The Chris Cuomo Project - Walk and Talk: The Concept Of “Enough”

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

In a candid and honest Walk and Talk in the rain, Chris Cuomo shares why it’s okay to philosophize, the need to be deliberate with your life, and the concept of “enough.”  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

Walk and talk. Here's what I got for us today. It's going to rain on me. That's okay. So why walk if it's going to rain? Why not? Why not? There's always going to be some kind of impediment or challenge. there's always going to be some kind of impediment or challenge. The only calculation that matters is whether or not the risk makes sense, given not so much the reward, but the goal. So the first thing is a very interesting cycle of humanity, which very much applies to where we are and has always applied. Another theme for you to keep in your head, everything to one degree or another has always been as it is. The idea that our politics are worse, people are worse, this is worse. If you go back to the ancient Greeks, when they talked about

the purpose of sentimentality and politics and placement of priorities, they were talking about the economy, family planning issues, all the same stuff that we talk about now, crime. So it's not new. The hostility in politics is not new. There's just more because of social media. And we have mechanisms now that allow for magnification of a minority.

So, and I don't believe the hype. You know, a lot of the persuasion business works off fear to make you afraid. It's everywhere. You need to eat this way so you can lose weight or else. You must only eat this. You must only drink that. Be aware. Be aware. Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Good times make weak people. Weak people make hard times. Hard times make strong people. we know that hard times make you or break you. And we're not in the business of breaking. And even if we do, even if we fail, and we all do, all the time, I certainly do, little and big,

you get up, you change, you do again, you learn, and then you also repeat and make mistakes again and again. And that's the process. That's life. Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times because that's what resilience is about. improvement is about anything that's ever gotten better in my life was a function of it having been in a worse place right it's not like you start at neutral get in better shape because you didn't like the shape you were in you change your financial picture because you didn't like the financial picture professionally you make changes that allow you to get to a place and do things in a way and have a level of effectiveness you didn't have before. Hard times make strong people. Strong people make good times. Now you have the part of this cycle that I really think is interesting. By the way, no, I didn't make this up. This is really, really old philosophy. And yes, all of this is philosophy, and it's interesting how many who comment negatively

as if that was some kind of proxy for insider intelligence, like if you say something nasty, somehow that means that you're more persuasive or smarter in some way than people who are complimentary, which is just silly small-mindedness. It's not bad for things to be philosophical. You absolutely should be a philosopher. It doesn't mean you have to publish. It means that you should think about why things are the way they are and what they mean. There should be a deliberateness to what you do with your life.

Note to self, I suck at this. Very often I just get caught up in the act of doing mindlessly, mindlessly eating, mindlessly just going from next to next without thought. Why? Because the thought can be intimidating. Having to think about it can create anxiety and worry about doing the wrong thing, doing the right thing, making the right move, making the wrong move.

Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory. Annie Lennox. Lover. So, it's okay to be a philosopher it's okay to philosophize and to think about things

it's good, it's good to think so we make good times when we're in a good place, when we're strong what do we do with those good times? that's where the problems come in you get soft, you stop doing what you needed to do to get there. You stop changing to get yourself to a better place.

Is this lady catching me while listening to music? Oh, no, they're on a bike. That's acceptable. I do not get passed when I'm walking. If somebody comes at me, even if they're swinging the hips and doing the arm thing to get momentum, the moment speeds up. No way. Not passing me. Not on my watch. Not on my walk. So what do you do with your good times? How do you continue the cycle? Now, in all likelihood, you won't. She's jogging. Show off. So, what do you do with those good times?

How do you extend them? Now, sometimes you will, sometimes you won't. Good times make weak people. Why? You know why. We get soft. We relent. We relax.

We forget. Right? Diet get soft. We relent. We relax. We forget. Right? Diet means daily. It means it's something you're supposed to do all the time. We don't want that. We want the opposite of that. We want something that we do intensely for a small period that gets us where we want to be. But then what happens? Right? And don't think that the industry of persuasion when it comes to food and supplements and movement, diet, they don't know this. They know you're coming back. They know that you're going to do this not once. And that's why they change it.

Take this route. Drink this drink. Do this thing, be this way, and everything will be great forever. No. No. Life is change. And you either change for the better or worse, but you're going to change. Good times make weak people. It's true. Weak people make hard times. We get ourselves into trouble.

We drink too much. We eat too much. We lie too much. We're too mean. We're too selfish. We let anger get in our way. Corrupt us. We stop reading.

We stop thinking. We put it off. We tell ourselves stories. We tell ourselves lies. We blame. I'm too busy. This quarter matters too much. I can just pick it up the next quarter. We make excuses. We play tricks. We play games. Makes us weak. Makes us weak. Want to hear a story? So, I get shook in, right? I'm home. Every night, about 7 o'clock,

I start to develop these weird mood pangs. I don't know that that's a thing, but because I'm supposed to be getting ready to be on TV, I'm supposed to be in go mode, right? This is what I've been doing for years. Number one at one of the biggest media platforms in the world. Number one show, smallest team, great team. So every night about that time, I start thinking about the fact that I'm not there

and why I'm not there. And the pain of that. And the disappointment of that and how I disappointed other people, my team, that I never got to say goodbye to, my family that I put in this position that I never even really considered because I never thought things could get

as sideways and as bad as they did. So I would start telling myself things. And I would drink. Why? I didn't have anything else to do. Kids are doing their homework. People are eating. Put it away.

What am I doing? What am I doing? I had nothing to do. I had no sense of purpose. And I was like, you know, an emotional mess. Trouble with my family. Trouble with my extended family.

Trouble. It was a problem. Every night. Every night. Because the routine was gone. My sense of purpose wasn't there. My sense of self was so tied to my sense of purpose. So it was hard. It was hard.

And what was I going to do with it? Well, first, I did nothing. I languished. You know, I would just sit around the house drinking. You know, whatever. I did nothing. I languished. You know, I would just sit around the house drinking. You know, whatever. I was just being useless because I had no use. So, eventually, with the help of people who love me and care about me and my therapist, who's really like a life coach, I started to give a sense of purpose to that at

night. And I would make that time where I thought about what I was going to do and why I wanted to do things, what mattered to me. And initially, my premise was that I wasn't coming back here. my premise was that I wasn't coming back here. I may have been back here. I might have still wanted to do things where I got to directly talk to people, but no more media business. Too much bullshit. Nothing really more for me to achieve.

You know, I was already number one at a huge platform. I had already made their morning show, which, you know, just never got enough credit. You know, we beat Morning Joe twice. CNN had never been anywhere near them. And we made CNN relevant in the morning in a way that had never been. People wrote about us all the time. We brought accountability to the morning. You know, there was a very deliberate decision to not just be some chat fest of faux friends you know which is what a lot of morning tv is and i know it works but i didn't want to be there so anyway i was like you know what am i going to do and i looked around at the jobs on landscape

even once people decided to take their foot off my neck And I didn't want to do any of them. So then I started to think about, well, what is my purpose? I was going to go, like, work at this hedge fund. This private equity guy wanted me to come in with him. Somebody wanted me to start this company with him. I just, money is good. Money is license. Money is opportunity.

But I've just, I've just never been about it as my exclusive goal. I've never negotiated money and I'm not saying, Oh yeah, well my agent did. No, I'm saying that never has been an issue for me. The money will come in any business. If you're successful and you are very important because I've always been an employee, right? Um, until I started the podcast, I'll get to that in a second. My point is, I was facing hard times and I had to deal with what to do with them. And hard times are not an absolute. They're relative.

Your hard time could be much less dramatic than my hard time. My hard time could be much more insignificant, and of course it is, than somebody who gets a cancer diagnosis or who gets fired and put into a position where nobody's going to ever hire them again. And they can't do what they know how to do. Kid is sick. House is gone. Horrible things happen all the time. And if you look at what people do in crisis, as they fall back on the fundamentals

for a lot of people, that's their faith, right? You ever hear the expression, no atheists in foxholes? Because when the times get really tough, you need, you got to believe in something bigger than yourself because you question whether you are enough. Now, I grew up in a very faith-based family. My father, my mother, my siblings, very serious Catholics. Me, not so much. I don't reject it. I don't reject it. I don't have that kind of arrogance to say that what they believe is not true.

We all choose what to believe and what not to believe. I don't judge others as long as it's not hurting me or hurting other people. So I do believe that you have to be enough. I do believe that your reality is very, very much tied to your own actions, inactions, and beliefs and ideas. So there was no more room, no more time for me to blame everybody else and to blame externals. It was going to be on me. What did I want to be about? What did I want to do? I wanted to take care of my family. I wanted to be there for them in the ways that matter. You know all the answers to that. You know, you know what, you know, how you have to make a partner feel, a kid feel, a sibling feel, a friend feel, you know, you know.

And I had to figure that out for myself. I'm still figuring it out. I'm still scrambled eggs, as my brother likes to say. And he's not wrong. And I'm trying to figure it out, man. I'm in the struggle. I'm in the struggle. And I feel very differently at different points and times.

I'm in this struggle and I feel very differently at different points in times. But I knew that I had to look at myself, move past what I couldn't change and figure out what I wanted to be about. And I believe I can help. And I believe in politics. Absolutely, I know what the problems are. I don't know the answers, but I'm not in the answer game. I'm not a leader. I'm not asking for any mandate. But I do know that this two-party system is toxic and we have to move away from it. And that independent voters, free agents are the key because you guys are the biggest number of people. Even if you identify with a party,

you're not some extremist. You don't believe in defunding the police any more than you do that every election is rigged. You don't believe in defunding the police any more than you do that every election is rigged if you don't win it. You don't believe this BS. Now, you watch it, you observe it, but it's almost like watching a bad football game. So, I decided to come back, and I wanted control, so I did the podcast.

Hard times. Toughened me up. Humbled. And look, when you're in my position, people are going to judge that. They're going to say, yes, he is. No, he isn't. Hey, man, all that matters is what you think about yourself. And that is especially true when you are exposed to the opinion of others. And we all are to a certain degree, not the way I am, but that's my choice, right? And if you make the choice to let people decide what they think about your face and your voice and your heart and your mind you made that choice so i had an opportunity to move in a different direction tell everybody to fuck off i don't care what you say but i made a different

choice because i believe in the power of interconnection and interdependence. I believe in community. I believe in society. I believe in what we're about. I believe in interchange with people. It doesn't matter that they like or dislike. All I can do is do my best and put out there what I think is helpful. And that's got to be enough. Now, that's how hard times can make people strong and good times can make people weak. And then the cycle repeats, right? And that's okay. And that's okay. Next idea. The concept of enough and the concept of listening. What is enough?

Hardest word to deal with. Hardest word. I got no answers for you, but I know it's the right question. What is enough lifestyle? What is enough fitness? What is enough marriage? What is enough singleness? What is enough parenting? What is enough? What is enough fitness what is enough marriage what is enough singleness what is enough parenting what

is enough what is enough very hard very hard especially in our culture culture is so raw so suggestive of the wrong benchmarks right and you see that just in terms of how ephemeral it gets how random it gets money money money money, money, money, wealth, wealth, wealth, wealth. The wealth or everything. Trump is rich. He must know what he's talking about. And then kill the rich. Wealth is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. They're the bad people. They're the elites. They're the insider. We don't know. We don't know what we're about. You have to decide for yourself what's enough. Moderation in all things. Absolutely. Temperance. One of the stoic cardinal virtues.

So hard. I'm like this. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. Struggle with this shit mightily. But it doesn't mean that it's not the right struggle. And not the right point of purpose. Last one. Listen.

Best way to interview? Keep interviewing? Listen. Don't come with a prepared set of ideas or things that you want to say. You'll see this in interviews all the time in the news. Them jumping the answer. I absolutely believe in interrupting. I get that that's unsettling for some people. It sounds like you're not letting them finish. They've said enough a lot. You got to cut them off. You got to push back. That's my job. Not to just give you an unfettered platform to test, but you listen. You listen. My interviews are all about response to what is being said, not having a scripted set of questions that I want to ask. The answers will dictate the flow. Listening is the key. Listening to others that you disagree with is huge. You guys don't listen. We don't listen. You don't like what they're saying. You don't agree, but you don't understand why they believe it. Because they're stupid. Because they're mouth breathers. Because they're evil. Because they're fascists. Because they're socialists. Because they're this. Because they're that. Hey, you know what? You believe all that shit because you have been listening, but just to the wrong people.

You got to listen to the people whom you oppose. You got to listen to whom you disagree with. Two reasons. One, maybe you'll understand where they're coming from differently. Or two, steel sharpens steel. And if you listen, you'll learn how to counter in a way that will have more success and more satisfaction. And the hardest kind of listening, listening to yourself,

listen to yourself, what you say, what you say to other people, what you say to yourself, the idols. If they talk to you the way you talk to you, I'd put their teeth through. Love yourself. I've mentioned that before before it's so resonant for me I'm a self loathing self-hating self-talking and by the way a lot of it's justified but still my choice and you can either just stay steeped in this terrible stuff we tell ourselves or you

can listen to it. Think about what you would say or do if someone else were talking like that about themselves and how you'd jump in, but you never jump in on yourself. Listening is so important. Listen to the people in your life. They're telling you what they need.

They're telling you what they want. They're telling you what they like. They're telling you what they don't like. Listen. Two ears, one mouth. Two ears, one mouth. Ancient philosopher observed. You should listen twice as much as you speak. You learn nothing when stuff is coming out of your face. You learn by what comes in. If you're teaching yourself shit by what you say, you've got a bigger problem. Listen.

Listen to yourself. Listen to others. Listen to loved ones and friends. This I do. This I do. Myself, I'm not good at it. I'm trying, I'm trying. I really am trying.

It's another reason I'm not drinking. Because. I'm trying, I'm trying. I really am trying. It's another reason I'm not drinking. Because the emotional lability, the ups and downs, are definitely improved by my medication. And the booze counteracts the medication. THC, not so much. That just gives me the munchies if I have the wrong mix. And in fact, that's why I'm partnering,

I hope, with this group called Imperium to talk to you about THC and dosage and variety and use. Because it's getting all this medicinal acceptance and even legal acceptance, although we have this weird state-federal imbalance, which is nuts. If Biden changes that, that would be smart. But I think the morality police are going to be all over him about it Faux morality, you know Putting these strictures on others that don't even make sense to themselves If they were to break them down as anything other than some misguided Judeo-Christian Ethic of Puritanism It's all BS

Anyway, that's why I don't do it I've got to listen to myself, I've got to be real I've got to listen to others. I've got to be real. I've got to listen to others. You've got to figure out what is enough for you. Perfect example. Today, I was going to stop and do all these calisthenics along the way. I'm doing this no-miss November thing with a bunch of my boys.

You know, working out every day. But I can't do the same thing every day. I'm sore AF right now. So I'm going to walk. I'm going to walk five, six miles. That's plenty. What am I getting ready for Mr. Olympia? You know what I mean? 52 years old. I want to look good, feel good, perform well. I'm starting a new phase of training for self-defense. It's going to be much more combative, much more interactive with sparring. For self-defense, it's going to be much more combative, much more interactive, sparring.

I've got to be strong. I've got to be durable. I don't talk to you guys that much about that, but it's very central to my focus and myself and what matters to me. Not that I want to go fight. It's the opposite of that. I don't fight. Self-defense isn't fighting. It's removing a risk, removing a threat that has refused to remove itself. So what is enough? Are you listening? These are very important things. And understanding that cycle. You're going to have hard times. What are you going to do with them? It's up to you. Good times and bad times are the same because both are subject entirely to what you decide to make of them. Easy to say, hard to do, simple, not easy. You're going to be in this cycle. I'm in this cycle

right now. How do I keep growing my show, growing my podcast, having it be useful? How do I keep growing my show, growing my podcast, having it be useful? How do I keep doing the things I need to do for my family, my friends? How do I be there for the people that I want to be there? How do I live my best life? How do I stop making the mistakes that twist up my mind, hurt my heart, make me hurt other people. I hate it. I hate myself for it. That's easy. How do you repair? How do you make things better? That's hard. That's what matters. And by the way, everything that we do in life that matters is going to be hard. You want to be a good parent. You want to be a good partner.

You want to be a good friend. You want to be a good sibling. You want to be good at what you do. It's all hard, hard, hard, hard. You want to have abs. It's hard. You want to be powerful. You want to be capable.

It's hard. And that's okay. The grind is the glory. The effort is all we control. You're going to be in that cycle. Hard times, good times. You listen. You're going to be in that cycle. Hard times, good times. You listen, you figure out for yourself what is enough. You realize what you control and how much you control in terms of what you decide is real and not real. All right. I hope this

helped. Walk and talk. I was going to do it without walking because I know that you guys aren't watching. You know what I mean? Most of you are listening. But then I got all this pushback from people saying, no, you got to be walking too when you do it. Otherwise, why are you asking other people to walk? Listen, I'm not here to tell you what to do. The heck do I know?

I'm just dealing with the same struggle and the same questions. And I don't know why you guys can't find News Nation on your cable channels. It's as easy to find as any other cable channel. It's got the same reach as the, you know, I think it's the same or more than Fox, the same or more than MSNBC, and it's a little less than CNN. But it's on the cable systems. You should be able to find it. If you go to the website, if you go to my page, there's a link where you can find it by you. And hell yeah, I want you to find it. I want you to join. I'm doing it for you.

I'm doing it to pay my bills, take care of my family, but podcast is coming up fast. And I own it. and I own it. So, you know, to me, yeah, the more of you I can, you know, connect with and that we can be a part of, it's great. So watch the News Nation show, eight o'clock weekdays, please. Subscribe and follow the podcast.

I'd love to know whether or not you guys like the calls that I do on the podcast and the calls that we do every the podcast and the calls that we do every night on the News Nation show. Are those working for you? My suspicion is yes, because it's good to hear what people like you think, not just pros. And yeah, some of them are going to be frivolous. Some of them are going to be off base, but so are a lot of pundits, right? Except they do it on purpose. They're often being intentionally deceptive about things, whereas real people just sometimes don't know. And we got to get power back for the majority of people who are not in the game.

But tell me what you think about it. Please buy the free agent merch. I really want to get a bunch of money together that we can then crowdsource contributions. I really want to do that. I'm not selling like, you know, testosterone pills or some BS like that. The merch is good. We keep expanding the line of what you can put it on. You know, like Kara Swisher said,

oh, you're pushing t-shirts. That was cynical and nasty. But you know what? That's what works. I actually think she's really good at what she does. I'd like to have her on the show. I'd like to have her on again. But people in the media, they take cheap shots.

And they like taking cheap shots at me. For some reason, people can easily misunderstand where I'm coming from and what I'm about. What I'm about is being some kind of lap of luxury. Everybody has their own trials. I've never been a victim. I've never painted myself like that and I never would. My life is what I decide to make of it. That's true for you too, you know, no matter what it is. And we don't have to just look at people who overcome the hardest things to understand that overcoming is endemic in the process of living your own life. I don't have to introduce you to people who overcome these tremendous obstacles and have great attitude and optimism for you to

understand that you should be the same way in your own life. All pain is personal. All struggles are relative and they all matter, especially to the people who are in them. So that's what I got. Free agent merch. Keep spreading the idea. Subscribe and follow to the podcast, please. Let me know what you think of these walking talks. I'm only doing them for you guys. I walk anyway. Okay. And I don't, I'm not Jordan Peterson. You know, I'm not dispensing this kind of furrowed brow fury about how you should be and who's out to get you and all this nonsense. I'm just in the struggle and I'm sharing what I think about and what I'm using to try to get to a different place. If it helps you, awesome. Let me know. If it doesn't, I'll stop wasting your time. All right? This one's about 30 minutes.

Not a bad walk. I do think an hour is better. Not of me yapping at you, but of you walking and thinking and processing and feeling and stopping to exercise. If it's not enough for you, stop. Do 10 burpees. Keep going. Every time you feel like this is too easy, stop. Do another 10 burpees.

See how you feel then. So, I wish you the best. And I really appreciate your support. I really do. And I need it. I shouldn't, but I do. It matters to me that there's value in what I'm doing as perceived by others.

This isn't something that is just self-fulfilling in and of itself. Not for me. So thank you. I wish you the best. I'm doing this for you today on Veterans Day. We don't just thank them for their service. That's too easy.

Act on it. There are things veterans need all the time that we don't get right. So let's get after it.