"The Power Of Small" with David Letterman

0:00The Light Podcast is presented by Starbucks and Intuit. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. It's wonderful to be a part of this. Thank you for letting me be a part of this. It's nice to see everybody. I'm going to, and I had to think long and hard about this. I was invited to participate in this, and it's made me very excited and more excited than I should be, but it's also made me feel guilty and weird. I'm going to tell you a story now and I'll try to move this along as quickly as I can so in 2017 my wife and I are invited to the JFK library in Boston and it's for the Profiles in Courage Award and I was runner-up, thank you so it's a big deal, you've got to wear a tuxedo and I'm telling you, I looked great and my wife has what I'm told now is a gown So now we go in, and at the table, holy goodness, I'm sitting next to Michelle Obama.

1:11Yeah. So she is wearing one of these gowns that I clumsily described. It's a big evening, and there's a lot of up and down. Oh, somebody comes out, you get up, you sit down. Somebody comes out, you get up, you sit down. Somebody comes out, you sit down. And about two or three of these somebody-comes-out things, I realize that when we stand, I've got my left foot here. That's right. I've got my foot on her gown. And so I think, well, my evening's ruined. Somebody else comes out, and two or three times later, again, I'm standing up, and there I am. All night long, I've been standing on Michelle Obama's gown.

1:48And I can't help it. I can't stop it. Something has gone wrong neurologically. Okay, so now it's time to go. I'm standing there. I look down. Oh my God, I'm still standing on the woman's dress. So she now makes a move to exit and is tugged. And I quickly take my foot off the dress. And she says, you know, all night long, my dress has been catching on something. And I say, yeah, I think it's your chair. I feel much better. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. It's, I'm going to do this now, and I'm going to do this quite simply, but this is all I can think of. My favorite first lady, America's favorite first lady, Michelle Obama.

2:53Hello, everyone. This is The Light Podcast, and I'm Michelle Obama. For the past 15, 16, 17 years, I've been lucky enough to travel all over the country and the world, meeting people, giving speeches, doing big events with big crowds, and so much more. But I've got to tell you, it's always special when you're in your hometown. There's a special comfort looking out at the audience and seeing all those familiar faces. That's a big part of the reason why this conversation is so exciting. I'm at home in Chicago and all sorts of folks are here with me. Aunties, uncles, cousins, my mom, my big brother, and so many others.

3:40and adding to the excitement is that I'm being joined by one of my favorite people, David Letterman. I just love David. We've known each other for a while now. And what I love about him isn't just his sharp wit. It's his sensitivity. He's unafraid to show his tender side. And over the years, we've bonded over the ups and downs of raising our kids. We built a deep and sincere connection, and I am so grateful to call him a friend. Whenever we see each other, it's like we haven't missed a beat, and we just dive right into the conversation. In this one, we dive into the writing process, vulnerability, mental health, and how focusing on smaller tasks can help us keep bigger challenges in perspective.

4:35It's a fun one and an added bonus. David didn't even step on my dress this time. So it was you, David. I should have known. Yes. And the other part of it is I'm surprised and perhaps I did leave a big stupid footprint on your dress. Yeah. And I'm sure that's going to be in the library. We should get that dress, put it in the presidential library, and outline the footprint. Thank you. First of all, my mother is here tonight. My brother is here tonight. My nephews. All my family. We've got some Shields and Robinsons and Fane's and, oh, there's my crew. Some Graves. My peeps are here. so y 'all have heard these stories so try to act interested and if i get them wrong it's my version it's my book so don't be all like that didn't happen that way um i i want to uh i read the book that good yes i was counting on that it's it's exciting to read because if you spend a lot of screen time, you think, oh, maybe the mechanism has been fried.

5:51So your brain actually works differently reading it. So thank you very much for that. One of the many things that I was taken by was this book is quite a lot of work. Writing is a lot of work. And it's thoughtful, and it's also biographical with examples to illustrate the thoughtfulness. How do you do that? Oh, wow, that's a deep place to start. I work with a wonderful collaborator, Sarah, who worked with me on Becoming. So a lot of it is storytelling. So I get to sort of lose myself in the storytelling and then we work backwards. But as I said, for this particular book, it came about in the time of quarantine.

6:40that period as was described in the opening segment where we were all stuck for me I was just spinning so that's the state I was in as I was agonizing and thinking how do you keep yourself from falling into a deep deep dark depression in these times and I had to start thinking of the tools that I had that got me through and I got a lot of questions from kids from people writing letters over that time. How do you pull yourself out of depression? How do you get through uncertainty? How do you deal with a level of vulnerability that many of us live with all the time, but so many more of us were experiencing?

7:24And so this book was the result of me kind of trying to answer that question for other people and trying to answer it for myself. it's remarkable I like to think mostly about myself but um I wish I had that ability because I think I'm like most people if the soup is cold uh I start to whine I'm that guy and that that's not the way humans are supposed to be is that's not how you are either David but you like to to say that. What is this? Gazpacho? I like that. And then I realized that the whole book is like a toolbox. And at this point, I'm thrilled because I thought that maybe I was the only one who needed this kind of help.

8:13But I'm thinking, here's a woman who has faced this sort of life, a life like anybody and has found ways to cope with it. Because when you're suffering something, you feel a bit alone. But oh my God, if you have these struggles, then I don't feel so much alone. Well, and that's the power of sharing those vulnerabilities. I mean, I have friends who've read the book and they're like, wow, you're so vulnerable. How can you put yourself out there? But what I've learned over the years is that vulnerability is, that's where your confidence lies, if you can own your story and own all of it, you know, the beauty of it, the hard parts, if you can embrace it, because a lot of times we try to ignore the hard part, you know, because you look at people on stage like us and we never talk about the hard times.

9:04We never talk about our fears. We never talk about any of that. So kids are walking around thinking, oh, if I want to be Michelle Obama, then it's got to be perfect. You know, she must have grown up with a silver spoon. You know, they don't remember all we went through in the White House. Many young kids today don't even remember how attacked I was because now I'm Michelle Obama. You know, they don't remember when I was accused of not loving my country. So they can look at where I am now. You know, but my dad's motto was that, you know, nobody can make you feel bad if you feel good about yourself.

9:43Do you mind if we talk a bit about that? Because that was one of those things underlined in my copy of the book. I'm not sure that would work. I used to have a television show and occasionally... You did? Yeah. Occasionally people would say and write unpleasant things about me. And when that would happen, I wouldn't leave the house. And I would whine to my wife and I would whine to anybody about, well, just leave me alone, like that. That's how I would deal with it. That's how it would sound. Yeah, that's pretty much any day at my house. David's whining again. Yeah, Dave's whining again. But it does, I found that it does hurt.

10:27And a lot of people say, no, it doesn't bother me. It's just part of the game. But that is stratospheric. Now, does that rock the household when that happened? No, I mean, it hurts for sure. And I think there was a second when I was like, forget campaigning. I'm just not doing this. But then I had to think to myself, well, then that would let them win. You know, and what example am I showing if I can take a lick? Because I grew up in a household with Marion and Fraser Robinson where I was seen enough. Because here's the thing. It didn't just work all of a sudden. You know, when you're a black woman in America and you're not wealthy, you have to practice liking yourself a lot.

11:20You know, because let me tell you, I grew up very early with people trying to set their bar low for me. And you see it coming. And this is the thing that we cannot pretend that kids don't see when they're being devalued. Because any time it happened to me, as early as kindergarten, I knew it. I knew in second grade that the second grade teacher thought we were all dumb and not worth it. Because she didn't organize the class. She wasn't giving us homework. And I went home to my kitchen table and I complained about it. I was like, Mom, this is not going to happen. And this lady, she doesn't think we can read.

12:04She doesn't think we're smart. And I went home and I had a mother who believed in my voice. But I knew in second grade that that teacher didn't think the kids she was teaching were worthy. And I was looking for homework. All of us were. What happened was my mother went up to that school. And that's what mothers do. They go up to that school. And she was one of those mothers. She went up to that school. and before you knew it, I was out of the second grade and in the third grade. So there were a handful of us who got tested. We were advanced. Not only were we, you know, smart, but we were smarter than smart, and we got skipped to the third grade, but there were only three of us, and I thought, what happened to the rest of the kids in that second grade class that didn't have a mother who could advocate for them and didn't have kids who could test out?

13:00but I was used to that. The world has made me practice liking myself and that is a tool for young people. You cannot wait for somebody to see you because first of all there are people who don't even know you exist. They don't even know your pain. They don't know your struggle and this just isn't race David. This is you know if you're poor, if you live outside in a rural county, if you are not in the best school system if you are a woman if you there are many ways to be othered in this world and for some of us when it happens it breaks us for me I just happen to be that smart kid that was like oh I'll show you I will show you you doubt me I'll work harder and so by the time I got to the White House I was like oh you don't think I'm gonna be the best first lady that you have ever seen.

13:59I am going to work so hard. I'm going to launch so many initiatives. I'm going to be all over the world. You just wait. That part. Yeah. Yeah.

14:25My sister was much more focused than I was. This is my big brother, Craig. Yep, mom's favorite. And my best friend growing up. He knows better than anyone that I've always been this way. And I would say that she really concentrated on getting every single answer right. And that's just, that's who she is right there. if I could give you an example, where I was trying to get good grades, but I wasn't trying to get everything right, right? I was trying to be efficient with my time because I wanted to be off and do other things. Now, my sister wanted to do other things too, but it was really important for her to get every answer correct.

15:14We lived in a very small apartment, right? It was really a one-bedroom apartment that we made into a two-bedroom apartment, and my sister and I shared room. And so there was not very much room to play. Like we played in the living room and that was pretty much it. So there was a time where we're both in the living room playing and she's playing with her dolls and I'm playing with my soldiers. And she just gets up and says, I can't play in the same room as you. You're having too much fun. She was like four and I was six. She said, you're having too much fun. I'm over here minding my own business.

15:51And she was also upset from the fact that she must not have been having fun. And I was. So I always had to manage that. And of course, I got up and moved out of the room and went into a different room rather than making her move. So we actually created the personality that she is in some ways. Like we emboldened it. That's one of the most beautiful parts of having a big brother. As much as I want to tell him he's wrong, as much as I want to claim my path as my own, I am who I am because of him. Because he gets me. Because he sees me. We've laughed and cried and fought and commiserated and everything in between.

16:37And so whenever I feel a little lost or untethered, there's a special comfort in knowing that Craig is only a text or phone call away. And whether you've got siblings or not, I hope you've got someone like him who can keep you grounded. Because that kind of support might be the only way that you can take flight. We'll be right back with more of my discussion with David Letterman. so the the the pandemic uh begins and um you started knitting i did never done it before i hadn't no i had well you know i i realized no i hadn't done it seriously because we were really we were raised in that time where it's sewing and knitting and all that stuff that was what your grandparents did, which all my whole family, everybody in my family sewed as I, you know, grew up.

17:39So we were raised in that way, but we came from a culture, like I think all working class families, particularly black families, where everybody sewed clothes for other people to make a living. They were carpenters, they were fixers, menders, makers. So I came from that. But on that ascent to greatness going to school, you lose track of that. And I certainly did. So it was interesting that in that time of stillness, that that was a thing that I thought of, let me try to knit. It was just like that. So I ordered some knitting needles because I was spinning and I needed to quiet my mind. So I taught myself how to knit.

18:22But I talk about knitting, I use that as a metaphor in the book. One of the first chapters is called The Power of Small, because what happened to me in the course of knitting, the task of, first of all, learning how to do something new, learning how to do something with my hands, right? Which is something we get away from, you know, working with our hands, making something. It was meditative for me in a time when I was depressed in quarantine. I was watching the news. I was looking at Trump. I was mad about the world. I was looking at the riots. And I had been asked to do the speech for the convention.

19:08And I was like, I have nothing to offer anybody right now. I can't motivate anybody to do anything. I couldn't even think of what to write, but it was interesting how the process of knitting quieted my mind. And for me, I didn't even realize I wasn't doing this for any kind of, you know, spiritual reason. I was just trying to use up some time. But there was a quieting that happened. And then as I started thinking about it, as I was writing the book, the beauty of knitting is that it is one stitch at a time. You know, You don't get anywhere without a knit and a purl and a knit and a purl, and it's a row over row, and there was some power in being able to control and make something.

19:55The thing in my lap, I could control, and that's what I started thinking. It's like, that's what's wrong with me. I'm trying to go big. I'm trying to think of a big speech, and I don't have that platform in quarantine, but I can focus on what's in my lap. Let me look at what I uniquely can control. What is the truth is what's in our lap. The fact that, yes, there are riots going on, but there are people who are also coming out and marching. They saw brutality, but the country, remember, for a time had come together around Black Lives Matter. There were all these emergency workers who were sacrificing themselves in this quarantine.

20:36People were giving. We were a better nation than we were being taught. But we lose sight of the beauty of what's small because we're taught that big is better. This is where great becomes the enemy of the good. And you don't have the power to change the world until you do the thing you actually can control, the thing in your lap. Let us now value the power of small. You know, we want to change everything, but we don't want to vote. When voting is the thing we uniquely control. So I use that as a metaphor because now when I'm feeling really down, I think about what's the thing in my lap. And that's the power that I have in the small thing that's in my lap.

21:25And I think we all have that power. Did you knit those scarves and hats? I did not. That was pre-knitting. What did you end up knitting, and do you still knit? I still do. Well, I had to stop when I was writing the book and doing the book tour because it's hard to write and knit at the same time. But, yeah, I made sweaters. I made hats. Oh, one year, everybody I know got a blanket. I made baby sweaters. How do you know when you're finished knitting something? When the outfit is done, David. Well, yeah, I get that. When the hat is done, you bind off. I know a little something about this. When I was a kid, I learned to knit at that age.

22:09Did you really? Yes. You're lying. I'm not lying. Really? Yes. Okay, so what did you knit? Well, that's why I asked how you know when it's done.

22:22I what I loved exactly what you talked about your mind narrows but you it does but I didn't know and so eventually Labor Day came around and I had to go back to school but in the meantime the thing must have been like 8 feet long so you were just knitting a straight rectangle well no it was more in the shape of a shovel It was narrow and then it got big. Yeah, but I do, and I'm sorry I wasn't more productive. So you didn't learn how to even out your rows. No, who cares? That's for losers.

23:03But I do know the therapeutic part of it. So that was my point. Absolutely. My name is Marion Robinson and I am Michelle's mother. The one thing I wish even children nowadays did not worry about, whether you were liked or not, because it can get in your way. And I figured I might as well tell her early because you can get in the habit of not caring what some people said. You care about things that are going to improve your life and you care about what people say who are helping you. but you don't care about small things. Well, I always say you walk down the street and a person says, oh, that red coat is beautiful.

23:53You take two steps and the next person says, well, you have that red coat on, it looks funny. Well, now there's two people that you run into in 10 minutes time. So what do you do? You wear the coat you want to wear and not care about either one of those people. And you need to do that for your whole life. Don't worry about being liked. When you get ready to be liked, come home. We like you. We'll be right back with more of my discussion with David Letterman.

24:30So that's, you know, one of the suggestions, especially in these times as we feel overwhelmed, because we're all feeling overwhelmed. There's power in getting a thing done, having a routine. Barack and I had to learn how to do this in the White House because when your motorcade is 20 cars long, when you can't even walk out the door to get fresh air without setting off alarms and having cat teams come in, we, for eight years, had to be incredibly mindful of how we moved, and we couldn't move far without huge to-do. So we had to learn how to stay sane in that environment. And so having a routine, getting up, exercising, I mean, it sounds trivial, but when I talk to young people who are struggling with depression, it's like taking care of your body and doing small things like waking up at the same time every day.

25:28We implemented those kind of practices. I kept our family on a routine. We had dinner when we were isolated at the same time. The kids had class. We would take regular walks. We got back into a routine. And that doesn't sound big, but that's the power small, that you slowly work your way out of some of those moods if you're not dealing with deep, deep, dark chemical depression. Some of it is just, it is as small as getting up, taking a shower, not going days on end, doing the same thing over and over again. Those small tools can be as powerful as the big change you think you need. And I resort to that a lot.

26:13You know, I have to think of big initiatives, not in terms of the end product, but what do we get done today to end childhood obesity? What do I have control over as first lady that I can uniquely do? Because if you look at a big problem, why start it if you can't fix it all? but change is small change is like knitting it is a knit and a stitch at a time and we lose sight of that and sometimes we give up because we can't do it all but there is power in doing something every day towards a goal well you're very kind uh having known you you my friend are the way uh humans should be oh thank you david michelle obama ladies and gentlemen Thank you, Chicago.

27:03I love my town.

27:11So it doesn't have to be knitting. It can be anything. Drawing, painting, writing, fixing things, basket weaving. Whatever you want it to be. Because let's face it, we live in a world where it is easy to feel overwhelmed. It's easy to feel like we don't matter. But creating, building, engaging, oh, those actions remind us of our power, our power to make change, our power to create something from nothing. And that's a fundamental truth that I always want young people to know, that yes, there will be days you feel alone or you have no clue what happens next. But that's okay. It's good even. Because the experience of finding your way out of those moments, the ups and downs of figuring out who you truly are, oh, that's how you figure out where your power comes from and how you want to use it.

28:18Your future is totally and completely within your grasp, even if it doesn't always feel like it. It's easy to feel overwhelmed if you only focus on the scale of the mountain in front of you, whether that's a problem with your significant other, or making new friends in a new city, or combating inequality or discrimination or climate change. But if you break those things down, if you just keep working at it, day by day, step by step, action by action, you'll see that you're making progress. And soon enough, you'll see that you're partway up that mountain and that the summit isn't far away. That's the power of small.

29:07If you unlock it, it's a way you can move mountains. A lovely day.

29:41Sanford, Dan Gallucci, Nancy Golombiski, and Lisa Polak. Production support by Andrew Eapin, Jenna Levin, Julia Murray, and Colin McNulty. Location recording by Jodi Elf. Special thanks to Melissa Winter, Jill VanLokeren, Crystal Carson, Alex May Seeley, Haley Ewing, Marone Hailey-Meskel, Sierra Tyler, Carl Ray, Njeri Radway, Meredith Koop, Sarah Corbett, Tyler Lechtenberg and Usra Najm. The theme song is Unstoppable by Sia. The closing song is Lovely Day by Bill Withers. Audible head of U.S. content Rachel Giazza. Head of Audible Studios Zola Masariki. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC.

30:29Sound recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC. This episode was recorded live at the Chicago Theater in Chicago. impossible of faith. And when someone else instead of me... We here at IMO are big believers that people never stop growing. That we're all in a state of continual becoming. So much so that Michelle even wrote a book about it. Because you are not one thing. You are all the things. Constantly growing and changing into the next version of you. And every day and in every stage of your life, You're only getting stronger, bolder, more confident than you were yesterday. That's why desert-toned diamonds are the perfect way of celebrating all that you are and all that you are still becoming.