Appreciating the Damn Good Things with Peter Andersen

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of the Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self, love, empowerment, soul alignment and joy. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
What does it mean to feel fully alive? Is it the grand adventures that we chase or or the small everyday moments that shape who we are? In our busy lives, where everything seems to move at lightning speed, it's easy to overlook the beauty in the ordinary. But what if the most damn good things in life aren't found in the spectacular, but in the simple? Today, we're diving deep into the power of storytelling, memory, and the moments that make life meaningful with a true master of the craft, Peter Andersen. Peter is a retired journalist and and author who spent 30 years at Microsoft where he chronicled stories that shaped the digital age. Now he's turned his focus to something even more profound, helping people preserve their personal histories. His latest book, Damn Good Small Moments that Make a Big Difference, is a beautiful reminder that life's greatest treasures often come in the quiet, unexpected moments. He's also the founder of Andersen Life Stories, a Seattle based company dedicated to capturing the rich personal narratives that that might otherwise be lost to time. In this conversation, Peter will share why documenting our life stories matters not just for ourselves, but for the generations that follow. We'll explore the power of personal storytelling, how small moments can have big ripple effects, and how reflecting on our past can actually help us live more fully in the present.

Jennifer Norman:
So if you're ready to find more meaning in the moments that make up your life, stay tuned. This is a conversation you won't want to miss. Welcome to the show, Peter.

Peter Andersen:
Thank you, Jennifer. I'm very happy to be here.

Jennifer Norman:
So delighted to have you here. Now, we were talking before the cast about, wow, what a good time to be positive because there is a lot going on these days. Otherwise we know that a lot of people are struggling with fear and loneliness and uncertainty. So the idea of appreciating these damn good things might seem small or even impossible. So I'd love to hear how do you see people these moments as a form of resilience rather than just a feel good idea.

Peter Andersen:
What a great question. I'll give you an example. I was coming home from work one day a few years ago and I stopped at the grocery store to get some stuff and I was tired and I was at the grocery and just wanted to get home. And I walk out of the store and I hear this child's voice shouting SpaghettiOs just as loud, as loud as he could over SpaghettiOs over and over again. I look across the parking lot and there's this young boy about 5 years old in a Spider man suit, fully dressed in a Spiderman suit and green rubber boots and, and he's holding his dad's hand and they're walking into the store and the boy is shouting SpaghettiOs. You talk about Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. You know, you've got the basic food and shelter down here and then love and self esteem and everything as it goes up. This guy had them all.

Peter Andersen:
He had everything. He had shelter and family, he had his dad right there. He had self esteem. He was Spider Man. He was going in to get SpaghettiOs which would obviously that's his happy place. And everyone in the parking lot stopped and, and looked and just there was just this moment where we saw this little boy completely alive. He was firing on all pistons. And it's not just that he was happy, he was obviously very happy, but he was so in the moment and so engaged.

Peter Andersen:
And I thought about recording these little stories. It occurred to me later I got in my car and I made a little note in my digital recorder that this had happened. I don't think either the boy or his dad was going to remember that moment because 5 year olds don't really, we don't remember much about when we're five, when we grow up. And dads, they have a lot on their mind. They don't have enough sleep, they're sleep deprived. And so the dad. We forget things as parents, we forget a lot of things that happen. And I thought here's this incredible moment.

Peter Andersen:
I'm going to share this moment with the world. I'm going to put it in my book. And yet the people who are actually creating this moment aren't going to remember it, which I thought was really interesting. So in terms of resilience, it's just there's something about stopping in the moment and seeing what's around you and appreciating the beauty of what's around you. And I know that sounds like a cliche, but there are little things around us and even either we miss them because we're bombarded with information these days. Absolutely bombarded with information. A lot of it is really scary information too. And we have to tune things out.

Peter Andersen:
We put up filters and we block things out. But when we block out the bad things, we also block out the good things. And it's easy just to curl up under your blanket and say, I'm going to have some coffee and watch TV or something. But these things are happening and so you have to decide first of all that you're going to look for them. You have to make a decision and say, stop. I'm actually going to look for this stuff because I know it's out there. And then you just have to know when to look, basically.

Peter Andersen:
And when is any time. I have a grandfather clock in our home, which I just love. We've had it forever. I've had it since I was a kid. I actually got it from my grandfather. It's an antique, wonderful grandfather clock. It chimes at the wrong time. And other clocks chime 4 o' clock, 5.

Peter Andersen:
This clock, it gets to 3, 14 in the afternoon, it goes bong, bong, bong, and you know, or 6:17 in the morning and bong, bong, and. And you don't even know how many times it's going to bong until it does it. It's just wonderful. It chimes a random hour at a random minute. And I love this because it keeps you on your toes. It's basically, I call it the crazy clock. It's sending a message, it's sending a reminder that the important thing, the important moment, the moment that's worth gonging about could happen anytime. And I thought, what's the good of a regular clock? It does the same thing over and over and over again every hour.

Peter Andersen:
Tell your 4 o' clock, 5 o' clock. This clock keeps you on your toes and. And it says, hey, look out. Any. The most important moment of your life might come at 19 minutes past the hour or something. So when you stop and you decide that these things are there and you decide to be open to them and you know that they're there and you know that they could happen at any time, then you connect with them and it's almost. I don't know if it's about resilience. It's sort of about being in a different place.

Peter Andersen:
Maybe it's more transcendence, I don't know. But when you experience this and everything else goes away and I mean, it's like. It's kind of like mindfulness it's kind of like gratitude. There's a lot of stuff kind of mixed in there. But again, the SpaghettiOs boy, the spider man, you know, boy, standing in the parking lot for everyone there, it just. Everything stopped. Everything stopped. And we all went, wow.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow, that's adorable.

Peter Andersen:
I like to say that a good thing makes you smile. A damn good thing takes your breath away. That's the difference. And maybe it would have been a good thing if he'd just been shouting SpaghettiOs, but he hadn't had the Spider man outfit or. Or if he had the Spiderman outfit but not shouting SpaghettiOs, but the fact that he had all that. There was just so much going on with him. And like I say, he was just so engaged. So it's.

Peter Andersen:
Yeah. When you notice these moments, it takes you to a different place. It's grounding. It's very grounding.

Jennifer Norman:
Amazing. The impetus for you writing damn good things came from a boyhood memory. Correct. That you had when you were on a roller coaster with your father.

Peter Andersen:
It's so funny. And it's a perfect example of something that I had completely forgotten for 20 years. I was actually. I just graduated from college and I was going to England to teach for the summer. And my dad was on sabbatical studying in Copenhagen. And so I stopped in Copenhagen for a few days to spend some time with my dad before going on to London. And I forget where my mom was. She was somewhere else.

Peter Andersen:
But anyways, just me and my dad for a few days. It was really fun. And so we spent a lot of time walking around Copenhagen. It's such a beautiful place. And we wound up one day at Tivoli Gardens, this incredible Hans Christian Andersen, sort of inspired amusement park. And it was beautiful with all the lights and all the people and everything. And we decided to go on a roller coaster. And I haven't been on a lot of roller coasters.

Peter Andersen:
I don't know if my dad had ever been on a roller coaster. But somehow we decided, we're going to go on this roller coaster. And so we went and it was fun. It was, you know, we were shouting and screaming, like everybody and going around the turns and all the roaring and thundering and everything. And it was really exciting. We had a great time. It was a great sort of bonding thing. And then I guess I went back and wrote this down in my journal and just one little paragraph.

Peter Andersen:
And the last sentence of the paragraph was, what a damn good thing for me and my dad to do. No. And so anyway, then I went on to London I taught, I did other things. Started a family, had a career, moved on, totally forgot about all this stuff. And then we moved a few years ago, and I was going through some old boxes, and I ran across this journal from 1985, whatever it was, And I was just flipping through it, and here's this paragraph about this roller coaster ride. I had completely forgotten about it. And I read it and I thought, wow, what? That's really cool. And then I got to this sentence, what a damn good thing for me and my dad to do.

Peter Andersen:
And I started thinking, well, that was a damn good thing. And I. What makes something a damn good thing? And so I started looking around in my life and looking for these moments when you feel really excited or really alive. And I started finding them, and I started collecting stories. Things that had happened to me, things that happened to other people, stories that I'd heard. And a few years later, I had this book, and it's a collection of 30 stories. In each story, someone is. Is having some moment.

Peter Andersen:
And they're. They're nothing moments. They're little moments. You just go, stop. You stop and you go, this is incredible. This is really incredible. I went to a wedding a number of years ago, good friend of mine from college. And there had been a band.

Peter Andersen:
When we went to Colorado College, there was a band in Colorado or nearby, in Colorado Springs, called the Boll Weevils. And it was the greatest rock and roll band. They made one record, they toured a little bit, but they just kind of did it on their own time and everything. And then they disbanded. Anyone who ever heard the Boll Weevils live in concert, this you've never heard. It's like having the Rolling Stones in your living room, basically. You've never heard better rock and roll than this. And so my friend Jeff, who was getting married, happened to be friends with all the guys in the band.

Peter Andersen:
And some of us got to thinking, wait a minute. What if all the guys in the band get invited and they all show up and there's a reunion? We've got this wedding. It's gonna be parties for two or three days. Gonna have the. We're gonna get the band back together. This is gonna be so cool. And sure enough, I think everyone was there. I saw them, you know, okay, they're gonna do it.

Peter Andersen:
Let's, you know, it sounded. Now here's the thing. They're gonna do. No, they didn't do it. Didn't do it Sunday. Didn't do it. Anyway, there was no reunion. But Sunday morning after the wedding, we had all been invited to go to church.

Peter Andersen:
And so we went to church. And I was thinking, wow, that was kind of disappointing. Wonderful wedding. I'm excited about that. But I was also tired after the wedding weekend and kind of let down. And the band wasn't getting back together and I was feeling old and my friend was getting married, and I just thought, oh, gosh, my youth is gone. All that stuff, it seemed like it was so close, but it's all gone. We start singing How Great Thou Art, and I hear this voice from the pew behind me, and I realize it's the guy, it's Ned.

Peter Andersen:
It's the vocalist from this band. And he. His voice still totally, totally has it. And he is just howling out like Jim Morrison and John Lennon and whoever, all combined. He's just howling this thing right in my ear, this incredibly beautiful hymn with his incredibly powerful voice. And I thought. And that was such a lesson because I was looking for something in front of me, hoping it's going to happen, hoping it's going to happen. This thing that I was looking for turned out to be behind me.

Peter Andersen:
And in a way, that was better than having an actual reunion of the band because it was a private show. It was just. I was the only one who could distinguish his voice. He was singing right in my ear. And just little things like that, you just go, wow, this is. Just stop and pay attention. This is wonderful.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting because. Because some of these damn good things. Think about the boy in his spider man suit, and we think about childhood when everything is novel, everything is new, everything's exciting and exhilarating and fresh because you're just constantly experiencing, like, every day is Disneyland, right? And then as you get older, life happens and you start to feel like the weight of expectations, like you're almost expecting that surprise me, delight me. Something else is going to happen, something else is going to be new. And then as people are scrolling, that's something that they're looking for in terms of those dopamine hits. Far as just, like, what is the new surprising thing that's going to make me laugh or a meme that I can send to my friend? And so there's oftentimes these canned approaches to just trying to get a little bit of entertainment more than anything, rather than the sitting back, appreciating mindfulness and truly coming at it, like, in eyes of, like, a new child, like, having that. That childlike spirit about you and that enthusiasm for life and what is in the here and now.

Jennifer Norman:
What do you Think in terms of, like, when people do get stressed, relationships get strained. There's uncertainty everywhere. How do you think that shifting our focus to, like, these small, meaningful moments can help us navigate challenges without feeling like we're just pretending that things are okay?

Peter Andersen:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. Again, I think it just puts you in this other place, and it. It takes you out of that world where things are so hard. And. Because I think everything. I'm getting out of my league here, but I think everything is there in front of us.

Peter Andersen:
All the good, all the bad, everything is there. And because we're adults, because we have to pay the bills, we have to pay the mortgage, you know, we have to do what. We have so many responsibilities. That's what we have to focus on. And so that's why things often get difficult. You get upset in a relationship, you get hurt. You get this. You know, someone's doing one thing, someone's trying to do a different thing, and there's a clash.

Peter Andersen:
And it's because you're sort of in different worlds. And I'm not saying in any way that damn good things are. They're not going to cure a toothache. They're not just a panacea for everything. They're not going to cure everything. They can get you to stop and get you out of that bad place sometimes. Or if you learn how to look for them and to appreciate, maybe you won't be so likely to get into that bad place. It's not necessarily a cure, but if you can learn how to be more in that mindfulness zone, yeah, I think that can help.

Peter Andersen:
And, yeah, what you say about these little tan things, I mean, it's like the difference. I'm a big movie buff. It's like the difference between going to an okay movie and going to an unbelievably good movie. The unbelievably or any form of art, a Beethoven symphony versus whatever, it just knocks your socks off. It takes your breath away. And it's. In art, there has to be an artist who creates that, a film director or an actor or a painter or whatever musician in life. They just happen on their own.

Peter Andersen:
And so, in a sense, it's easier to look for them when they happen in nature rather than trying to do this huge, contrived thing. Because there are beautiful, wonderful, incredible pieces of art, obviously, and we appreciate them and we need them, but they don't always work out. Sometimes great artists can fail at something. And so when you go to something expecting something wonderful, and it doesn't work. It's really disappointing. Yeah. The difference between something that's mediocre and like, walking out of a really great movie after it's over.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I've started to really take into practice the looking for it, looking for the good, looking for the. The thing that is just like, wow. Something to appreciate, something to be grateful for. Because where your attention goes there, your energy goes as well. And. And then because of the law of attraction, the more that you look for it, the more you attract it. And in this day and age where if you're constantly feeling stressed, constantly feeling overwhelmed, constantly feeling anxious, you're going to get more of that because that's the mindset you're in.

Jennifer Norman:
But if you can separate yourself and take a look and say, you know what? My life is damn good. My life is. There's a lot of damn good things around. Even today. This morning, I was taking my son to a doctor's appointment, and it was at 10 miles to get to the doctor's appointment. And I look on my GPS, 50 minutes. 50 minutes to get 10 miles because the traffic around Los Angeles is just insane. And I was like, oh, my goodness.

Jennifer Norman:
And rather than saying to myself, oh, my gosh, we're going to be late and all of these things, I decided that I was going to find the good in it. And I said, look at the beautiful sky. Look at the fact that we are actually. We have a car. We have. We're actually all together and we get to spend this time in a car together. And I had a friend who was even saying, like, a lot of people on the planes complain about, like, there's no WI fi on the plane. It's like, you know, you're sitting on.

Jennifer Norman:
You're sitting on a chair in the sky.

Peter Andersen:
You're crossing the country in five hours.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I, I think it was a Sam Kinison quote or something like that. It's like, you know, that we, you know, we, we constantly are so attuned to feeling like there's something wrong with what's happening to us rather than seeing all of the won things that actually are in our lives because we just get so accustomed to life and our, our first world comforts. At any rate. Yeah.

Peter Andersen:
Working. Dogs are a great reminder that life is there. I think there's excitement. There's, you know, there's a thing in, in the book called Something to Shout about, and dogs always have something to shout about, and we should pay attention to that. It's good to have something. It might be really annoying. It might be at the inappropriate time. But no, I'm glad you say that and that you're looking for that because. Well, because I am.

Peter Andersen:
But also when I started writing these stories, I just thought everybody thought like this. I thought everybody saw the Spiderman, you know, everybody saw these little moments and really appreciated them and thought how wonderful they were. But I started telling the stories to people and they said, wow, that's amazing. I never would have thought of that. And I thought, well, maybe there's just something weird about my brain where I see these and maybe I'll write a whole book and people will go, well, that's amusing, that's interesting, but that's your brain. We can't do that. That's, you know, you're just writing about how your brain works. But then I started reading more of the stories to people.

Peter Andersen:
I'm going to a wonderful writing group and they started telling me they're looking for the damn good things in their lives too. And I thought, okay, and they're finding them. They're finding them. The fact that you can decide to do that and say, look at the sun, look at the sky, look at the car. I was taking my dog to my little black pug we had a number of years ago named Lola. She had some mobility problems and I was taking her to a doctor's appointment and again, we were stuck in traffic also. And we were sitting there and it's just totally standstill in traffic and she's, she's on my lap and I'm just late. It's a 30 minute appointment we're going to miss, you know.

Peter Andersen:
And Elton John was on the radio. And I mean, it's so cliche, but he's Elton John. What do you. What more do you want? What more do you want? And he was singing your song, how wonderful life is when you're in the world. And I just looked at little Lola and I thought, nothing else matters in this moment. I don't care if we're late, if we're early, where we're even going. It's just how wonderful life was when you're in the world. And what could be more important than that could be better.

Peter Andersen:
So with my dog and with Elton John, I was given a good reminder there.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, looking for the miracles. And when I say miracles, it's like, we are miracles. To be alive, we're miracles. To be together, to be in a place at the same time, Even if it's energetically, if it's a podcast, even if it's through the distance but what are the odds of two people actually meeting? And if we think about the history and the billions of years and the cosmos and the universe and. And so, yeah, I sometimes get a little bit profound and prolific and maybe a bit esoteric when it comes to these things, but I truly think that it's one of the ess of happiness, it's one of the essences of being able to find that joy and abundance in life is to realize that you have all of this within you, you have all of those capabilities. And yeah, a lot of times life will happen and it'll pull us out of those, of those extraordinary moments for a temporary spell, let's call it a temporary spell. But we all, if we choose to, we can come back to it. And we're not talking about toxic positivity because there are times of grieving there, healing, there are times of really understanding and being in those spaces where we can cathartize and expel and do the things that we need to in order to get out of whatever we are in.

Jennifer Norman:
Certainly, however, when you do find that space of optimism, when you do find the space where it's like, yeah, you know what? I want to be able to appreciate the small stuff rather than sweat it. I want to be able to look at these things and these, all of the wonderful blessings that we have that I and we have in front of us and be able to say, you know what? I mindfully choose in this moment to be grateful for it. I really see how special and how lucky and how blessed and how fortunate that I am. And I'm able to find humor in a lot of these things. A lot of, a lot of it does require a great sense of humor.

Peter Andersen:
Yes, absolutely. Well, it's interesting that you say that because one reason for what you're saying, I think one reason that that happens, and I'm not a brain scientist, I've read a little bit, so of course I'm an expert. The brain, our brains are oriented towards survival. Our brains want us to survive and they don't really care about a lot of other things. And we have. My understanding is, and someone will correct me on this, the prefrontal cortex is where we hold short term memory and we can only hold a few things in there and only for about eight seconds. Basically, I think the brain is going, you know, is there a great white shark? Is there a tiger? Is there a train that's about to, you know, is there? And if there isn't, it flushes out everything from the prefrontal cord and Then it starts looking again, you know, eight seconds later, you know. So if you see wonderful things, if you're in a car, if there's a blue sky, if you're walking down the street and the most beautiful thing happens, your brain doesn't care.

Peter Andersen:
Your brain, that part of your brain really doesn't care. And so at the end of the day, I have this theory that you have seen a number of damn good things and your brain has actually deleted them. You didn't just forget them, your brain deleted them. Because that's what your brain is designed to do. Have you ever had the experience where you're introduced to someone and then you immediately forget their name? That's. I mean, we do that. And I.

Jennifer Norman:
Or all the time.

Peter Andersen:
All the time. You ask them. You ask someone what time it is, and they tell you. And then you forget. You know, you don't. That's an example of that. Rain is getting rid of that information. And unless your name is Charging Lion, no one's going to remember your name.

Peter Andersen:
So that's a really important thing. And that's one thing I noticed in writing these stories, is that you have to write things down. You have to make a note, you have to record them, take a picture, do something, make some kind of note within a few seconds. And there was. I mean, I wrote about ourselves, daughters when they were little, all the cute little things that they did. And there were so many times when someone would do something funny or. But I was in the middle of, you know, washing dishes or something. I thought, well, I'll remember to write that down later.

Peter Andersen:
And then later comes like, oh, what did she say again? I know there was something. I can't remember what it was. So I started carrying around a little notebook. This is when our daughters were about 6 and 8. Both very verbal, very bright. And they were always saying these things. And I thought, I'm not going to try to write everything down first. I wanted to write everything down.

Peter Andersen:
I thought, this is so great. I got to record every single thing they do. Absolutely impossible. But I thought, I got a little book for Winnie and a little book for Dorothy. And I thought, one thing a day. I'm gonna write down one Winnie thing a day and one Dorothy thing a day. And I did that. But it was hard because I had to.

Peter Andersen:
I knew, oh, something happens. Dorothy just said something funny. I gotta write it down immediately. And so I got in the habit of doing that. And you'll go a little crazy if you really do this as much as I do, because, again, we're not meant to remember this stuff. It's meant to just come and go. Parent we often forget so much of our children's childhood and that's. There's so many great things that happen there.

Peter Andersen:
So many things. So, yeah, one big thing that I learned was to. It's like riding the bull in the rodeo. You have to stay on the bull for 8 seconds and 8 seconds seems like a really long time for the bull rider. But if, if something beautiful happens and you don't make some note of it within eight seconds, you're probably going to forget it. So that's just partly, that's. I think that's just helpful in recording these things. But also it, I think it helps explain why we can be in a miracle airplane or a miracle car or have a miracle sunrise and it's just gone.

Peter Andersen:
We don't pay attention to it. Our brain doesn't want to do that. And so, and go, ah, wait, I see that, I see that you're not. I'm not gonna let you forget that.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow. Wow. And you're very talented at not only remembering and recording it because you're focusing on it, but you're also a storyteller. You create connections and you create a way of really carrying it forward. And I won't say shape shifting the memory, but helping it to evolve. Because I know that a lot of times things don't necessarily happen the way that they truly happen. They happen the way that we remember them or that the way that we perceive that they happen. Because based upon all of the things that we're that are going on.

Jennifer Norman:
And so when you either write something down or you're ruminating about it, then you're creating new memories as you're actually re remembering them. How can storytelling, whether it's through this journaling or video simply sharing memories, how do you think that that helps us to reconnect with ourselves and then with each other?

Peter Andersen:
Oh, that's a good one. We learn about ourselves through stories. We learn about people. I remember being in high school in an English class and we were talking about Hamlet and we got in some heated debate about Hamlet this or Hamlet that or something. And one guy, Roger Gerst, great guy, said, what are you doing? It's all just made up anyway. And I thought, well, okay, it is made up. And we all had a good laugh. But there's the saying that art lies to tell the truth.

Peter Andersen:
And in a way, stories do get at a deeper truth. There's the facts of what happened to you during the day, but Then there's the truth of what happened. And the facts are, you did this, you did this, you did this. But the truth is you're struggling or you're working hard or you're afraid, or you're this or that. And stories can get to the deeper part of that. And so, yeah, you go see a movie, you go see the Shining, a really scary movie. It's not real, but there's a lot of truth. If you've ever experienced fear, there's a lot of truth in it, and that's what touches us.

Peter Andersen:
So I think a moment can be. Or an experience can be broadened, and we can connect with it more easily if there's a story that gets us to the deeper truth. One of my favorite authors, John Le Carre, who's a spy novelist but was also just a great writer, in one of his books, he said something to the effect of, there are moments that are filled with too much stuff to be lived in the moment that they occur. And I think our days are filled with that. And I somehow. I was born with this thing where I go, wait a minute, wait a minute. Didn't everybody see what just happened? You know, the dog wagged his tail. Oh, my God.

Peter Andersen:
And it makes me kind of annoying to live with. I'm not suggesting everyone wants to be like this, but I'm just fascinated by every. Almost every moment, and probably should be every moment and. Because every moment does have a story and there is truth, and just. Just because it exists and. And I know I sound like a totally crazy person, but, I mean, I was. I was visiting a friend on his deathbed a number of years ago in Denver, and a bunch of us were there, and it was just sad, and he was too young and all this stuff. We went to see him, we had a good talk.

Peter Andersen:
And then there were about eight or nine of us in the hospital, and we all shuffled out into the hall. It was late at night. And one of the guys there was a minister, a good friend, and he looked at. We were waiting for the elevator to come, and he looked at us, and I thought, oh, you're the minister. You're going to say something that's going to make everything good. You're going to make us feel good. And I thought, how can you possibly. In.

Peter Andersen:
Under these circumstances, how can you possibly say something to make us feel good? And he just looked at us, and everyone was looking at him because they all expected him to say something, too. He looked at us and he smiled and he said, it's great to Be together. And I thought, that's true. We are all together. We are all the. The people that this guy loves the most. The one who was in the hospital, he loves us, we love him, and we're all together, and that is a great thing. So the fact was, we were all in this hospital, it was late at night, we were very sad.

Peter Andersen:
But the truth also was the truth underneath the fact was that we were all together and we wouldn't have been otherwise. Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
So, yeah, I think that that's beautiful. And it's true that of the social connections and the interactions, those are the things that we take to our deathbed, literally. You know, it's like, you know, when you are on your deathbed, it's like the people in my life, joys, the. The sorrows, all of those things. It's like those are the things that really count when you're at the end of life. And to have had all of those loved ones around together and for him to have recognized that and for it to be just so overt is a beautiful thing. And that's what you remember today. Yeah.

Peter Andersen:
Pete Seeger said, I'm a huge Pete Seeger fan. And he said, unhappiest people I've ever seen are the ones who are struggling alone. The happiest people I've ever seen are the ones who are struggling together. It's not that they're not struggling. It's not they are struggling, but they're struggling together. And I think when you do things with a person, then a story is generated and then it becomes something that you share. And that's. So you can take basically the same kind of facts, but if you're doing it with someone, if you're together, it makes it into a story, it makes it deeper.

Peter Andersen:
There's more truth in it, and there's more meaning, and I think. I think more connection.

Jennifer Norman:
What about for people who feel like, well, my life's pretty boring, my life, that I don't have a story worth telling? What would you say to somebody who thinks that their life hasn't been extraordinary.

Peter Andersen:
Enough to, oh, my gosh, slap them on the cheek? I have done some work in helping people write memoirs, and I've read a lot about it. And I was on some website where they'll help you publish your memoir. And the website was basically saying, unless you're a celebrity, unless you're Johnny Depp, no one's going to want to read your memoir. And I'm thinking, oh, I mean, if you're talking about writing something that's going to sell a million copies, that's one thing. But that's not who your memoir is for. It's for the 50 or 60 people in your life who love you and who will always remember you and who want to know more about you and who want to learn these stories. And the website actually said something like, who knows, maybe your life actually is interesting. No way.

Peter Andersen:
You cannot say that. You cannot say that. I believe. And it's, it's almost more of a principle than anything. It's. I don't, I haven't met everybody, I haven't heard about everybody's life. It's not that I know everybody's life is interesting. It's that I refuse to believe that someone could actually have an uninteresting life.

Peter Andersen:
I mean, like you say, we're miracles. The fact that we're here, there's a thing going around on the Internet. We are made of the same things that stars are made of. And we're here, you know, in this spinning rock. And Ralph, you know, if that's not miraculous. But. So I think it has to be an attitude thing. And, and I think our own individual temperament has a lot to do with it.

Peter Andersen:
If we feel like we're bored, if we were born feeling that way, or if we do have circumstances that where we're not engaged or something, obviously we all get bored. I get bored. I get horribly bored sometimes. And my book, I can read through my book when I'm bored. Doesn't help at all. It's just, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't cure everything. But there are things that can get you out of that and there are things you can do. You have to make a choice, I think.

Peter Andersen:
And it's different for everybody. And maybe someone just hasn't found their thing. We've all been in times when the life just isn't happening right now and you're bored or, or you're upset or you're, you know, you're checked out or something. And my good friend John from college works out all the time. He's in print, he's in like. He went to the doctor the other day and they said he has a heart of a 40 year old and he's in his 60s. And sometimes I'd get bored or sad or something. He'd say, Pete, you got to go running, you got to go to the gym, you got to do this, you got to do that.

Peter Andersen:
And I go, no, that works for you. That doesn't work. Sometimes it does. I mean, getting out and doing something, activity. I think there's something physiological there that does make you feel better. Anything that gets the blood flowing and gets the ju flowing and everything. But for someone I knew a guy who was making lasagna, whenever he really needed to just escape from the world and really re. Reconnect himself, he would make lasagna.

Peter Andersen:
And you know, everybody has their own.

Jennifer Norman:
I need to be his best friend.

Peter Andersen:
Exactly.

Jennifer Norman:
I'd tell him to be sad and depressed all the time, so I could get more lasagna.

Peter Andersen:
Dan, I'm sad again. So, yeah, finding something. I'm not an expert, but just from, from what I've seen in my life, life, finding that thing and finding someone else to do it with, like Pete Seeger says, you know, struggling together, beautiful. Don't take it easy. You can't just sit there and have things be easy. You gotta struggle, you gotta work hard, you gotta get outta your comfort zone. And if you can do that with other people, then I think there's, there's real magic there.

Jennifer Norman:
Well, I love your humbleness because, I mean, you've been working at Microsoft for 30 years before you retired. Is that correct? Okay. So you've got a little bit of life experience behind your belt.

Peter Andersen:
So I haven't even talked about stories about Microsoft. I have got the best. It's fascinating people, fascinating place. I loved, loved my time there and.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, that's amazing. I love that you loved it because I've heard opposite. So.

Peter Andersen:
Sometimes you have to learn, you have to learn to love some things.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that to have been able to be there for that long and to learn to love it and to understand that you had something to offer and that you were able to grow and evolve until you felt that it was time. That's an absolutely amazing thing. And you were able to now, at this phase of your life, parlay that into appreciation, into recognizing the small things, into finding your purpose and your message, which is to help people to find all of these little positive, beautiful aspects of surprise in their own lives. And so what would you say, like, if there is one thing that somebody could take away from this conversation and what you're doing now, what would that be?

Peter Andersen:
I would say, remember that crazy clock. And remember the clock that just goes off at the wrong time. Time. And, and just realize, remember that these things are all around you and don't put pressure on yourself, don't beat yourself up, but just remember, you know, hey, maybe thing there's something going on here. And, and I found that the times where I've really decided to do that, I'm going to really stop and look for something. Those things are there. Those things. It's like the person who says they have a boring life.

Peter Andersen:
I think they're wrong. I think their feeling and their judgment is correct on their terms, but I think they're wrong. I think they haven't looked for the things that make their life less boring. I believe that they're there. So, yeah, I would say if there's one thing you take away, remember that, that, that crazy clock at any time. And that's, that's a reminder that damn good things can happen when you least expect them.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh well. Peter Andersen, this was a damn good thing for us to speak together on this podcast. Thank you so much for your book called Damn Good Things and for being my guest and for spreading the message that the small things count and the small things matter and that everybody has a story to tell. Thank you for being my guest today.

Peter Andersen:
Thank you. Jennifer. I love your podcast. I love your website. I love the the whole movement. It's wonderful. Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
Much appreciated. Thank you for listening to the Human Beauty Movement podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more@thehumanreadingmovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.