How to be “whimsically available” to others at work
What it looks like to be “whimsically available” to others at work, how to make the shift from “will it work” to “will it last” in your work, and how God can use working in adventurous places like Disneyland and Kennedy Space Center.
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[0:00:06] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as epidemiologists, broadcast technicians, and energy brokers? That's the question we explore every week.
Today, I'm posing it to the legendary Bob Goff. He's the New York Times best-selling author of Love Does, Everybody Always, and a bunch of other books. He's also a mere Christian, who worked as an attorney for 25 years and is Honorary Consul to Uganda. Bob and I recently sat down to talk about what it looks like to be whimsically available to those that you work with. We talked about how to make the shift from will it work, to will it last in your work? Finally, we talked about how God can use working in adventurous places, like Disneyland and Kennedy Space Center. Trust me, you're not going to want to miss this short, terrific episode with my new friend, Bob Goff.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:15] JR: Bob Goff, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:17] BG: Hey, thanks a million, Jordan. Great to be with you.
[0:01:20] JR: Yeah. Hey, so I've loved what I've been reading on this new devotional Catching Whimsy.
[0:01:25] BG: Oh, I'm so glad.
[0:01:26] JR: Oh, I love it. I'm excited to contextualize it to this audience of Christian professionals. I am curious, how do you personally define whimsy?
[0:01:34] BG: Yeah. I'll define it by what it isn't. Sometimes people think of it as confetti and glitter and unicorns and silly. It's not that. It's actually a strategic whimsy. It's a lot of joy and anticipation, but underneath that is a mile of strategy, which would really appeal if you're in the marketplace that you know why you're doing what you're doing. That you're not just showing up.
I just got back from Africa and we have a big chunk of land out there and a school with 1,500 kids living in. I decided to build a university. Now that isn't whimsical. That's just a university. However, I wanted six giraffes. You got to go to the guy that owns a giraffe, which is the president. It was like going to Pharaoh and say like, “Set my long-legged friends free.” The whole idea is that there's a big idea that you have, that it passes the test of a lot of us in the marketplace are saying, will it work? That was me in my twenties and thirties. Now at 65, I'm thinking, will it last?
That pivot is an important one, because you want to do more of the things that are going to actually outlast you. I don't know, and none of us know how many circles around the sun we get. In this brief period of time we have, I'm just not trying to do it. It's not satisfying to say, will it work? But to say, is this thing going to have lasting impact? Is it going to be when the scriptures talk about hungry people, thirsty and sick and strange and naked, people in jail to say, “Is this meet one of those lasting needs?” When it talks about, what is an orphan? There’s a way to actually do that. Because a lot of us just read things and agree with that. I want to actually move from agreeing to just engaging.
[0:03:12] JR: Yeah. It's really good. I love that shift from what's going to work. I understand that your twenties when you're trying to provide for your family, right? You meet those basic needs and you're moving to what's going to last. How's that connected to whimsy? What role does whimsy play for you right now in helping you create and invest your time at things that last?
[0:03:31] BG: Oh, yeah. It means constantly doing what Cortez did in burning the ships. Remember that? Like, shall we leave? As the last ship is sinking into the sea on fire, so what's your next question? For somebody in the marketplace would be leaving what you're merely capable of to do that sense of calling, and not in a mysterious way, but I put my cellphone number of the back of three million books, and that whole idea of availability, that's really, really whimsical. I get so many calls every day that that idea of saying, can we leave what we're known for and think, what do I want to be remembered for, right?
If you met me 20 years ago, everybody knows me as Bob the trial lawyer. At some point, I thought, it's a great job, I enjoy and all that, but I don't feel like seeing to give the lasting impact that as I've evolved as a person. I just burned the ships. I walked into my own law firm. I started quitting things on Thursday. Every Thursday, I quit one more thing. I walked out of the 17th floor of this high-rise in downtown Seattle and the receptionist said, “Who are you here to see?” I said, “Actually, that's my name right behind you.” I realized I hadn't been in my own office for almost a year.
Now, I went to Seattle all the time to work, but I would go to work and then fly home to San Diego every single day. Fly up in the morning and fly back. That in a weird way is whimsical, because I lived in San Diego, but I practiced law somewhere else and I just got the cheapest seat on American Airlines and I would just go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, eating my body weight in peanuts. It wasn't just that, I started writing down what I thought about things. I’d write that. If you want to lead a noteworthy life, take a couple notes on what are you learning. What am I learning from you, Jordan? What am I learning from the person around me, the person that bags the groceries, or delivers the mail, or people that are noteworthy, or notorious? What are the things – I teach at St. Quentin — I've been teaching there for years and years and years. There are some pretty notorious people, I’m like, “I've read about you.”
That whole idea to say like, what can I learn from you today? I don't go to teach. I go to learn. There's something beautiful if we can cast ourselves, and again, that's whimsy. Somebody walking in to say, “I've got the plan.” There's nothing wrong with plans. But to say, I've got the plan and they try to control the room, there's nothing whimsical about that. In its worst form, its manipulation. In its best form, it's just really organized. Sometimes we can organize this child life wonder right out of our life.
I teach at Pepperdine Law School, but I also stop at Disneyland on the way. I'll just go and sit down on Tom Sawyer Island. People know, Wednesday, 10 to 2, when they can find me, or I'll send out a little something. I'll just say, “I'm on Tom Sawyer Island today.” There's something really winsome and lasting about that, that people come up and you make yourself available. There's something strategic about it as well.
[0:06:35] JR: Yeah. How is making yourself available – I think there's intrinsic value in this, right? This is just a really practical way to love our neighbors as ourselves. What's the strategic value of your absurdly whimsical availability?
[0:06:48] BG: I'm just thinking about the way that Jesus rolled. I mean, here's this guy that knew he had three years to get it done, this public expression of love as he's out with people. Yet, he's the most available guy I can think of. People are tugging on his shirt and he's like, “Who was that?” Or a little guy in a Sycamore tree, he’s like, “Lunch, on you.” He had time for everybody. While God — it’s not lost on me, the first thing he made was time. Sometimes it's the last thing that we make. I thought, rather than being that person that writes a country, Western song about a big old dog and a big old truck, and then people like it, so they stop being available anymore. They have people you have to talk to, or somebody gets a bit part in a movie, or somebody gets a job promotion. Now, they're the big cheese in the C-suite and they're not available.
I'd say, what if we flip that, let's invert it and see what would happen if we were just weirdly available? If writing books is your thing, put your cellphone number out there. You'll get a couple odd calls. I have. I mean, there's a guy. I don't know what his jam was, but he would call me up and just cuss at me. I'd be like, just amazing. I'm a lawyer. I know most of the cuss words.
[0:08:00] JR: But he invented some new ones it sounds like.
[0:08:01] BG: He would come up with new ones. I would put him in caller ID as a Vulgar Kid, because I knew I was going to get an earful if he called.
[0:08:12] JR: But you would answer the call.
[0:08:13] BG: I would answer the call and I would end it the same way every time. I say, “I will always take your call.” Because I'm probably the only guy that would take his call, because I'm probably not the only one he's going off on. It's pretty off-putting behavior. What if you could be the one safe person in somebody's life? If you just said, it's not about me and how I'm feeling. I'm not saying you need to be a doormat for everybody. What if we said, this selfless act of love might be to just be available? If you're in the marketplace and you're listening to this, there's this prickly person. Nobody wants to talk to Jim and HR. Sorry, Jim, if that's you listening. But nobody wants to talk to that guy, be the one guy that doesn't say, “How are you?” And he says, “Fine.” He says, “How are you?” And you say, “Fine.” But say, “Jim, what's it feel like to be you today? Let me tell you, while you're thinking about that, let me tell you what it feels like to be me. It feels like a 100% anticipation and about 80% insecurity.”
Most people wouldn't guess that that's where I live in total anticipation. They might figure that out, because I'm a pretty upbeat guy, but they wouldn't realize just how insecure that I am. A lot of my joy is not fake, or fabricated, but it's learning how to cope with my insecurity. These are the conversations I want us to be available to. We can lead with that authenticity, and what that will breed is more authenticity, and what that will lead to is greater whimsy.
[0:09:38] JR: Yeah. It sounds so “unproductive” by the world’s standards to be available like this. I read I've studied the life of Fred Rogers really carefully. He was radically available to everyone around him, even when he was at the height of his fame with Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. Speak to that and how we as believers should be measuring productivity differently from the rest of the world.
[0:10:01] BG: Yeah. I just think there's this thing. You're not doing it. It's not a transaction that you're available, because you're going to meet people in a moment of desperate need. Somebody will be reading a book to their loved one that's in hospice and they're just pining away the hours together and they get to the end of the book and they find your phone number and they don't have anything going on, they said, “I wonder if this is for real.” Just two days ago, with this really, it felt a sacred moment with some people that are just in the final stages of life. Then kids, like the Vulgar Kid. There's something that keeps me really grounded and everybody can decide what level of availability would be comfortable.
Sweet Maria Goff, my wife, she's available to me, the people we made, the people they married and the people they made. That's it. But she's really weirdly available to all of them. But to everybody else, not so much. For me, I'm like Tigger. Maybe you're the same way. Just feel like, people.
[0:11:05] JR: Yes. Yes.
[0:11:07] BG: We get this little shed, it’s described as a vapor that we have this little bit of time here. I just want to be available. What if we just, the more we're known for something, what if we say, what do I want to be remembered for? I want to be remembered for the most available guy in the room. I'll never be the smartest guy in the room, but I can be the most available guy in the room. Each of us in our own way. If you're not available, it doesn't mean you're betraying Christ when your phone goes to the answering machine and the rooster crows. Isn’t like that. It's just say like, hey, that's not my jam.
[0:11:43] JR: This is just a different way to look at it.
[0:11:44] BG: Yeah. Yeah. What if we just lean into whatever is the newest, not the most comfortable version of you, or the most familiar version of you, but the most winsome version of you? What do you want to be remembered for? I heard somebody describe it this way. They said, to spend 15% of your day deciding what you're going to do, the 15% of your life, the last 15% of your life. Plan now for what do you want to be remembered for and then just start reorganizing some things. For me, that meant quitting my job. I fired myself from my own law firm. I took the key off the ring. I gave it to a guy and said, “It's all yours, man. You don't owe me a thing.” I've never gone back.
[0:12:23] JR: Yeah. I love it. You mentioned Tom Sawyer Island. You’re famous, of course, for working in these whimsical adventurous places, like Disneyland. What is working in places like this do for your soul? Does this fill you up to work in these adventurous places? Then, what does it do for your goals? Do you find you're more productive as you're working outside of the proverbial box?
[0:12:46] BG: Yeah. Location, location, location. I don't want to have a conversation in a boardroom with somebody, hence the name board, because that would be me. Instead, what I would want to do is to say, meet me at Tom Sawyer Island on Wednesday at 3. If they don't want to pay 110 bucks and get in, that's a bit of a gatekeeper literally and figuratively. If people really want to meet, that's a place. If there's people that are really mad at each other, they're just daggers for each other. They ask me if I can help them navigate that. Then I say, Tom Sawyer Island. Because nobody yells at Disneyland.
[0:13:22] JR: Nobody yells in Disneyland.
[0:13:22] BG: Location, location, location. You can scream on a ride. You just can't scream at each other.
[0:13:27] JR: That's right. That's right.
[0:13:30] BG: I think that idea that, again, is strategic whimsy. As a trial lawyer, I don't know how many cases I would have the litigants meet me at Disneyland if they have to fly in from somewhere, they need to fly in from somewhere. There's something beautiful. We get to change it up. Just that small little change, it just goes that quarter twist makes all the difference. There's places that you might need. It may be a Starbucks, or Dippin’ Dots. I mean, they cost more than drugs, but what a great way to meet. They're like, “Let's meet for Dippin’ Dots. You pay.” The reason I'm thinking about Dippin’ Dots is that was one of the calls I got, from the guy that invented Dippin’ Dots. I'm telling you, when you write your book, and he invented it, as you would imagine, by mistake. It wasn't the plan. He was trying to put something else together and then those popped out.
[0:14:20] JR: Yeah. I find that working in types of places like this expands my vision for the work. My friend, Cal Newport, talks a lot about this. He calls this adventurous working, right? I like to work on the Library of Congress in DC, or Kennedy Space Center, or there’s this great coffee shop right next to the Golden Gate Bridge called The Interval in San Francisco. I find that when I do, I don't know, God just reveals things to me in my work. It just unlocks creative connections that I don't get right here in my home office. Has that been your experience?
[0:14:52] BG: Yeah. It's being wonderfully inefficient in the way that you do things.
[0:14:57] BG: Yeah. You get less done. Yeah, if you can only get there by cable car, that would be the way to do it. Somebody would say ergonomically, that is not the way to do it. We're not trying to be the most efficient in the way that we love people. We're not being the most efficient, because if you've ever had somebody, a former boyfriend or girlfriend that has been really efficient in the way that they love you, it doesn't feel very loving. The whole idea, sweet Maria and I, I work in Seattle, I live in San Diego. For 25 years, I'd go up in the morning, last seat on the airplane, back at night. Up in the morning, back at night.
It wasn't efficient, but we're not trying to be efficient. We're trying to be extravagant in the way we love people. Maybe outward looking, if this fits with how you were knit together in the factory, that to be extravagant with your love. That just means spending a little time. If somebody calls and they say, “Hey, I want to tell you my life story about whatever,” and say, “Oh, gosh. I don't have as much time as I wish I had, but tell me the last couple sentences. I just love to hear the last little bit about where you are right now.” If they respond by saying, “Well, when I was an embryo,” Oh, this is going to take a while.
What I'll do is I'll then say, “Hey, here's my email address, bob@bobgoff.com, easy to remember. Just send me an email. Collect your thoughts. They're a verbal processor. They'll collect their thoughts.” Then I could give them a really kind and engaging and meaningful response. I get hundreds of emails. I love it. Hey, it's not what – I'm not looking for new best friends. I just love that idea of honoring people to say like, “You matter. You count.” I would want to be remembered as the guy that answers everybody's emails. The guy that answers everybody's calls.
[0:16:44] JR: Were you like this at the law firm?
[0:16:46] BG: Let's see. I think, I was thinking pretty focused, because we're handling just immense things that would take five or more years to get that peg through the snake. There would be usually, there would be our law firm would represent the owner of a high rise and there might be 50 law firms on the other side. I remember being, my recollection of that was being really busy and really afraid that I'd screw up and fail.
[0:17:12] JR: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:17:13] BG: That's the attribute that you want of your lawyer, a fear of failure.
[0:17:18] JR: That's right. That's right. Hire that attorney. Talk to the attorney who's still practicing, who's listening right now, or the executive at Amazon. What does it look like for them to practically be this available, when they do have real demands on their time within their role? What advice would you give them?
[0:17:38] BG: I would say, why don't you bring some creativity and winsomeness to what you're doing? Go find somebody who's got that cubicle, that's out in the middle and swap them offices for the day, but don't make a big deal about it. Just say, “Let's swap offices for the day.” The whole idea is to be secretly incredible. Don't make a big deal about it and you get a little golf club. But instead, just do that because this in reverse economy that Jesus was talking about, like first is last, last is first. Lead means follow.
If you could just think of a hundred winsome ways, have a jar of marbles, and every time that you have a conversation with somebody that really matters, you drop a marble in there. There's something beautiful that when the person that works for you leaves, they see you put a marble in there, they go like, “Wow, I got a marble. That counted.” I really mattered in that conversation.
[0:18:32] JR: This mattered.
[0:18:34] BG: Take notes on each other. Make yourself each other's biographers. We don't paddle around the people who work with me. They have their lives and we're busy doing stuff, but we honor and respect one another. We know enough to check in and they check in on us. There's something about that disclosure to let people save people in the door a little bit. I just think, there are winsome ways at the lunch break. Go wash somebody's car. Just find the messed-up car. Don’t fuss with somebody's fancy car, because you'll scratch it and owe him a bunch of money. But just find somebody's worked car. Ask them when they walk into your office, “Hey, what was your first car, anyway?” Yeah, tell me this. Jordan, what was your first car?
[0:19:14] JR: I had a Ford Taurus. It was terrible. It was a boat.
[0:19:16] BG: What color it was?
[0:19:17] JR: It was a silver Ford Taurus. Actually, I just saw this car inside the Chick-fil-A lobby, Truett Cathy has one –
[0:19:23] BG: No.
[0:19:24] JR: - in his collection. What was your first car, Bob?
[0:19:27] BG: Yeah, it was a light blue. I want to stay away from baby blue. It was a light blue Volkswagen Beetle. I can remember the interior was black. It had a cassette, AM/FM cassette. If somebody asked me, what is your fifth car? Or if I said, Jordan, what was your fifth car? I'd just be like, just say it fades. We always remember that first, first day at school, first kiss, first time you touch knees, first job, first, whatever. I would say, for that employer, somebody in the C-suite, somebody that's the lawyer now, I would say, what was the job that you wanted? When you first got this, what were you out for when you first set sail, when you cast your lines off and said, at first, you just wanted to make rent.
I mean, it was really, I wanted to make rent, Burger King and rent. I was pretty much handled. Then your life got more complicated. I wonder if you could find your way back to your first love. That's how Revelations 2, too. That my problem with you is this, that you forgot your first love. If we could just boil it down, maybe engage in those conversations. It makes me want to ask some of my friends here, what their first car was. Maybe they're still driving their first car. They ask those questions, take a genuine interest in other people. There's something beautiful that emerges in that.
All of a sudden, work doesn't feel like work. Work feels like a safe place. Work is a place where people are known and there's a vulnerability, and that leads vulnerability is the gateway to whimsy.
[0:20:59] JR: I think the key to that, to being so others focused is ourselves experiencing the love that we have in the father. I love in the introduction to Chasing Whimsy, you tell the reader that you wrote this devotional quote, “To remind you how over the moon God is about you.” I'm curious for you, Bob, what disciplines do you have in place, that you credit with helping you remember how over the moon God is about you personally?
[0:21:24] BG: Oh, yeah. Here's the first thing I did. I bailed about 30 years ago in having quiet times.
[0:21:29] JR: Yeah, tell us more.
[0:21:30] BG: Minor, super loud. What I'll do is I'll take everything that I do. I bet, I send myself a hundred emails a day. I’m like, “Him again? Block.” But shards of ideas, things that I'm thinking about, things somebody said, maybe Jordan, something you said that made sense. Then want to do that idea of what Paul said to check it against scripture. My times are really focused, but I'm trying to get to the truth. Is there something underneath that for me? It's not so I can teach other people, but so that I can arrive. If I came over to your house for dinner, I wouldn't arrive empty handed. I'd have something with me. I'd bring a story, or a bottle of wine, a bread. I'd come up with something.
What if we engaged when you walk in to your workplace? Come prepare the first coin ever made in the United States. On one side, it said, we are one. I think of John 17, the father and I are one and that we need to be one. On the other side, it says, “Mind your business.” I love that. Instead of just thinking about that, I got the coin. There's somebody that plays a lot of music and they were going through some times, I gave him my coin. It's just like, that idea that's winsome. The patterns, the habits that I have, there was somebody who's a friend of a couple of ours here that had gone through a really hard time. There was this coat I found. It looked like Joseph's coat of many colors. I said, figure out her size on the slide. I don't look at the tag of her coat that she's wearing, or something. Let's go get one of those and give her. I love those capers. We don't even need to send something with it. When it arrives, she'll know. She'd be like, “Oh.”
I think if we could be loaded with that, if somebody is a reader of Huck Finn’s, or thing, go find a first edition somewhere on Amazon. I've got an old Bible by JB Phillips. They called it the cookbook Bible, way back in the day. It looked like there ought to be a muffin recipe in there, but it was the first living Bible. It was just in modern-day English. I will find eBay and find all the cookbook Bibles I can find, and they're like hens teeth. But when I find one, then at Christmas time, I just start mailing them out to people, because it's just cool.
[0:23:38] JR: I love it. It's great. Speaking of which, it reminds me of one of the four rapid-fire questions we rounded every episode with. Number one, looking ahead of the new earth, Isaiah 65 says, we're going to long enjoy the work of our hands, free from the curse of sin. What job would you love Jesus, the king to give you on the new earth?
[0:23:55] BG: Oh, wow. The job. I would say, greeter.
[0:23:58] JR: That's great. Oh, my God. I’d be shocked if that's not your job in the New Jerusalem is greeter. I love that.
[0:24:07] BG: Just be like, this is going to be great. I would tell people when I greet them, get prepared to unlearn a whole bunch of the things you were positive about.
[0:24:15] JR: Yeah. For sure. For sure.
[0:24:18] BG: That would be. It'd be a greeter with a message and it would be, welcome, like awesome. If you don't like people, I've been watching. If you don't like people, you're going to hate heaven.
[0:24:27] JR: You’re going to hate. You’re going to hate it here.
[0:24:29] BG: Because, talk about everybody always, right?
[0:24:31] JR: That's exactly right. All right. Number two, we opened up your Amazon order history. What book would we see you buying over and over and over again for friends?
[0:24:38] BG: Yes. In addition to melatonin, you’d find – I’d see loads of melatonin. In addition to that, I think the last book I got there, usually books by friends. I'm trying to support them, because they've just written a book, and so I want to bump up their stuff. There was a friend that released a book and I really wanted him to get to be the number one release. When he got to number three, or number two, I'd buy 50 more books, 25 more books. Had fun for that. I think that's when you'd find some weird numbers of books. Then you'd find books. I got Peter Pan recently. I love that book. Cause those are this winsome, that idea you could take a book and say, I love the introduction to it. They're asking, Wendy, why do the swallows make their nests in the leaves and the eaves? She said, it's cause they like to listen to the stories. I just love it. So much wisdom there. Because the guy at the tire store would understand what that was about.
[0:25:41] JR: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Hey, speaking of stories, whose story would you like to hear on a podcast like this? What Christian is out there in the world doing really interesting work that you'd love to hear them talk about how their faith influences that work they do?
[0:25:56] BG: Yeah, I think, but it isn’t a name that comes to mind, but it's the guy, or gal that no one has heard of. They're just doing faithful stuff. There's a guy named Kevin that comes to mind that's serving people on Skid Row in Los Angeles. I met him in Saint Quentin. Now, what he does is he makes sandwiches in his kitchen and with his new wife, Molly, they go and they serve people on Skid Row. I'd want to have us learn from him. What do you learn about life and faith? He's never going to have a great, big nonprofit. He's never going to have a great, big whatever, but he's just a faithful guy.
[0:26:33] JR: You can send Kevin our way. Those are the majority of our episodes, janitors, nurses you've never heard of. People who haven't written a book and have a platform. I love that answer.
[0:26:41] BG: Yeah. Bingo.
[0:26:42] JR: All right, Bob, if you could say one more thing to this audience of Christian professionals who want to glorify God and their work, what would it be?
[0:26:49] BG: I'll tell you this. I think God takes all of our accomplishments and degrees and really wonderful stuff. He just makes confetti out of them at some point. It's just like, I'm just picturing that big, at the end of the fireworks show, there's the grand finale where all the fireworks go up in the air. I think he uses what all of our accomplished form, not because they are bad accomplishments. They were really noble and it was really great. Then he uses that to celebrate the humble and the poor and the person that is hurting and all that. He uses that stuff that, so that we don't overvalue that, nor do we undervalue that. That your work is noble, whether you're bagging groceries, or leading a Fortune 500 company. It's noble work and that God will use that to celebrate people that are doing the things that aren't recognized and all that. Let's just spend our time lighting those fuses.
[0:27:44] JR: Bob, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do for the glory of God and the good of others, for reminding us to lift up the humble, for reminding us to exude the whimsy of Jesus and everything that we do. Guys, the new devotional for Bob is called Chasing Whimsy. You can pick it up wherever books are sold. Bob, thanks for hanging out with us today.
[0:28:03] BG: Thanks a million. I appreciate it. Take the rest of the day off.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:28:07] JR: I loved Bob's answer to the question of who he would want to hear on the podcast. That's who I want to hear more on this podcast. Here's the challenge though, mere Christians with no platforms are hard to find, right? We don't know where they are. Their publicists aren't pitching us books. That's why we rely on you, our listeners to help us find the godliest mere Christians you know, who are making sandwiches for the poor, like Kevin, the guy that Bob was talking about, or are working a retail job, or are driving an Uber 30 hours a week, whatever it is, let us know who they are at jordanraynor.com/contact. We would love to chat with them. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
[END]