March 2, 2026 • 40 mins
What if the most powerful thing you could do for your life takes less than 30 minutes and costs nothing?
Morgan brings on Walter Green, founder of the global Say It Now movement, former CEO turned purpose-driven changemaker, and author of This Is the Moment. After losing his father at a young age and later witnessing the powerful tributes spoken at funerals, words the person would never hear, Walter made a life-altering decision: stop waiting.
They talk about why we save our deepest gratitude for eulogies, why the loneliness epidemic exists, the one specific question that can transform relationships, and why "I love you" matters, but isn't enough.
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Personally Fuelsman. It's the start of a new series, one
that I hope helps us all become not only better humans,
but also the truest versions of ourselves. This week, we're
focused on the Say It Now Movement, why it's important,
and how it can greatly impact our lives. The best part,
it's something you can do starting right after you finished
(00:34):
this episode. Let's get into it. I'm joined this week
by Walter Green. He is the Say It Now Movement founder.
He's a lecturer at Warton and he's an author and
has just done a whole lot of things with his life,
(00:54):
which I'm excited to get into. Walter, how are you great?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So it's a pleasure being with you.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thanks for joining me. I'm excited to talk to you
about a lot of things, but I want to start first.
You went from a CEO and chairman for twenty five
years to now focus on this movement and investing time
in it. So tell me why the switch and what
all happened there.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, we'll let you kind of compress twenty five years
pretty quickly. Yeah. I had been working since I was thirteen.
Long story. My father died when he was fifty three
from a heart attack. So I thought, I'm fifty eight
and fifty nine, and maybe I should think about other
things that I might want to do with my life.
And so I sold my company at age fifty nine.
(01:40):
And really the last chapter I described life in three chapters.
One was finding myself, the second was in my business career,
making something of myself, and then the third chapter is
becoming who I've probably always wanted to be. So I
(02:00):
really love this chapter. It's yeah, they're about almost three
decades at length, so they're long chapters.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Oh yeah, there is, but I want to know what
categorizes them into each chapter. How old were you and
when did you start this last chapter? Kind of give
me some of those details of the three life chapters
as you named them.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, so the first one was kind of like one
to each twenty nine, and then the next one was
twenty nine to fifty eight, and the last one was
fifty eight eighty seven. They really are very distinct and
very different. Some challenging, some hard work, and some a
(02:41):
lot of joy. And I would say the last third
has been filled with an enormous amount of meeting, even
though I got great satisfaction in my business career as well,
I would.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Like to know, because you mentioned that this is your
potentially your best chapter yet that you've been in is
up partially because of creating the movement that you did
and what you're passionate about now. Is that a part
to that story.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Sure, it's a part of the story, But I would
say the last chapter, I've really spent almost all my
time on serving others, whether it's through nonprofits or mentoring
or my men's groups, or ultimately discovering this rather remarkable
(03:31):
aspect of my life that I hadn't fully appreciated, was
led to this founding of the movement, And it would
be less in candid if I didn't say I've been
rather excited about the impact of the movement, but it
had a lot of other things other than just the
creation of the movement. But I would say in the
last seventeen years, it was the intensified effort to create
(03:57):
awareness about.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
What that was. Tell me about this movement. So the
say It Now movement is very much I would imagine,
inspired from some things that you went through in your life.
You mentioned the passing of your dad. Is that a
part to that story as well?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, So there are several parts I would say, first,
I really didn't. We moved I think it was thirteen
different cities by the time I was eighteen, so I
never really had any friends. I missed them, but didn't
have any, so that made an impact on me. Wow,
must be nice to have them. The second one was
getting a call when I was a freshman at school.
(04:34):
I needed to come home and my father had died
that day, So that was another impact that really life
is unpredictable. He was in his early fifties, and that
was another big deal. I then really began to make
some friends. So later on when I was in my
mid thirties, and so by the time I was fifty,
(04:56):
I wanted to celebrate them, so I brought them together
for my fiftieth birthday. There were five guys, so I
invited my close family and we had seventeen people. Spent
a whole weekend in New York and the first part
of that weekend was for me to pay tribute to
each one and what they had meant to me in
my life. And that was the first time I got
(05:18):
chills just now, this is thirty seven years ago, just
the joyfulness of acknowledging people who had been important to me,
and also that it was gratifying to them as well.
But that was really the first wake up call to
the power of expressing gratitude to people who shaped our lives.
(05:42):
I'm not talking about incident a nice things. I'm talking
about people who really made a difference in our life.
And any of your listeners are self made, they should
let me know, because I haven't met anybody yet, So
my guess is maybe they had a little help along
the way by somebody. I then was touched by some
(06:06):
funerals of rather remarkable people. It was a Tim Russard,
who was a moderator and meet the press. I think
that made a enormous impact on me. There must have
been fifteen hundred people at his funeral. The tributes paid
to him were unbelievable, unbelievable, And Yeah, when the funeral
was over, I had a bittersweet feeling. I'm thinking, I
(06:29):
don't think Tim ever heard this.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, and you mentioned bringing up your birthday that you
decided to celebrate these friends of yours that obviously became
very important to you, especially given what you say about
your childhood and not getting to really create friendships and
have those type of relationships It's very rare that people
will often take a moment of celebratation that's for them
(06:54):
to then turn around and say, hey, I want to
celebrate the people who mean a lot to me, So
tell me about that behind behind the idea.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it was all part of this realization that our
culture waits for people to die and then we stand
up and we worked so hard at paying tribute to them.
It really seemed rather rather strange, and I came to
the conclusion I didn't want that to be part of
my life. Maybe that was custom made no sense to me,
(07:24):
And so I decided for my seventieth birthday that I
would ask my wife for a gift to be able
to travel around the United States and abroad to sit
down with everybody had been important in my life, everybody
who was still alive, that is, and to sit down
and tell them what they had meant to me. And
that was a profound experience, and that just magnified the obviousness. Morgan,
(07:52):
I can tell you this idea is not only simple,
but it's powerful. And I thought, really the years after
I wrote the book called This Is the Moment, How
one man's year long journey captured the power of extraordinary gratitude.
Where I told everybody about this idea I had that
(08:12):
I took a year off what I said, and the
last third of the book was, hey, listen, now, think
about your lives, think about somebody who's been important in
your life, and tried to inspire them. And that was
seventeen years ago. I've always expected someone to say, well,
there was this movement or that movement, and they've been
doing this for you. Guess what, It's been silent. I've
(08:39):
never heard anybody awaken people to the importance of expressing
gratitude for specific things that shape their life. Many people
do it at celebrations of life, and many people do
it at funerals. I am hopeful that people listening today
(09:00):
we will join this. Really what's become now a global
movement where we crossed fifteen million expressions of gratitude in
the last four years when I decided to make it
a global movement. It's unlikely that any of us will
ever regret what we've said. Very true, but highly unlikely
(09:26):
we will regret what we kept to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
You say that in talking about funerals, and I really
think about a lot of the funerals that I've been to,
and how many people do stand at that podium and
they admit and say, I wish I would have said
this more in person, or I wish that they had
known how I felt, or I wish the last time
I talked to him, I said I love you. And
it was a funeral when I was really young, I
(09:52):
very much remember going to a funeral of a classmate.
I was very young in middle school, maybe lay elementary
schoo and a kid had committed suicide, and our whole
school went to the funeral, and I remember one of
his parents saying, please make sure every time you hang
(10:13):
up the phone or you stop talking to me somebody,
that the last thing you say is I love you,
every time. And that really instilled something in me the
experience of what was happening in that moment, and just
of course the loss of someone way too young and
these parents going through that grief. And to this day,
(10:34):
every time i'm endo conversation with somebody that I care
about that I is deeply involved in my life, whether
it's a partner, a friend, my parents, I always say
I love you, And that has always really mattered to
me that I say those things, even if I hang up. Actually,
don't say it. I'll call it back and say, hey,
I love you, by the way, just in case you forgot,
(10:58):
and I have a feeling that's That's a lot of
what you're speaking to here is that you don't ever
have to go saying I wish I would have said this, you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Know, And the secret sauce in this case is in
addition to the expression of affection, my specific request is
that you enrich the expression with some acknowledgment. I'm not
saying every phone call you're going to do this, but
(11:29):
periodically you stay current and that you make sure everybody
who's impacted your life understands the impact I had on
your life. That's it. That's staying current. And the more
specific you are, the more powerful the gift. And here's
the thing, Morgan, you do this podcast, I assume one
(11:53):
reason is because you want to make a difference very much,
so matter right.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I want people well to feel connected. I want
people to feel seen, and I very much want them
to feel like this podcast helped them in one way
or another, which is a big reason why I had
you on today because I felt like this was important.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Let's just begin with the simplicity of it. Number one,
I've already established that there's unlikely anyone listening that's done
it all by themselves. So most of them have had
parents that contributed, maybe grandparents, maybe teachers. Maybe there's a coach,
(12:34):
maybe there's a friend. But most likely, somewhere along the line,
somebody has made a difference in your life. Now here's
the other thing. They probably do not appreciate the difference
they made in your life. Now here's the problem or
(12:58):
the opportunity. They made a difference, they don't fully appreciate it.
So who has the gift? The person who is a beneficiary.
So you can keep the gift in your closet and
never give it to anybody. Just leave it there and
then feel the regret, Oh my gosh, I should have
given that gift. Or just take a moment right now
(13:22):
while we're on this podcast, people think, who is it?
What happens? If something unexpectedly happened to that person tomorrow,
how would we feel. So we have the unique position
(13:43):
to validate that a person's life mattered. Maybe you can
say to yourself, I'm pretty special and I've done some
nice things in the world. But the reality is the
validation comes from others now. If they don't express it,
it's a gift that's never given. And the one thing
(14:05):
we want to die with is knowing that our life mattered.
No more complicated than that. We can get into the
variety of ways you could do it, but we're caring
with us the greatest gift that we could give to
people we care about. In addition saying I love you
(14:28):
and I care about.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You, it is. It's more detailed than that, and it's
why it's such an important conversation because it feels weird
that even me just saying hey, I love you after
every phone call is seemingly difficult for people to understand
that's a necessity. But then taking it the step further
of what you're doing with the say it now movement
to say hey, I really want you to show appreciation
(14:52):
for the people in your life and do it as
often as you can. Why do you feel like to
people that seems like like just such this foreign concept.
Why have we been ingrained to go our whole lives
with never saying anything or saying the things that we feel?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Custom is pretty strong? Yeah, custom is powerful. That's the
way it's been done. People watch how it's been done,
and since it's not customary and may feel a little awkward,
(15:33):
but it doesn't take long to get over that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's true if you've never given a random compliment before,
just to anybody, it's funny. Some of my friends and
I will do it to each other. I'd be like, hey,
we're talking about a memory, or we share a moment
in time, and both of us leave that with smiles
on our faces. You never leave a moment like that
with sadness or with anger. It's almost always when gratitude
(16:00):
is expressed. Gratitude is what leaves with you.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yes, I know you talked about that tragic situation of
the person who took his life. I think he mentioned
in the middle school. And we have a real issue
in this world now, where there's a lot of loneliness.
There's a lot of people who don't really feel they
(16:25):
make much difference, and most likely the people who take
their lives. I would say one element is that it
didn't think their lives mattered. That's not the only reason,
but it's a compelling reason. I'll never forget this story.
(16:45):
Very early on after my book came out, I got
an email from a young girl. I don't know how
old she was. I'm just assuming maybe twenties or thirties,
and she said that she was considering ending her life,
which was amazing because she wrote in an email to
literally a stranger. I was an author, but I was
a stranger. And she said she had been abused when
(17:07):
she was younger from family members and she could never
deal with that and the implications to her. She happened
to pick up my book I don't know what it
was doing in a Philippine library after it was released,
and she read it and she realized, there are people
who have mattered in my life. She wrote me, I
(17:30):
don't know. Maybe a decade later and said she'd moved
to Scandinavia and she had been married and her life
has gone on, but at that moment she didn't really
feel her life mattered. We have a lot of adversarial
relationships these days. Everything seems to be we they, But
(17:52):
gratitude is a solidifying force. It brings you closer to
people that you're already close to, but it adds a
dimension to the relationship. I had a story. I love
this story. A fellow called me. He said, well, I'm
not sure how to do it, I said, doesn't really
matter if it's in person and it's a little difficult,
(18:14):
why don't you just drop a note to the person?
Oh okay, And I hardly knew this person. About three
weeks later, he wrote me, I'd love to tell you
what the experience was like. Now people marvel at how
much it means to the person doing it. You always think, oh,
I'm going to express gratitude to the person so they
all feel wonderful. Guess what, you probably feel more wonderful
(18:37):
in any case, he came back. He said, wealter. I
wrote seventeen letters. And now at that point I had
never known anybody write seventeen letters. So I wrote seventeen letters,
he said. One was to my sister, who I hadn't
spoken to in a year. Our relationship had been fractured.
But when I thought about it, I realized, you know what,
(19:00):
she was very important to me during stage in my life,
and we haven't talked. But I never forgot. Once I
reminded myself of her importance to me, I just wrote
her a letter and told her what it meant. And
he said, rekindled that relationship.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Oh see, and that's what gratitude does. That's what the
power of gratitude is. It's not just belonging in the
one who's giving the gratitude, but you're also receiving the
gratitude on a level when you're giving it. And that's
such a huge part to that story. And that's why
I feel like gratitude is such a powerful I want
(19:39):
to call it energy, and that's probably not the right word,
but it's such a powerful feeling to give gratitude and
to receive it that it can change our lives in
a lot of ways, which is also what I think
you're really the movement is around that and how much
it impacts your life. When you talk about these very
huge mind milestones in your life, your fiftieth and your seventieth,
(20:02):
and how you did things in a way that was
like seemingly giving back to the people who were important
to you, but you were also gaining in those experiences.
Big job, what lessons did you learn when you went
and did those things, Because maybe it will inspire some
people to do something similar or something of their own
(20:25):
that's this kind of big milestone to show gratitude.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
My hope is that there are First of all, I
want to make this really simple. When you talk about gratitude,
A lot of books written, gratitude journals and this and that.
This idea is really, I promise you simple. So I'm
going to tell you how I did it, because somebody
else may say, you know what I can do that.
I definitely could do that. So I wrote the question
(20:50):
what difference did this person make? In my life? So
remind this is when I went on my journey. Before
I went on the journey to visit anybody, I asked myself,
here we are legal pant, what difference did this person
make in my life? And I put bullet points about
specific contributions to my life. That became the basis of
(21:15):
what I communicate.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Now.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I did it in person, but you could easily take
that and convert into a letter. So let's be really clear.
Number one, it's probably not hard to think of somebody,
probably more than one person right now. Just think of somebody,
(21:36):
hold that person, and then just spend a few minutes
thinking about what difference did that person make in my life?
Capture it. Then you can decide whether you want to
go visit him and tell him you want to send
it to him in a note that he could reread
he or she can reread and enjoy for many years,
(21:59):
which I've done many times. You can send a little
video for a few minutes. Remember, it's not just I
love you, thank you. It's specific as to what difference
a person made in your life. And here's a secret.
It's free. I have nothing to sell. There is no
product here, and it doesn't take a long time. It
(22:22):
can take less than a half an hour, so it's quick.
It's free. It will enrich your life, it will enrich
the relationship. All we have to do is get you
on the bike, get you riding. Maybe you've never ridden before.
We're going to have you get on the bike, and
after you do it a couple of times, it becomes
(22:45):
the way you live now, Morgan, this is my dream
for the movement. The program, the concept that we've talked
about today is now being taught in eighty three thousand
schools around the globe in eighty five countries. The reason
is these kids are going to learn how it works.
(23:07):
As a child's still act unlearned. Oh my god, that's
where I do it. I do it at funerals. Oh really,
I shouldn't do it at funeral How about teaching them
that's the way it is. And my hope is in
the long run that we live more intentionally and it's
(23:28):
the way we live. You don't have to say to yourself, oh,
I think I need to do it. That's just the
way you live. That's the way you live. So I
recognize I'm getting down ahead. But we've had over fifteen
million people try it already. Yeah it works, I promise
(23:48):
you it works. And I have nothing to sell.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
But the idea you talk about, just in general, the
state of the world that we're in, and sometimes we
get lost from the most basic things that can help us.
We stray and we get distracted. And I know personally
that I'm being impacted by technology and the hustle and
bustle of life and the things that we've all been
(24:12):
so ingrained into over time, right and that's what we're
in right now, is the state of the world we've created.
But when you really get back to it, the basic
things are what all of us need to make our
lives feel better and more enriched. Gratitude feels like on
the same basis of hey, get out and touch some grass,
(24:33):
go take a walk, get out there.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Like very basic, but it's.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So important, and sometimes the basics are what we need
to be reminded of, and that's why it's important. It's
important to have a conversation around it much as it's
important to have a movement around it. Yeah, you're right,
I do too want to talk about as well, something
(25:00):
that also I feel like is in your realm of
things and experience that parasocial relationships are something that's very
much happening. Do you know what I'm talking about when
I mean parasocial relationships?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Paris social?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yes, So when people basically through a screen, through a phone,
through a computer, feel like they have a relationship with
someone they've never met before. Okay, And so there's a
lot of people out there who a celebrity passes away
and they feel insane grief and sadness and just things
(25:35):
that they didn't feel like they should feel over the
loss of someone that they didn't really know. But I
feel like there's a connection between feeling that way and
this thought of never having said the way we feel.
Am I wrong in that.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I never thought about it? Actually? So let me just
think about that for a moment. I think was central
to both of what we're talking about is the importance
of connection. If we don't have one, we might make
(26:13):
it with someone we don't even know, just because we
need it. And that's that loneliness I was telling you about.
And I personally think this is a powerful treatment for
mental health. So you won't have to have these, as
(26:35):
you describe them, artificial disconnects that you make reeal that
you actually have people you'll see in school or in
work tomorrow that have no idea of how they've meant
to you, and maybe their need for these artificial connections
(26:56):
will be reduced if they had some real ones, And
this is one way of developing it. There are other ways,
but this is a pretty powerful way to do to
let people know that what they mean to you is
really significant, feels an emotion that's critical for all of us.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, and you're right. The parasocial relationships are created out
of this desire to have community and connect. And it's
also difficult because I think there's also a lot of
people out there who don't feel seen and heard by
certain communities, which really was what this podcast was born
(27:39):
out of, is just hoping to consistently share stories where everybody,
no matter their scope of life, can feel a connection
with one guest or another and feel that feeling. But
it is something that's missing. And if you look at
our communities now, connection is missing. I often share how
my neighborhood we all talk to each other. I still
(28:01):
talk to my neighbors. I know who they are. We
help each other when things are happening in the neighborhood.
And that's actually rare. I thought that was pretty normal,
but that's rare. And so you're seeing people just lack
community and connection. And I do think that's where parasocial
relationships can be born out of. And to your point,
(28:23):
if we express gratitude before it's too late, maybe we
could have the connection and community that we've been looking for.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
It's no question that's central to your desire for people
to be seen. That if the way people know that
they're seen is because people let them know that they
see them, and by definition they're being seen. Yeah, what
(28:54):
a wonderful way to be seen is to be appreciated
and to know that you matter.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, there's a very popular phrase right now too that
you just reminded me of it. It's to be seen
is to be loved, truly seeing somebody, to truly see
all parts of you and it's so powerful. And you
mentioned the mental health aspect, and I would love to
hear more of your thoughts on the mental health side
of this, because gratitude is such a powerful factor, and
(29:23):
it's why gratitude journals were born, and it helps to
create a more grateful space in which you live, in
in which your mind keeps its space. And what you're
doing with that say it now movement can have an
impact on the mental health crisis that we're facing right now.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, one of the reasons people feel emotionally depleted is
they don't really feel connections. They don't And even I
don't want to disparage gratitude journals, but in many ways,
(30:04):
you're talking to yourself. The expression of gratitude to somebody
who's been important to you, by definition, must include somebody else.
It is, by definition, a connection. It's a way to
deepen a connection. It's a way to rebuild a broken connection.
(30:25):
That's a way to be mentally healthier. No more than that,
do you.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Feel like too, because you've obviously lived multiple lives at
this point now you're in your third teerar for sure,
You've had so many And do you feel like as
you got older, the gratitude and stuff became so much
more important as you got older, Or when did that
moment in your life really hit that you said, Okay,
(30:55):
this is important that I pay attention to this and
this feeling.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I think that different kinds. There's several arenas for gratitude.
One are the blessings we have in our life. We
have beds to sleep in, we have hot and cold
water instantly goes on. We have generally the ability to
feed ourselves, and so they're generally speaking, it's a safe country,
(31:19):
and we have a lot to be grateful for, a
lot to be grateful for. And I think I know
this to be true. Actually, I think when people don't
have something, they feel it more deeply than those that
(31:40):
have it. And so I think it goes back. If
I grew up with a bunch of friends and I
always had friends and always felt connected and always felt
important it, maybe it wouldn't occurred to me when it did,
but I didn't, so I said, oh my, I really
wish I had them. And when I acted on it,
(32:01):
which I described when I was fifty and then again
when I'm seventy, I really feel I struck gold in
terms of emotional health. I think I struck gold. And
the purpose of being on your podcast is to share
that richness with just hope a few people act on it.
(32:24):
Not I don't want people saying, oh, and really, that's
a good idea, or if they read my book, that's
a good book. No no, no, no, no, no, no
no no. I want to know that you've thought about
that one person, and you haven't just thought about that person.
You actually thought about the contribution of that one person.
That's not enough. You're now going to figure out how
(32:46):
do I do it? And I love the story when
I was lecturing at a business school and these are
business school students of there, I don't know, late twenties,
and it was a two hour class. So I actually
had them go through in the class think about somebody,
and I gave them ten minutes in the class to
put down specifics. So why that person came to mind?
(33:08):
And I said, listen, I'm not your professor, but I'm
going to ask you for your homework to go and
express that person to that person one way or the other.
I think it was the next day. It couldn't have
been more than two days. I get this note from
the one of the young ladies in the class, she said,
I and instantly people do tell me their stories. There's
(33:29):
no income in this room. This is all psychic income
when I hear these stories. So she wrote me, and
she said, you wouldn't believe it. I went home. I
lived with my dad. She still is living at home.
She's in her late twenties and her dad works s
late until nine o'clock at night. So she said, when
he came home, I just this is just unbelievable. She said, Dad,
I'd like you to sit down on the couch. She said,
(33:50):
why so, I want to tell you something. What do
you want to tell me? I want to tell you
how I feel about you, she said. He said, I
know how you feel about me. Lived together. No, Dan,
I actually want to sit down. And she took out
her pad and reviewed the specific contributions that her father
had made in their life, and they were both in
(34:12):
tears before she got halfway through the list. And she
lives with that man she had been living. So sometimes
the relationships can be very close and still lack that
very special gift.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Now I need to hear too, because you spark something
in me, and you've been married. You mentioned your wife.
How long have you been married for.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've been married, I am married.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Okay, you're married. How long have you been married to her?
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Well? SIXI two wonderful years?
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Incredible? Okay. So when you had this huge idea and
the feeling of gratitude and you wanted to create this,
I'm curious how gratitude impacts your relationship and has it
helped it? Is there ways that you guys expressed gratitude
to each other that maybe can help the rest of
us have sixty two wonderful years of marriage.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
There's more to marriage, as we all know, than the
expression of gratitude. However, if you don't do it, you've
missed a gigantic opportunity. And I would say, long before
we called it, say it now. We've been thoughtful about
letting the other person know. But even saying that, when
(35:25):
I went on my seventieth journey, I sat down with
my wife and went through the same experience with her
that I did the other forty three people. It was
just as meaningful to me, it was meaningful to her.
And even though we're being married a long time, there
(35:48):
are an awful lot of things that you could be
deeply grateful for I would say everything that's been important
in our marriage or important in my life. Sixty two
years we've married, that's a good part of my life.
My wife's either thought of an idea or been fully
supportive of the idea. Now, what a gift is that?
(36:09):
What a gift is that to go when I'm eighty
three years old and decide to create a global movement,
to spend a ton of time and some resources on this.
She said, if it's important to you, I'll support you.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, she sounds like a very special lady.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
She's the best. She's the best.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I love that. And Walter, You've given us so many
reasons to go out and do this. So I'm going
to encourage everyone. I like to always end on something
and we will hear in a second, but I'm going
to encourage everybody to do this, at least with one
person today, to go and express gratitude to that person
in a very meaningful and intentional way and report back.
(36:57):
Love's how I feel. We want to know because I
better it was amazing, and now you just have It's
the trickle effect, right, You do it one time and
you're like, oh, I love that feeling. I got to
keep doing it, Energizer Bunny. We'll hope that's what happens.
But I do like to end my podcast episodes with
a piece of advice or motivation or maybe something that's
heavy on your heart that we didn't get to talk about.
(37:19):
It's whatever you want it to be, so pass the
floor over to you, and you end us on something.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Walter, I want to cut a little bit more slack
to your listeners and say, I'd like you to think
about this person today. I'd like you to think about
their contributions today or tomorrow, and I'd like to act
on it in the next very few days. In other words,
be thoughtful about it, be specific about it. And I
(37:49):
don't really need to do much convincing after the prison
does the first one, and so I think if we
can inspire just the first one, they'll be motivated to
continue the practice. And I don't know if you remember
Pay It Forward. It was a movie where you can't
always do something for the person who did something to you.
(38:11):
And so now let me say, hey, listen, I was
so nice. I'm going to pay it forward. I want
to say it now to be as commonplace as pay
it forward. We've got fifteen million people that expressed it
to fifteen that's thirty million people that have been involved.
I'd like several hundred million people. And I want it
(38:32):
to be the way we live. I want it to
be a conscious, intentional life is one that doesn't let
it go by without acknowledging something of significance. Talking about
just opening the door or baking a cake or whatever.
I'm talking about road changers. We all have road changers.
(38:54):
So my hope is that none of us lose road
changer from this day forward without having told them how
important they are to us.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
That's the perfect thing to end on, because you just
encouraged all of us to make a difference in our lives.
And I think that's all what we need and deserve
right now. So thank you for that and welcome, thank
you for what you're doing. I think to Say It
Now movement is fifty million people. I think we can
get the whole world.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, let's try, and they can go to Say it
Now Just Say it Now dot org. Nothing to sell there,
It just gives you some guidance and help if you
need a little bit more guidance and help. And you
can also watch a Ted talk and documentary and other
things that are on there, But most importantly, I want
to inspire that person to enrich their life and to
(39:49):
enrich the life of somebody who's been very important to them.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yes, thank you so much, Walter. You're awesome and very
inspiring and I love your story, so thank you for
being here.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Thank you for being doing what you're doing so the
story gets to be told. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Walter Green took a concept that should be widely acknowledged
and put into action, although it often isn't, and he's
trying to change that with the say It Now movement.
I hope his story inspires you to have some important
conversations with the people who have impacted you and know
not tomorrow or next week, but right now. Yes, now,
that's the whole concept. We're continuing the series next week
with Danny Morrell, who truly knows how to help you
(40:27):
awaken the best version of yourself. It's a fun one.
Subscribe for me if you will, and I'll yap with
you guys next time.
Personally Fuelsman. It's the start of a new series, one
that I hope helps us all become not only better humans,
but also the truest versions of ourselves. This week, we're
focused on the Say It Now Movement, why it's important,
and how it can greatly impact our lives. The best part,
it's something you can do starting right after you finished
(00:34):
this episode. Let's get into it. I'm joined this week
by Walter Green. He is the Say It Now Movement founder.
He's a lecturer at Warton and he's an author and
has just done a whole lot of things with his life,
(00:54):
which I'm excited to get into. Walter, how are you great?
Speaker 2 (00:57):
So it's a pleasure being with you.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thanks for joining me. I'm excited to talk to you
about a lot of things, but I want to start first.
You went from a CEO and chairman for twenty five
years to now focus on this movement and investing time
in it. So tell me why the switch and what
all happened there.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, we'll let you kind of compress twenty five years
pretty quickly. Yeah. I had been working since I was thirteen.
Long story. My father died when he was fifty three
from a heart attack. So I thought, I'm fifty eight
and fifty nine, and maybe I should think about other
things that I might want to do with my life.
And so I sold my company at age fifty nine.
(01:40):
And really the last chapter I described life in three chapters.
One was finding myself, the second was in my business career,
making something of myself, and then the third chapter is
becoming who I've probably always wanted to be. So I
(02:00):
really love this chapter. It's yeah, they're about almost three
decades at length, so they're long chapters.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Oh yeah, there is, but I want to know what
categorizes them into each chapter. How old were you and
when did you start this last chapter? Kind of give
me some of those details of the three life chapters
as you named them.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, so the first one was kind of like one
to each twenty nine, and then the next one was
twenty nine to fifty eight, and the last one was
fifty eight eighty seven. They really are very distinct and
very different. Some challenging, some hard work, and some a
(02:41):
lot of joy. And I would say the last third
has been filled with an enormous amount of meeting, even
though I got great satisfaction in my business career as well,
I would.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Like to know, because you mentioned that this is your
potentially your best chapter yet that you've been in is
up partially because of creating the movement that you did
and what you're passionate about now. Is that a part
to that story.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Sure, it's a part of the story, But I would
say the last chapter, I've really spent almost all my
time on serving others, whether it's through nonprofits or mentoring
or my men's groups, or ultimately discovering this rather remarkable
(03:31):
aspect of my life that I hadn't fully appreciated, was
led to this founding of the movement, And it would
be less in candid if I didn't say I've been
rather excited about the impact of the movement, but it
had a lot of other things other than just the
creation of the movement. But I would say in the
last seventeen years, it was the intensified effort to create
(03:57):
awareness about.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
What that was. Tell me about this movement. So the
say It Now movement is very much I would imagine,
inspired from some things that you went through in your life.
You mentioned the passing of your dad. Is that a
part to that story as well?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, So there are several parts I would say, first,
I really didn't. We moved I think it was thirteen
different cities by the time I was eighteen, so I
never really had any friends. I missed them, but didn't
have any, so that made an impact on me. Wow,
must be nice to have them. The second one was
getting a call when I was a freshman at school.
(04:34):
I needed to come home and my father had died
that day, So that was another impact that really life
is unpredictable. He was in his early fifties, and that
was another big deal. I then really began to make
some friends. So later on when I was in my
mid thirties, and so by the time I was fifty,
(04:56):
I wanted to celebrate them, so I brought them together
for my fiftieth birthday. There were five guys, so I
invited my close family and we had seventeen people. Spent
a whole weekend in New York and the first part
of that weekend was for me to pay tribute to
each one and what they had meant to me in
my life. And that was the first time I got
(05:18):
chills just now, this is thirty seven years ago, just
the joyfulness of acknowledging people who had been important to me,
and also that it was gratifying to them as well.
But that was really the first wake up call to
the power of expressing gratitude to people who shaped our lives.
(05:42):
I'm not talking about incident a nice things. I'm talking
about people who really made a difference in our life.
And any of your listeners are self made, they should
let me know, because I haven't met anybody yet, So
my guess is maybe they had a little help along
the way by somebody. I then was touched by some
(06:06):
funerals of rather remarkable people. It was a Tim Russard,
who was a moderator and meet the press. I think
that made a enormous impact on me. There must have
been fifteen hundred people at his funeral. The tributes paid
to him were unbelievable, unbelievable, And Yeah, when the funeral
was over, I had a bittersweet feeling. I'm thinking, I
(06:29):
don't think Tim ever heard this.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, and you mentioned bringing up your birthday that you
decided to celebrate these friends of yours that obviously became
very important to you, especially given what you say about
your childhood and not getting to really create friendships and
have those type of relationships It's very rare that people
will often take a moment of celebratation that's for them
(06:54):
to then turn around and say, hey, I want to
celebrate the people who mean a lot to me, So
tell me about that behind behind the idea.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, it was all part of this realization that our
culture waits for people to die and then we stand
up and we worked so hard at paying tribute to them.
It really seemed rather rather strange, and I came to
the conclusion I didn't want that to be part of
my life. Maybe that was custom made no sense to me,
(07:24):
And so I decided for my seventieth birthday that I
would ask my wife for a gift to be able
to travel around the United States and abroad to sit
down with everybody had been important in my life, everybody
who was still alive, that is, and to sit down
and tell them what they had meant to me. And
that was a profound experience, and that just magnified the obviousness. Morgan,
(07:52):
I can tell you this idea is not only simple,
but it's powerful. And I thought, really the years after
I wrote the book called This Is the Moment, How
one man's year long journey captured the power of extraordinary gratitude.
Where I told everybody about this idea I had that
(08:12):
I took a year off what I said, and the
last third of the book was, hey, listen, now, think
about your lives, think about somebody who's been important in
your life, and tried to inspire them. And that was
seventeen years ago. I've always expected someone to say, well,
there was this movement or that movement, and they've been
doing this for you. Guess what, It's been silent. I've
(08:39):
never heard anybody awaken people to the importance of expressing
gratitude for specific things that shape their life. Many people
do it at celebrations of life, and many people do
it at funerals. I am hopeful that people listening today
(09:00):
we will join this. Really what's become now a global
movement where we crossed fifteen million expressions of gratitude in
the last four years when I decided to make it
a global movement. It's unlikely that any of us will
ever regret what we've said. Very true, but highly unlikely
(09:26):
we will regret what we kept to ourselves.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
You say that in talking about funerals, and I really
think about a lot of the funerals that I've been to,
and how many people do stand at that podium and
they admit and say, I wish I would have said
this more in person, or I wish that they had
known how I felt, or I wish the last time
I talked to him, I said I love you. And
it was a funeral when I was really young, I
(09:52):
very much remember going to a funeral of a classmate.
I was very young in middle school, maybe lay elementary
schoo and a kid had committed suicide, and our whole
school went to the funeral, and I remember one of
his parents saying, please make sure every time you hang
(10:13):
up the phone or you stop talking to me somebody,
that the last thing you say is I love you,
every time. And that really instilled something in me the
experience of what was happening in that moment, and just
of course the loss of someone way too young and
these parents going through that grief. And to this day,
(10:34):
every time i'm endo conversation with somebody that I care
about that I is deeply involved in my life, whether
it's a partner, a friend, my parents, I always say
I love you, And that has always really mattered to
me that I say those things, even if I hang up. Actually,
don't say it. I'll call it back and say, hey,
I love you, by the way, just in case you forgot,
(10:58):
and I have a feeling that's That's a lot of
what you're speaking to here is that you don't ever
have to go saying I wish I would have said this, you.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Know, And the secret sauce in this case is in
addition to the expression of affection, my specific request is
that you enrich the expression with some acknowledgment. I'm not
saying every phone call you're going to do this, but
(11:29):
periodically you stay current and that you make sure everybody
who's impacted your life understands the impact I had on
your life. That's it. That's staying current. And the more
specific you are, the more powerful the gift. And here's
the thing, Morgan, you do this podcast, I assume one
(11:53):
reason is because you want to make a difference very much,
so matter right.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, I want people well to feel connected. I want
people to feel seen, and I very much want them
to feel like this podcast helped them in one way
or another, which is a big reason why I had
you on today because I felt like this was important.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Let's just begin with the simplicity of it. Number one,
I've already established that there's unlikely anyone listening that's done
it all by themselves. So most of them have had
parents that contributed, maybe grandparents, maybe teachers. Maybe there's a coach,
(12:34):
maybe there's a friend. But most likely, somewhere along the line,
somebody has made a difference in your life. Now here's
the other thing. They probably do not appreciate the difference
they made in your life. Now here's the problem or
(12:58):
the opportunity. They made a difference, they don't fully appreciate it.
So who has the gift? The person who is a beneficiary.
So you can keep the gift in your closet and
never give it to anybody. Just leave it there and
then feel the regret, Oh my gosh, I should have
given that gift. Or just take a moment right now
(13:22):
while we're on this podcast, people think, who is it?
What happens? If something unexpectedly happened to that person tomorrow,
how would we feel. So we have the unique position
(13:43):
to validate that a person's life mattered. Maybe you can
say to yourself, I'm pretty special and I've done some
nice things in the world. But the reality is the
validation comes from others now. If they don't express it,
it's a gift that's never given. And the one thing
(14:05):
we want to die with is knowing that our life mattered.
No more complicated than that. We can get into the
variety of ways you could do it, but we're caring
with us the greatest gift that we could give to
people we care about. In addition saying I love you
(14:28):
and I care about.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
You, it is. It's more detailed than that, and it's
why it's such an important conversation because it feels weird
that even me just saying hey, I love you after
every phone call is seemingly difficult for people to understand
that's a necessity. But then taking it the step further
of what you're doing with the say it now movement
to say hey, I really want you to show appreciation
(14:52):
for the people in your life and do it as
often as you can. Why do you feel like to
people that seems like like just such this foreign concept.
Why have we been ingrained to go our whole lives
with never saying anything or saying the things that we feel?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Custom is pretty strong? Yeah, custom is powerful. That's the
way it's been done. People watch how it's been done,
and since it's not customary and may feel a little awkward,
(15:33):
but it doesn't take long to get over that.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
That's true if you've never given a random compliment before,
just to anybody, it's funny. Some of my friends and
I will do it to each other. I'd be like, hey,
we're talking about a memory, or we share a moment
in time, and both of us leave that with smiles
on our faces. You never leave a moment like that
with sadness or with anger. It's almost always when gratitude
(16:00):
is expressed. Gratitude is what leaves with you.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yes, I know you talked about that tragic situation of
the person who took his life. I think he mentioned
in the middle school. And we have a real issue
in this world now, where there's a lot of loneliness.
There's a lot of people who don't really feel they
(16:25):
make much difference, and most likely the people who take
their lives. I would say one element is that it
didn't think their lives mattered. That's not the only reason,
but it's a compelling reason. I'll never forget this story.
(16:45):
Very early on after my book came out, I got
an email from a young girl. I don't know how
old she was. I'm just assuming maybe twenties or thirties,
and she said that she was considering ending her life,
which was amazing because she wrote in an email to
literally a stranger. I was an author, but I was
a stranger. And she said she had been abused when
(17:07):
she was younger from family members and she could never
deal with that and the implications to her. She happened
to pick up my book I don't know what it
was doing in a Philippine library after it was released,
and she read it and she realized, there are people
who have mattered in my life. She wrote me, I
(17:30):
don't know. Maybe a decade later and said she'd moved
to Scandinavia and she had been married and her life
has gone on, but at that moment she didn't really
feel her life mattered. We have a lot of adversarial
relationships these days. Everything seems to be we they, But
(17:52):
gratitude is a solidifying force. It brings you closer to
people that you're already close to, but it adds a
dimension to the relationship. I had a story. I love
this story. A fellow called me. He said, well, I'm
not sure how to do it, I said, doesn't really
matter if it's in person and it's a little difficult,
(18:14):
why don't you just drop a note to the person?
Oh okay, And I hardly knew this person. About three
weeks later, he wrote me, I'd love to tell you
what the experience was like. Now people marvel at how
much it means to the person doing it. You always think, oh,
I'm going to express gratitude to the person so they
all feel wonderful. Guess what, you probably feel more wonderful
(18:37):
in any case, he came back. He said, wealter. I
wrote seventeen letters. And now at that point I had
never known anybody write seventeen letters. So I wrote seventeen letters,
he said. One was to my sister, who I hadn't
spoken to in a year. Our relationship had been fractured.
But when I thought about it, I realized, you know what,
(19:00):
she was very important to me during stage in my life,
and we haven't talked. But I never forgot. Once I
reminded myself of her importance to me, I just wrote
her a letter and told her what it meant. And
he said, rekindled that relationship.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Oh see, and that's what gratitude does. That's what the
power of gratitude is. It's not just belonging in the
one who's giving the gratitude, but you're also receiving the
gratitude on a level when you're giving it. And that's
such a huge part to that story. And that's why
I feel like gratitude is such a powerful I want
(19:39):
to call it energy, and that's probably not the right word,
but it's such a powerful feeling to give gratitude and
to receive it that it can change our lives in
a lot of ways, which is also what I think
you're really the movement is around that and how much
it impacts your life. When you talk about these very
huge mind milestones in your life, your fiftieth and your seventieth,
(20:02):
and how you did things in a way that was
like seemingly giving back to the people who were important
to you, but you were also gaining in those experiences.
Big job, what lessons did you learn when you went
and did those things, Because maybe it will inspire some
people to do something similar or something of their own
(20:25):
that's this kind of big milestone to show gratitude.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
My hope is that there are First of all, I
want to make this really simple. When you talk about gratitude,
A lot of books written, gratitude journals and this and that.
This idea is really, I promise you simple. So I'm
going to tell you how I did it, because somebody
else may say, you know what I can do that.
I definitely could do that. So I wrote the question
(20:50):
what difference did this person make? In my life? So
remind this is when I went on my journey. Before
I went on the journey to visit anybody, I asked myself,
here we are legal pant, what difference did this person
make in my life? And I put bullet points about
specific contributions to my life. That became the basis of
(21:15):
what I communicate.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Now.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
I did it in person, but you could easily take
that and convert into a letter. So let's be really clear.
Number one, it's probably not hard to think of somebody,
probably more than one person right now. Just think of somebody,
(21:36):
hold that person, and then just spend a few minutes
thinking about what difference did that person make in my life?
Capture it. Then you can decide whether you want to
go visit him and tell him you want to send
it to him in a note that he could reread
he or she can reread and enjoy for many years,
(21:59):
which I've done many times. You can send a little
video for a few minutes. Remember, it's not just I
love you, thank you. It's specific as to what difference
a person made in your life. And here's a secret.
It's free. I have nothing to sell. There is no
product here, and it doesn't take a long time. It
(22:22):
can take less than a half an hour, so it's quick.
It's free. It will enrich your life, it will enrich
the relationship. All we have to do is get you
on the bike, get you riding. Maybe you've never ridden before.
We're going to have you get on the bike, and
after you do it a couple of times, it becomes
(22:45):
the way you live now, Morgan, this is my dream
for the movement. The program, the concept that we've talked
about today is now being taught in eighty three thousand
schools around the globe in eighty five countries. The reason
is these kids are going to learn how it works.
(23:07):
As a child's still act unlearned. Oh my god, that's
where I do it. I do it at funerals. Oh really,
I shouldn't do it at funeral How about teaching them
that's the way it is. And my hope is in
the long run that we live more intentionally and it's
(23:28):
the way we live. You don't have to say to yourself, oh,
I think I need to do it. That's just the
way you live. That's the way you live. So I
recognize I'm getting down ahead. But we've had over fifteen
million people try it already. Yeah it works, I promise
(23:48):
you it works. And I have nothing to sell.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
But the idea you talk about, just in general, the
state of the world that we're in, and sometimes we
get lost from the most basic things that can help us.
We stray and we get distracted. And I know personally
that I'm being impacted by technology and the hustle and
bustle of life and the things that we've all been
(24:12):
so ingrained into over time, right and that's what we're
in right now, is the state of the world we've created.
But when you really get back to it, the basic
things are what all of us need to make our
lives feel better and more enriched. Gratitude feels like on
the same basis of hey, get out and touch some grass,
(24:33):
go take a walk, get out there.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Like very basic, but it's.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So important, and sometimes the basics are what we need
to be reminded of, and that's why it's important. It's
important to have a conversation around it much as it's
important to have a movement around it. Yeah, you're right,
I do too want to talk about as well, something
(25:00):
that also I feel like is in your realm of
things and experience that parasocial relationships are something that's very
much happening. Do you know what I'm talking about when
I mean parasocial relationships?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Paris social?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Yes, So when people basically through a screen, through a phone,
through a computer, feel like they have a relationship with
someone they've never met before. Okay, And so there's a
lot of people out there who a celebrity passes away
and they feel insane grief and sadness and just things
(25:35):
that they didn't feel like they should feel over the
loss of someone that they didn't really know. But I
feel like there's a connection between feeling that way and
this thought of never having said the way we feel.
Am I wrong in that.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I never thought about it? Actually? So let me just
think about that for a moment. I think was central
to both of what we're talking about is the importance
of connection. If we don't have one, we might make
(26:13):
it with someone we don't even know, just because we
need it. And that's that loneliness I was telling you about.
And I personally think this is a powerful treatment for
mental health. So you won't have to have these, as
(26:35):
you describe them, artificial disconnects that you make reeal that
you actually have people you'll see in school or in
work tomorrow that have no idea of how they've meant
to you, and maybe their need for these artificial connections
(26:56):
will be reduced if they had some real ones, And
this is one way of developing it. There are other ways,
but this is a pretty powerful way to do to
let people know that what they mean to you is
really significant, feels an emotion that's critical for all of us.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, and you're right. The parasocial relationships are created out
of this desire to have community and connect. And it's
also difficult because I think there's also a lot of
people out there who don't feel seen and heard by
certain communities, which really was what this podcast was born
(27:39):
out of, is just hoping to consistently share stories where everybody,
no matter their scope of life, can feel a connection
with one guest or another and feel that feeling. But
it is something that's missing. And if you look at
our communities now, connection is missing. I often share how
my neighborhood we all talk to each other. I still
(28:01):
talk to my neighbors. I know who they are. We
help each other when things are happening in the neighborhood.
And that's actually rare. I thought that was pretty normal,
but that's rare. And so you're seeing people just lack
community and connection. And I do think that's where parasocial
relationships can be born out of. And to your point,
(28:23):
if we express gratitude before it's too late, maybe we
could have the connection and community that we've been looking for.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
It's no question that's central to your desire for people
to be seen. That if the way people know that
they're seen is because people let them know that they
see them, and by definition they're being seen. Yeah, what
(28:54):
a wonderful way to be seen is to be appreciated
and to know that you matter.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, there's a very popular phrase right now too that
you just reminded me of it. It's to be seen
is to be loved, truly seeing somebody, to truly see
all parts of you and it's so powerful. And you
mentioned the mental health aspect, and I would love to
hear more of your thoughts on the mental health side
of this, because gratitude is such a powerful factor, and
(29:23):
it's why gratitude journals were born, and it helps to
create a more grateful space in which you live, in
in which your mind keeps its space. And what you're
doing with that say it now movement can have an
impact on the mental health crisis that we're facing right now.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, one of the reasons people feel emotionally depleted is
they don't really feel connections. They don't And even I
don't want to disparage gratitude journals, but in many ways,
(30:04):
you're talking to yourself. The expression of gratitude to somebody
who's been important to you, by definition, must include somebody else.
It is, by definition, a connection. It's a way to
deepen a connection. It's a way to rebuild a broken connection.
(30:25):
That's a way to be mentally healthier. No more than that,
do you.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Feel like too, because you've obviously lived multiple lives at
this point now you're in your third teerar for sure,
You've had so many And do you feel like as
you got older, the gratitude and stuff became so much
more important as you got older, Or when did that
moment in your life really hit that you said, Okay,
(30:55):
this is important that I pay attention to this and
this feeling.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I think that different kinds. There's several arenas for gratitude.
One are the blessings we have in our life. We
have beds to sleep in, we have hot and cold
water instantly goes on. We have generally the ability to
feed ourselves, and so they're generally speaking, it's a safe country,
(31:19):
and we have a lot to be grateful for, a
lot to be grateful for. And I think I know
this to be true. Actually, I think when people don't
have something, they feel it more deeply than those that
(31:40):
have it. And so I think it goes back. If
I grew up with a bunch of friends and I
always had friends and always felt connected and always felt
important it, maybe it wouldn't occurred to me when it did,
but I didn't, so I said, oh my, I really
wish I had them. And when I acted on it,
(32:01):
which I described when I was fifty and then again
when I'm seventy, I really feel I struck gold in
terms of emotional health. I think I struck gold. And
the purpose of being on your podcast is to share
that richness with just hope a few people act on it.
(32:24):
Not I don't want people saying, oh, and really, that's
a good idea, or if they read my book, that's
a good book. No no, no, no, no, no, no
no no. I want to know that you've thought about
that one person, and you haven't just thought about that person.
You actually thought about the contribution of that one person.
That's not enough. You're now going to figure out how
(32:46):
do I do it? And I love the story when
I was lecturing at a business school and these are
business school students of there, I don't know, late twenties,
and it was a two hour class. So I actually
had them go through in the class think about somebody,
and I gave them ten minutes in the class to
put down specifics. So why that person came to mind?
(33:08):
And I said, listen, I'm not your professor, but I'm
going to ask you for your homework to go and
express that person to that person one way or the other.
I think it was the next day. It couldn't have
been more than two days. I get this note from
the one of the young ladies in the class, she said,
I and instantly people do tell me their stories. There's
(33:29):
no income in this room. This is all psychic income
when I hear these stories. So she wrote me, and
she said, you wouldn't believe it. I went home. I
lived with my dad. She still is living at home.
She's in her late twenties and her dad works s
late until nine o'clock at night. So she said, when
he came home, I just this is just unbelievable. She said, Dad,
I'd like you to sit down on the couch. She said,
(33:50):
why so, I want to tell you something. What do
you want to tell me? I want to tell you
how I feel about you, she said. He said, I
know how you feel about me. Lived together. No, Dan,
I actually want to sit down. And she took out
her pad and reviewed the specific contributions that her father
had made in their life, and they were both in
(34:12):
tears before she got halfway through the list. And she
lives with that man she had been living. So sometimes
the relationships can be very close and still lack that
very special gift.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
Now I need to hear too, because you spark something
in me, and you've been married. You mentioned your wife.
How long have you been married for.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I've been married, I am married.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Okay, you're married. How long have you been married to her?
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Well? SIXI two wonderful years?
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Incredible? Okay. So when you had this huge idea and
the feeling of gratitude and you wanted to create this,
I'm curious how gratitude impacts your relationship and has it
helped it? Is there ways that you guys expressed gratitude
to each other that maybe can help the rest of
us have sixty two wonderful years of marriage.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
There's more to marriage, as we all know, than the
expression of gratitude. However, if you don't do it, you've
missed a gigantic opportunity. And I would say, long before
we called it, say it now. We've been thoughtful about
letting the other person know. But even saying that, when
(35:25):
I went on my seventieth journey, I sat down with
my wife and went through the same experience with her
that I did the other forty three people. It was
just as meaningful to me, it was meaningful to her.
And even though we're being married a long time, there
(35:48):
are an awful lot of things that you could be
deeply grateful for I would say everything that's been important
in our marriage or important in my life. Sixty two
years we've married, that's a good part of my life.
My wife's either thought of an idea or been fully
supportive of the idea. Now, what a gift is that?
(36:09):
What a gift is that to go when I'm eighty
three years old and decide to create a global movement,
to spend a ton of time and some resources on this.
She said, if it's important to you, I'll support you.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
Yeah, she sounds like a very special lady.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
She's the best. She's the best.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
I love that. And Walter, You've given us so many
reasons to go out and do this. So I'm going
to encourage everyone. I like to always end on something
and we will hear in a second, but I'm going
to encourage everybody to do this, at least with one
person today, to go and express gratitude to that person
in a very meaningful and intentional way and report back.
(36:57):
Love's how I feel. We want to know because I
better it was amazing, and now you just have It's
the trickle effect, right, You do it one time and
you're like, oh, I love that feeling. I got to
keep doing it, Energizer Bunny. We'll hope that's what happens.
But I do like to end my podcast episodes with
a piece of advice or motivation or maybe something that's
heavy on your heart that we didn't get to talk about.
(37:19):
It's whatever you want it to be, so pass the
floor over to you, and you end us on something.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Walter, I want to cut a little bit more slack
to your listeners and say, I'd like you to think
about this person today. I'd like you to think about
their contributions today or tomorrow, and I'd like to act
on it in the next very few days. In other words,
be thoughtful about it, be specific about it. And I
(37:49):
don't really need to do much convincing after the prison
does the first one, and so I think if we
can inspire just the first one, they'll be motivated to
continue the practice. And I don't know if you remember
Pay It Forward. It was a movie where you can't
always do something for the person who did something to you.
(38:11):
And so now let me say, hey, listen, I was
so nice. I'm going to pay it forward. I want
to say it now to be as commonplace as pay
it forward. We've got fifteen million people that expressed it
to fifteen that's thirty million people that have been involved.
I'd like several hundred million people. And I want it
(38:32):
to be the way we live. I want it to
be a conscious, intentional life is one that doesn't let
it go by without acknowledging something of significance. Talking about
just opening the door or baking a cake or whatever.
I'm talking about road changers. We all have road changers.
(38:54):
So my hope is that none of us lose road
changer from this day forward without having told them how
important they are to us.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
That's the perfect thing to end on, because you just
encouraged all of us to make a difference in our lives.
And I think that's all what we need and deserve
right now. So thank you for that and welcome, thank
you for what you're doing. I think to Say It
Now movement is fifty million people. I think we can
get the whole world.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, let's try, and they can go to Say it
Now Just Say it Now dot org. Nothing to sell there,
It just gives you some guidance and help if you
need a little bit more guidance and help. And you
can also watch a Ted talk and documentary and other
things that are on there, But most importantly, I want
to inspire that person to enrich their life and to
(39:49):
enrich the life of somebody who's been very important to them.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
Yes, thank you so much, Walter. You're awesome and very
inspiring and I love your story, so thank you for
being here.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Thank you for being doing what you're doing so the
story gets to be told. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Walter Green took a concept that should be widely acknowledged
and put into action, although it often isn't, and he's
trying to change that with the say It Now movement.
I hope his story inspires you to have some important
conversations with the people who have impacted you and know
not tomorrow or next week, but right now. Yes, now,
that's the whole concept. We're continuing the series next week
with Danny Morrell, who truly knows how to help you
(40:27):
awaken the best version of yourself. It's a fun one.
Subscribe for me if you will, and I'll yap with
you guys next time.
Host
Morgan Huelsman
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