fairly developed self-defense practitioner. Leave. He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. And if you don't have to fight at all, even better. That means argument and that means anything uglier. But think about it. If you consider yourself a strong person, do you have the strength to walk away?

Do you have the strength to not do? Do you have the strength to not respond? Now, let me make this easier. I don't. I struggle with this mightily so much so that I can feel it. so much so that I can feel it. I can feel that I'm actively not responding to this person, that I'm actively for anything from an intimate, a kid, you know, great friend, or just somebody on social media. You know, when you walk, it really teaches you to drive more slowly.

Anyway, I feel myself fighting. That I want to respond. I want to respond. I can't let them get away with this. This is wrong. They're wrong about this. They're lying. This is unfair. This is mean. Whatever it is that that's the strength that's the strong move is to respond i feel myself fighting to want to say something but that is almost always

the lesser of the two moves not Not that it's a weak move, not that the strength is the forbearance, but forbearance is often the better judgment, but much more difficult. So I had to learn in this most recent period of my life that my real challenge in the situation was not what to do. It was what not to do.

How not to act, what not to say, what not to respond to, what not to feel. Very hard. Would have been so much easier and so much more within my personal reach to have been much more combative with what was coming at me. But I was lucky. I had good people around me giving good guidance. And I was smart enough to rely on them and rely on the obvious intelligence of forbearance and the power of inaction. And that made a big difference. Well, how do you know if you only chose to do it that way and not the other way? Because I'm in a better place as a result. So no matter what the alternative might

have been, I'm where I needed to be. The question is, how often can I do that? Not often. I really struggle with this. Many of you are probably much better at it and your lives probably reflect that. And what's interesting is that one place I've always done this well, almost always, right? Nothing is always, is on television. On television, I am not highly reactive. I am listening. You know, the key to being a good interviewer is listening. Preparation, yes.

Preparation, yes. Preparation, yes. Preparation, yes. But then listening. Big mistake that you'll see in interviewers is that they're ready with their next question before the last one is answered. And that's not how you get the best stuff. It's not how you're the most incisive or most effective. And it's always been something I'm able to do. Not so much outside of that context.

I guess I don't feel the same sense of duty to myself and other situations that I do to the one when I'm on camera. Weird. But true nonetheless. So what does that mean? The ability to not do. The ability to hold. The ability to not do. The ability to hold. The ability to continue to think.

Patience. Patience is virtue. Patience is power. Forbearance is power. Consideration is power. Time can be a tool, not just a temptation, meaning I have to do this now, I got to do this fast, I got to act, I got to act. That is often not the case. And the more that you think about it, the more clear the distinction between when you have to, house is on fire, okay, it's an emergency.

But we often make things an emergency when it is not an emergency, when they are not emergencies. And that is a real struggle that plays to your sense of self, self-care, insecurity, To your sense of self. Self-care. Insecurity. Or worse. Sometimes. There's an emotional.

Inability. That speaks to something that you've got to deal with. Clinically. Actively. But the idea that strength. Is doing. Is very incomplete as an understanding. I learned, and I believe that there's a common curiosity about this, that is there a better way to do and be what I want to do and how I want to be. And that so much of it was about not doing,

you know, Ryan holiday. I'm a big fan, but he seizes on this concept. You wrote a whole book about it called stillness is the key. Stillness is the key. And, you know, you can look up the book if you want to,

but the basic idea is what I'm discussing right now is that we have to see the strength in what he identifies as stillness. And that doesn't mean inaction. That doesn't mean mean inaction. That doesn't mean passivity. No, it means planning. It means double checking. It means doing what's hard, not what's easy. That's the truth of it. And once you lean into that, you'll start to see examples of it all over the place in history, in modern events, in how we struggle in current times. For instance, social media, social media can be beautiful things. It allows us to share things like this. People are doing great things. They're raising money. They're raising awareness. They're reaching out. They're creating community. they're reaching out, they're creating community but when it comes to our politics it's really weaponized and toxified

obviously so and one of the big problems is the problem of more you have so much coming at you that it's very hard to pay attention you're inundated with information so it's very difficult to develop an understanding and that's how so many people fall

into this faulty zone of thinking they know based on how they feel, because of what they're being deluged with, because of where they frequent and who they listen to. It's too much. Where less is actually more, because you have to process. You have to think. You have to take time. You have to listen. This is very hard, very hard for me. 52 years old, very hard. Big reason I walk.

Take the time to think. Don't let a thought get away from me. Stay with it. Stay with it. Even after I think I know what I want to do or I know what I think it means, stay with it. It's not easy. It's much easier to make a rash judgment. It's much easier to walk away. It's much easier. And when I say walk away, I mean not deal with a situation, not what I was talking about earlier. And there's a real power in that. And again, I'm telling you this because I struggle with it, not because I'm a master of it. And that's important too. You know, this is not something that I'm telling you to bank on because Something that I'm telling you to bank on because there is some type of achievement tied to it for me. It's actually the struggle. But I know that it's true.

I know that that first instinct, you know, going with your gut can be very powerful. But remember why. Going with your gut can be powerful because that sense of intuition is the accumulation of a lot of experience. It's actually the accumulation of processing, layers. See what I'm saying? So even though we see it as an immediate thing, it actually is a function of something that is not immediate. And we run from that because it's hard. And we mistake instant spontaneity, you know, the spontaneity of aggression or of action. As that's what a leader does. Leader goes first.

A leader figures out where to go. That's what a leader does. Leader goes first. A leader figures out where to go. That's what a leader does. And that can take time and it should take time. And if you don't have a lot of time, you should make use of the time that you do have instead of hurrying. Haste makes waste. All the cliches apply. You have to figure out why, or at least I do. cliches apply. You have to figure out why, or at least I do. So where this idea gets even more tricky is in the idea of what is very voguish now, although very old as an idea or a concept, present, being present, mindfulness. All the newfound meditators, focus on your breath. Why do you focus on your breath? Everything is the breath. Why? Because there's some magic to it? No, because it's basic and simple and stasis. It is the most immediate thing. It is the progression of your own existence.

It is the progression of your own existence. That's it. That's where you are right there. Now, the mistake I made was I believe that figuring out how to be present meant right now. Everything is right now. This is it. This is everything. I got to just be here.

I got to tune out everything else. No. Now being present is subjective. It can be right now, this conversation, this interaction, this test, this week, this goal that can take a long time, this month, it could be a period of any kind of time where you are able to stay focused on being a very specific way. And I think that's an important distinction for me because it makes it somehow more practical than this idea of in every moment, nothing else matters. It's not true.

It's that you are only focused on what you control in this moment, in this phase. There's one other part to this, which is the idea of how you look at what you don't like. Now, this is a personal obsession. Okay. And again, all disclaimers. Don't be me. We talk about demons sometimes. I don't like that.

He had his demons. You know, sometimes it's just a euphemistic way of trying to say that somebody had flaws and was messed up or screwed up, whatever. Little one gets it, always. So I just threw a ball to the dog if you're just listening. I don't like demons. I think we're giving things about us that are flawed too much power and we're making an excuse for ourselves. So at the same time, we're making it too much and we're making it too little.

There are absolutely aspects of me where there is repeated behavior, decisions, choices that are the wrong ones and the wrong ones as a function of what I want to believe. That was my truck hood. Um, how I want to be and they will lead me to make mistakes repeatedly. Even when I'm trying not to, even when I know it's wrong, even when I know it's bad, even when I know it's dangerous. It's a natural recklessness to it, an understanding and an appreciation of the risk that I'm taking, but doing it anyway. Why? Weakness, self-destructiveness. But I also think that insecurity needs whatever it is. It depends on the situation.

You're listening to a dog. You're seeing a dog if you're watching. If you can do this, it is very helpful. You have to give yourself the power of forgiveness over other people because it releases you from whatever they have over you. As long as you're mad at them about it, it's still going on. You're not getting ahead. But also that if it's over, it's over. You will never change it.

There's very little that you can undo. There's very little that you can fix. Okay? There are different levels of accountability depending on what it is, but ultimately all you have is next. That's all you have is the next at bat, right?

It's such a huge coaching cue in athletics. Next shot, next play, next at bat, next serve. Whatever it is, next round, next show, next day. That's all you have. Learn, if you can, move. Think, use. Give yourself the chance, the forgiveness of doing more,

of having opportunity to be more than you were when you didn't like it, when you didn't like you, whatever it is. That's very hard for me. Struggle with it. I think that it leads me into a lot of repeated misery and I deal with that. Look, the good news in my mind is And I deal with that. Look, the good news in my mind is I've gone through this weird phase, right? Weird things, a lot of publicity. But at the end of the day, all that matters is how understand and do according to what I think matters. And that, sure, there can be a ton of noise. And in my world and in my profession and in my life, there certainly is.

But it's not that you can make it go away, but you get to determine every day, every way, what it means to you. The power of not doing, of thinking, of quiet, of sitting with a situation, of understanding the power in that, of understanding the ability to be present and what that really means. And it's not some yogi term. Maybe it is, but it doesn't matter. And ultimately, the mandate that you have to be more than the mass of your mistakes. You have to do more with your life than that. There are responsibilities, there are requirements on you. And also there's just a simple reality that you only get one shot at this. And we're not here very long.

And all the cliches to me are now true. I understand. It doesn't mean that I figured it out. It doesn't mean that I don't struggle. I think I actually struggle more now that I understand better. And that's okay. Because I think it's okay. And at the end of the day, that's what matters. And that's why I walk. And that's why I think, and that is what's shaping

what you see on TV and what people in my life see every day. And I hope it is helpful to you. Take care.