Survival as a Calling: The Boy Who Decided to Get Up

Matt Gilhooly (0:30): Rich Harwood was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in the sixties. Doctors told his parents that he had three to five years to live. So he grew up in hospital beds, learning early what it felt like to be unseen and making a decision at eight years old that would quietly shape everything that came after. Nearly forty years ago, he started the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities come together across divides. The line from that sick little boy watching a clock tick through the night to the work he does today is not a straight one, but it is a direct one.

Rich Harwood (1:06): When I was eight, I made the decision to stop calling my parents to come in to help me when I was sick because I felt like they were hurting me more than they were helping me, and it was hurting them too much for me to bear. And I decided it's also when I discovered God, and it's also that I believed that I was gonna have to get up and keep going and make this work.

Matt Gilhooly (1:29): You're listening to the LifeShift podcast. I'm your host, Matt Gilhooly. This show is built around one simple idea that sometimes a single moment can change how we see everything. Each week, I talk with someone about the moment that shifted their life and how they learn to live differently after it. These are not stories about having it all figured out.

Matt Gilhooly (1:48): They are stories about what it looks like to keep going once the story changes. Thank you for being here. Here's today's story. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the LifeShift podcast.

Matt Gilhooly (2:03): I am here with Rich today. Hello, Rich.

Unknown Speaker (2:05): Hey, Mac. Good to be with you.

Matt Gilhooly (2:07): Well, thank you for wanting to be a part of the LifeShift podcast and kinda dig into the human experience in the way that you experienced it. I think it's just been such a journey for me, a stranger to so many of the people on this show, to be able to sit down and ask the curious questions and understand someone at a deeper level that I may never have crossed paths with in my life. And so it's just been such a a beautiful journey, and I'm so grateful that you wanted to be a part of it.

Rich Harwood (2:37): Yeah. Thanks thanks for the invitation. I'm and I'm looking forward to, to our conversation.

Matt Gilhooly (2:42): Well, so am I. Before we get into it, though, maybe you can tell us who Rich is in 2026. Like, how do you show up in the world? How do you identify these days? Like, who is Rich?

Rich Harwood (2:53): I'm a husband of thirty eight years. I'm a father of two grown children. I'm a grandfather of a three year old and just a matter of days ago, a newborn. So I now have two grandchildren. I am a person of faith, which is very important to me.

Rich Harwood (3:12): I love to exercise. I love to read. And I head up, you know, my calling probably is the best way to put it. My calling in life is to help lead an organization called the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, which in shorthand is about, so this has been going on almost forty years now. I started when I was 27.

Rich Harwood (3:34): Everyone told me not to do it, but that's maybe a story we'll get into. But, you know, I'm really interested and moved by and animated by how do we bridge divides at a time when our country seems to be splitting further and further apart? How do we create a culture of shared responsibility in communities and in our society when the notion of things that we share is often taboo and the notion of responsibility is something we often look askance at? And how do we create communities that are a common enterprise, where we're pulling in a common direction, marshaling our common resources, having common goals? And where community, you know, I intentionally chose the word community because to me, community means everyone, everyone who's there, all means all.

Rich Harwood (4:22): And I think we like to say that in our society today, but we don't necessarily act on it. And there are all sorts of things that impede our ability to do that. And so, you know, our work has now spread to 50 states and 40 countries and it continues to spread. And, you know, the last thing I'll say about this, at least for now, is that the greatest joy I get from that calling is seeing people have the opportunity to fulfill their God given potential and individually and with others shape their future. And I can't think of anything more important, at least for me, to be doing right now.

Matt Gilhooly (5:03): I mean, a life of service, it seems.

Rich Harwood (5:08): I mean, it's funny, Matt, I never use that word, although people have said that. To me, this is kind of like a fight. Yeah. It's a battle. As you know, and as your listeners know, there are so many things that have undermined our belief in institutions, have undermined our belief in leaders, have undermined our belief in the news media, have undermined our belief in faith institutions, have undermined our belief in one another, and unfortunately have caused us to doubt ourselves many times.

Rich Harwood (5:44): And those forces are real, they're powerful, they're unrelenting at times. And so for me, this is about how do we come together and create a counterforce to those, what I would say, unhealthy forces so that society looks more like the best parts of us, not the worst parts of us.

Matt Gilhooly (6:05): It's a lofty goal.

Rich Harwood (6:06): Yeah, that we are actually living out upholding one another's dignity regardless of our identity, our sexual orientation, the color of our skin, the native language we speak, what side of town we live on, what kind of car we drive, how much money we have in our bank account, all those things, where in a particular city we live or county, they shouldn't matter. And they do. And, so to me, this is this really has been sort of an upward climb and it's something that really motivates me.

Matt Gilhooly (6:39): Yeah. I mean, I think it's beautiful and and what you're putting into the world is I mean, you're definitely in service. I mean, if you didn't show up, you know, like, you didn't put this out here, would other people be doing it? Would you know? And the ripple effect that must be immense and probably really exciting to see.

Rich Harwood (6:56): It's funny that you say the ripple effect because in our work, we have reports called ripples of change. And in our work, what we're trying to do is to help people discover what really matters to other people and to catalyze and unleash a chain reaction that typically starts small but takes root and grows and spreads like a positive contagion over time, what results from that is a ripple effect. And so if you look at, for instance, people can go to our website for this, but if you look at our work in Alamance County, North Carolina or Reading, Pennsylvania, which was declared the poorest community in America ten years ago, or two counties in Ohio, which are in Jim Jordan's congressional district, the co founder of the Freedom Caucus. On and on it goes, people have come together, not for kumbaya moments, though they do get joy. This is a kind of civic joy.

Rich Harwood (7:50): To really focus on what matters to people and to strengthen our civic cultures so we can actually come together and get stuff done and restore our belief in ourselves and one another that as Americans, not as Republicans, Democrats, independents, but as Americans, we can do this. And the good news is people are doing it.

Matt Gilhooly (8:07): Yeah. And to me, the cynic in me is like, oh, 2026, 2025 is probably harder than a lot of the years over the last forty years that you've been doing this. There were probably some periods that were maybe not easier, but a little bit more palatable or felt like it wasn't as much work to do. And it seems like nowadays it might be even more intense.

Rich Harwood (8:28): You know, it's interesting that every five years or so I've kind of gone on a walk, gone across the country to engage people really deeply. This is in addition to our working communities, but to engage people really deeply about how they see their lives, how they see the country, where they think things are going. It's really interesting. The first report I did was in 1990 right before the Gulf War. And we pulled it off the printing press because the Gulf War broke out and patriotism went sky high and everything else.

Rich Harwood (9:01): And we redid it and we found the same results even deeper, which was people were mad as hell about politics. They felt as though someone had come into their house and taken over politics and they were mad at politicians, the news media special interest. I won't take you through every five year walk. I'll simply say, if you fast forward to a report we did not too long ago, it wasn't about politics. This goes to your point about the work being tougher and deeper.

Rich Harwood (9:29): It was about our relationships to one another. It was about the very culture in which we live in. It was about being overridden by consumerism and technology and all of these things in a fragmented news landscape. Essentially what people were telling us is they felt like they had lost control, not of politics, they felt like they had lost control of their lives, of their communities, and of this country. That's a much deeper, more profound sense of things and feeling about things.

Matt Gilhooly (10:00): Yeah. That's that's challenging. And, again, I commend you for your work. I think it's it's really important and very much needed, especially now. And and part of me wonders and kind of I know a little bit of of your early story, but part of me wonders if people like you exist because of things that happened to them.

Matt Gilhooly (10:23): You know, for me, this podcast would not exist had I not lost my mom suddenly and then struggled in a big heaping pile of mess for twenty years to grieve. I wouldn't be doing this. So I'm curious. Maybe you can kind of take us back and paint the picture of your life because my my sinking suspicion is that, you know, some of those things may have impacted how you see the world now.

Rich Harwood (10:47): Yeah. First, let me just say that, you know, a loss like a mom when you're eight years old never goes away. And so I I'm just sorry for your loss and the continued pain that I'm sure it causes you. For me, you know, when I was born I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which in 1960 was a death sentence. My parents were told that I had three to five years to live.

Rich Harwood (11:11): My family went on a death watch. The doctors at one point turned to my mom and said, Face it, he's a lemon. That's a label I've never been able to fully shake off. I grew up in hospital beds throughout my youth and then into my adulthood. And, you know, what I experienced and what I took from that was that I experienced a healthcare system that was supposed to help heal me, chew me up, and spit me out repeatedly.

Rich Harwood (11:41): I was manhandled repeatedly as a young kid. That's very difficult. I have vivid memories starting at a very early age of doctors and nurses surrounding my hospital bed all talking about me, but never talking with me. I learned very early on what it feels like to be stripped of one's dignity. I was violated repeatedly.

Rich Harwood (12:04): I learned really early on what it feels like to not be seen and heard, to be invisible. And at a really young age, I learned what it feels like to struggle for not only a sense of survival, which I did struggle for, but a sense of hope because that tomorrow could be better than today. And because for me, for so much of my early years, tomorrow was worse than yesterday. There was more terror, there was more fear, There were more hallucinations. There were more persistent hundreds

Matt Gilhooly (12:41): So physically, it was it was worse every day. Yeah. But also the people around you were Worse. Seemingly worse as well.

Rich Harwood (12:49): Yeah. Seemingly worse. And, you know, my parents, god bless them, they, you know, took me a long time to see really, they were overwhelmed. They didn't have the money, they didn't have the resources. My father's working sixteen, seventeen hour days as a young lawyer trying to start a practice in New York City.

Rich Harwood (13:09): He didn't have any money. My mom had three kids at home. They were stretched financially. They were stretched emotionally and they did everything in their power to support me. The challenge was that they couldn't give me what I needed most, which was a sense of security, a sense of safety, a sense of unconditional love.

Rich Harwood (13:34): You know, when I got sick, which was often, you know, my mom would come into my bedroom because she was always the first one, and she would look at me and I'd, you know, I'd be a mess, and she would turn away and say to my dad who was not far behind her, He's sick again. And then she'd walk out. And for a young child that inculcates a sense of shame that's very hard to shake. And then my dad would come in and again, to his credit, he wanted to fix me. And so he would tell me, You're not that sick.

Rich Harwood (14:11): You're gonna, you know, don't, I would have massive dry heaves and hallucinations and a high fever at the same time. So he almost treated me as if it wasn't happening at times clinically when in fact I just needed someone to hug me. Right. And to get in bed beside me. So, you know, it was a long answer to a short question, but, you know, I'm sure you and your listeners, you know, there are direct there's a direct line from these experiences as a kid and then people who helped me along the way and what I learned along the way.

Rich Harwood (14:49): There's a direct line from those experiences to what I do each and every day. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about these experiences, that I am aren't affected by them, that I'm not reminded of them. And, you know, it's what animates me every day.

Matt Gilhooly (15:06): It is. But I I also think of these things of, like, anyone that's been through a trauma. I mean, yours was just an enduring trauma. Like, it was not a one and done kind of feeling. I I don't wanna compare.

Matt Gilhooly (15:19): But, like, for me, it was like rip the Band Aid off and now now what? For you, it was like rip the Band Aid off every day and see what tomorrow brings. And I I'm sure you've looked back and your parents were probably doing the best they knew how to do and trying they were probably lost in in a sea of who knows what. I think of, you know, my dad as well in in my experience. Like, he was he was young.

Matt Gilhooly (15:42): He thought he wasn't gonna have to raise me, you know, like, and all of a sudden he had to. But people that have gone through this and something that you have and you survived it, which is or you've you've made it to this age, through all that, but you could have you could have not done what you're doing now. You could have kept the cynicism, the anger, the like, you could have just used that of, like, a victim mentality that some of us like to try on every once in a while to make us feel better. So, I mean, there is something about the spirit that you have, which I'm it's probably part of your story how you gain that spirit. But there's so many people that have gone through these things that don't take that and turn it into good.

Rich Harwood (16:26): You know, before we started this, we were talking about what time I wake up in the morning and

Unknown Speaker (16:32): 04:30.

Rich Harwood (16:33): 04:30. Yeah. And when I was sick, one of the ways in which I would get through the night was at a dial clock back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and I literally would watch the second hand. I would become almost go into a trance so that everything would be still and I would watch the second hand go second by second, then I'd watch it go the minute pass, then I'd watch five minutes pass, then I'd watch it now. That's how I got through every night.

Rich Harwood (17:04): And I would stay, I would be awake all night. And what I learned, what I came to learn or experienced probably is when it became four twenty, I realized that the next day was going to start. And sometimes that was because I saw the light coming up, sometimes it was because of the color of the street lights through my bedroom windows. But at 04:28, I would always breathe a sigh of relief, and this still happens today. I'm 65 years old, I'm still doing this.

Rich Harwood (17:39): And I would say to myself, Today's a new day. Today's another chance. Today's another opportunity. And I would get up out of bed, I would get dressed, and I would get in motion. And I believed then, still, you know, I've carried this belief through my life that good things happen when you're in motion and that laying in a bed, feeling like you're a victim or feeling sorry for yourself wasn't gonna get me anywhere, and no one gave a shit.

Rich Harwood (18:13): Yeah. No one cared. No one talked to me ever about being sick. To this day, my parents have barely spoken. My father's now deceased, but have barely spoken to me.

Rich Harwood (18:24): It's not a topic that we talk about. So, I learned really early on. And in fact, you know, you said that when you were eight, your mom passed away. When I was eight, I made the decision, and I remember this, Matt, vividly, I made the decision to stop calling my parents to come in to help me when I was sick because I felt like they were hurting me more than they were helping me, and it was hurting them too much for me to bear. A disappointment

Unknown Speaker (18:54): for you?

Unknown Speaker (18:56): I'm sorry?

Matt Gilhooly (18:56): Like they were disappointing you because they weren't showing up in the way that you needed them?

Rich Harwood (19:01): I wasn't getting what I needed, but more than that, I felt like I was stretching them even farther, that I was hurting them even more, that they didn't know what to do. Why should I keep calling them? Doesn't help them. Felt and I felt enormous shame about calling them continually. And so in that moment, when I was eight, it's both when I discovered God and it's also when I well, first when I stopped calling, it's also when I discovered God, and it's also that I believed, I was gonna say realized, but really believed that I was gonna have to get up and get going and make this work.

Rich Harwood (19:43): And that still, if you talk to people on my team, you know, was talking to my chief of staff today for the longest time, and we sort of got into a little of stuff about how I operate. And it still drives me to this day. It's like, get up, what can we make of this situation? There's always something you can make of it.

Matt Gilhooly (20:03): I mean, I commend you. As a kid, you took the harder road. Like, I feel like it's so much easier to just stay in bed. Like, you took you made the as someone that has been through depressed depressive stages in my life, it was so much easier to stay in that terrible headspace than it was to, like, do something about it and get in motion. So kudos to that young version of you who was already fighting enough with the health system and the health care system.

Matt Gilhooly (20:37): And now you're like, well, no. I'm gonna make it even better, or I'm gonna make my life even better despite all those other things.

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Unknown Speaker (21:14): Yeah. And, you know, there were people along the way who helped me.

Unknown Speaker (21:17): Well, that's

Unknown Speaker (21:18): great. I was I was really fortunate.

Unknown Speaker (21:19): But you were open to it?

Unknown Speaker (21:21): I was open to it up to a point.

Unknown Speaker (21:22): Okay.

Unknown Speaker (21:23): I was open to it up to a point. I think when I look back on my there are so many people, Matt. Yeah. Like, I've started to list them because I I I just wanted to recognize them Mhmm. For all the good they did, for all the love they gave me.

Matt Gilhooly (21:39): And the ripples they created.

Rich Harwood (21:41): And the ripples they created and all they taught me

Unknown Speaker (21:43): Mhmm.

Rich Harwood (21:44): About myself and about the world and about people. And whether it was as a young kid, when I was eight, nine, 10, or when I got into high school or when I was in college or graduate school or after, there are all these people, you know, for whatever reason for them, they put their arm around me and they supported me. Now, because of what I went through, my levels of trust were not high. My willingness to open up was not great. My fear of being, you know, as you said, I experienced repeated chronic trauma over many, many years.

Rich Harwood (22:26): I was on high alert. I was on high alert for pretty much my entire life that someone's gonna hurt me. I'm gonna be hurt. I'm gonna have to experience more pain. I can't take any more pain.

Rich Harwood (22:39): So, that prevented me from really allowing a lot of people into my life in a way that I wish I could have, but I understand that I wasn't able to.

Matt Gilhooly (22:52): I just wasn't able to do it. You're protecting yourself. Mean, we all have that in some way, but it seems like you did let the light. Like, was there a I know you've mentioned multiple mentors and stuff. Do you think of one as more pivotal than the other?

Matt Gilhooly (23:07): Or is it

Unknown Speaker (23:09): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are many. And

Matt Gilhooly (23:13): We won't rank them. We'll just say how this particular moment

Unknown Speaker (23:17): Let me talk about the first one.

Unknown Speaker (23:18): Yeah. Tell me.

Rich Harwood (23:19): You asked me about the moment that was a turning point. Let me talk about the the mentor who who was at the the first turning point as a mentor.

Unknown Speaker (23:27): I love that.

Rich Harwood (23:27): Yeah, so it was a man named Mr. Rivers. He had a seasonal job at the time. I grew up in New York City and then we moved to Upstate New York. Three blocks from my house was the oldest race track, thoroughbred race track in America, Saratoga Racecourse.

Rich Harwood (23:44): Mister Rivers, at that time, drove the tractor around the racecourse after each race to smooth out the dirt so that the next race could happen. That was his job. And he had, I don't know, four or five kids. Danny was in was my age. And I'll try to give you the really short version of this.

Rich Harwood (24:06): Mister Rivers, when I was eight, I started playing basketball. It was called bitty basketball. And mister Rivers, I tried out. Mister Rivers drafted me. And, first of all and I should say he's the first person who taught me about hope, that it was okay to hope, that as a young kid who had these ailments, could exert myself physically and good things would happen.

Rich Harwood (24:35): And so he drafted me. I'm Jewish. My parents insisted, luckily, that I go to religious school on Saturday. All our games were on Saturday. Mister Rivers went to all of his fellow coaches who were his drinking buddies.

Rich Harwood (24:53): They'd never met a Jew before. He had never met a Jew before. There are hardly any Jews in our town. And he got them to change every time of our games so I could play. Now, I've coached youth sports for thirty five years.

Rich Harwood (25:08): I can't imagine any league doing that for any kid, but he did it. And he cheered me on and he got me to exert myself and he could see I had a lot of, as you said, a lot of spirit and a lot of fight in me. And he just kept encouraging that to manifest itself. And, you know, I could talk about him for the whole hour. One story after another, one thing after another that he did.

Rich Harwood (25:33): And then he coached me for many years. And when after soccer practice in high school or basketball practice in high school, and I was playing with his son, Danny, he would this is before seat belt laws. He would pick up eight strapping boys and in his beat up Chevrolet, the seats were back. It had a certain kind of odor to it. You know, the engine kind of revved in a certain kind of way and we would all pile in on top of each other.

Rich Harwood (26:00): I swear to God, he'd worked a full day. He was a laborer. And he took each kid home one by one. There were eight of us in different parts of town. He would spend like an hour and a half doing this.

Rich Harwood (26:16): And he would tell us things on the way and make sure that we were walking a straight line and make sure that we were doing the right thing and make sure that we were good friends to the other kids in the car, even though we didn't all like each other all the time. And when I think about the effort that went into that, the care that he gave to us, the arm he put around each of us, the fact that he did this night after night, he never missed a night. And if he did, Mrs. Rivers would pick us up. And, that's a whole another story.

Rich Harwood (26:54): But, you know, in my faith, there is a teaching, if you save one life, you save the world. And I often wonder, I say this a lot in speeches, but I often wonder why they teach us that and all religions have some similar teaching. Because if you save one life, you don't save the world. But if you save one life, what you're doing is you're putting a stake in the ground that someone else's humanity matters as much as your own, that you've turned outward towards someone and you see them and you hear them and you're affording them dignity that that is their God given right, not something you deserve, it's your right in a sense. That you care enough about someone that you'll step forward toward them even though they may be different from you or you may not even like them, but you'll do it.

Rich Harwood (27:41): That you'll go the extra mile for them. And, you know, I don't need to look very far to know the meaning of that teaching because Mr. River saved

Unknown Speaker (27:50): me.

Rich Harwood (27:52): He saw you. He saved me in so many ways. And I dedicated my first book to him. I used to go back and see him. I went to his funeral.

Rich Harwood (28:04): I still see Danny at times when I go back home. And

Matt Gilhooly (28:11): It sounds like, I mean, it sounds like someone that stepped in at the right time and saw you and validated you as a human and introduced you to community and And what

Unknown Speaker (28:23): community is.

Matt Gilhooly (28:24): Yeah. And just Yeah. And that you can be in community with people that are not exactly like you, that you don't like all the time because you're a teenager or whatever that may be. And it sounded like he he kind of, you said, introduced you to hope essentially or helped you understand that. But just seeing what a, quote, unquote, regular life could look like as well.

Matt Gilhooly (28:50): And you're not maybe you weren't seen as the sick kid or the the the needy one because, you know, you needed to go to the hospital or you needed to go you know? And I'm sure that that people had identified you as that for for a while as well. But it sounds like this was the right person at the right time. Do you wonder why?

Rich Harwood (29:11): I think he was an angel, honestly. I really do. I I I you know, it's funny because you were asking me before that you could be a victim. And honestly and this has been a long healing journey for me. This has not been easy by any stretch.

Rich Harwood (29:25): Yeah. I But in so many ways, I think about Mr. Rivers or Mr. Petker, who came after him, or Mr. Brundage, who was my next door neighbor, or Gil Thalen, who I talk to every Sunday at 01:30, who has Parkinson's, was my mentor for so many years as an adult.

Rich Harwood (29:46): He's about twenty years older than me. Honestly, I feel in so many ways like the luckiest person in the world. I got to live. I got to do all these things and meet all these people, and I get to put into play something I care so deeply about that brings purpose and meaning in my life. Like, what else could you and I have this incredible family with these kids and grandkids and stuff.

Rich Harwood (30:10): So what else could you want?

Matt Gilhooly (30:12): Yeah. Well, there's a lot you could want, but what else do you need? And Right. You probably are creating the things around you now that you needed as a kid like a lot of us do. I I have a question of of when these people showed up in your life like mister Rivers and these others that you mentioned.

Matt Gilhooly (30:30): Did that create a different feeling towards your own family because of what these people offered you? And this is totally the cynic in me asking that curious question.

Unknown Speaker (30:42): You mean, it make me more angry at

Matt Gilhooly (30:44): my Did make you feel differently about your parents or your siblings because you were creating this life and community with these other teenagers and Mr. Rivers?

Rich Harwood (30:56): Yeah. It's a great question. No one's ever asked me that. I think, honestly, I hate to say this, I think that I was in search of things in community that my family simply couldn't or wasn't able to provide. And, you know, I don't think at all that it's an accident that I do the work I do.

Rich Harwood (31:23): I mean, a lot of our work, I talk about moving from trauma and disparity, healing and hope. Like, I was called into Newtown after the massacre there to help the community move forward, you know? And I think because of the chaos in my family, because of people feeling so stretched, because there were people butting heads a lot, because things felt askew a lot, that my work, my relationships in community and my work now in community is about, can we create something that works better for all people? There were years when I was silent in my house. My mother jokes about it all the time.

Rich Harwood (32:08): And

Matt Gilhooly (32:09): Yeah. Because you didn't wanna ruffle any more feathers.

Rich Harwood (32:11): Right. I didn't wanna create any more wreak any more havoc, and I didn't wanna disappoint anyone, and I didn't

Unknown Speaker (32:17): Not that you would have.

Rich Harwood (32:18): But I didn't right. I didn't wanna ask for more. I thought I was already getting a lot. And, you know, my wife and I have bent over backwards in our family now as we were raising our kids, now we're helping to raise our grandchildren, that we wanna make sure there's enough space for everyone. Again, you know, I might have not said this twenty years ago or ten years ago, but today I would, that I am really grateful to my parents.

Rich Harwood (32:46): There are a lot of things that didn't go right. My father was very, very, very tough on me outside of me being sick. And so that was a whole another thing here. But I am really grateful. They inculcated us with really good values.

Rich Harwood (33:01): I learned my faith from my parents. My parents were really active in our community. My mom started the first transition home when mental health patients were being deinstitutionalized in New York and she put it in our neighborhood of all places. That took guts. My father helped resuscitate the NAACP in our town.

Rich Harwood (33:21): Over and over again, they did these they started our local synagogue with five other families. So over and over again, they did remarkable things. They just couldn't manage this thing.

Matt Gilhooly (33:32): Mhmm. Yeah. And it it doesn't pull from the other things. They taught you the whole word of service. I mean

Unknown Speaker (33:40): Absolutely.

Matt Gilhooly (33:40): They they modeled that, and they just didn't have the, I mean, in my opinion, they probably just didn't have the tools, and they just didn't know what to do. I I feel like growing up for me, the reason I asked that question is there were times in my teens when I would be at a friend's house who had, like, the full family, like the parents. My parents were divorced before my mom died, so I was living a different life. But I would go to these homes in which the parents had been married forever and the kid, you know, like and everything felt like hallmark. And so it would make me look back at my own experience.

Matt Gilhooly (34:15): And and because I was still deep pushing down the grief, it made things worse for me because it just made me look like when I go home, this is what I'm going to. Not that my home life was bad or anything like that, but it just wasn't, quote, unquote, normal. And it just made me more mad. And so that's why that where that question came from of, like, seeing someone essentially love you and the people around you as much as mister Rivers did and took care of you and cared about your safety and except for the seat belt thing. And, you know, and then take care of you and and how you guys feel and work together could bring up some emotions about when you do go home and it feels like, oh, no.

Matt Gilhooly (34:56): I'm home.

Rich Harwood (34:57): You know, it's interesting. That's that's also a really good question. I I didn't feel that, honestly. I I think it's partly because I just first of all, I I saw the good things in our family. There were many.

Rich Harwood (35:11): Some I just mentioned. You know, it's interesting, my friends always told me they thought we had the perfect family. And it was because my parents, first of all, my brother, sister and I all worked hard and did fairly well. I think the other thing is that my parents were known as being present when other kids would walk into our house. They were very attentive to them.

Rich Harwood (35:36): And, you know, honestly, I think when I talk to my mom now a little bit about this, she's like, You didn't need additional help. You seem to be doing just fine. I hid everything, right? I was really good at hiding a lot. So, I think when I looked at other families, to your question, I didn't envy them or want that.

Rich Harwood (35:59): I think I was more curious about like, geez, I wonder how their family works. I wonder what's going on in that house. They look perfect, to your point, but, you know, I is that really what's going on? Like, was curious. Yeah.

Rich Harwood (36:14): Because I think I think what I've come to realize is that being sick and having to struggle and keep moving and everything was that I was always thinking about what is someone else experiencing? How are they experiencing life? How do they experience pitfalls and things that go wrong? Do they experience a dyslexia side too?

Matt Gilhooly (36:41): Yeah, maybe in different ways.

Rich Harwood (36:42): Yeah. And honestly, now in my work for all these years, it's kind of like a, I hate to say this, but it's kind like a superpower because I'm so empathetic to other people's plight. I'm so, try to be so attuned to what they're experiencing and how this work that we do can help them gain greater confidence, help them feel seen and heard, help them realize that they have much more agency than they probably ever imagined.

Matt Gilhooly (37:11): So what was happening at 27 that you were like, let's make this bigger? Because you were probably in service of others doing things, but what was the impetus to start your own thing and then here we are forty years later that you're still doing the good work or

Rich Harwood (37:32): Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a confluence of things. It was for sure being sick, which continued to sort of shape who I was. I think by the time I was 23, I'd worked on 20 political campaigns.

Rich Harwood (37:47): The last one, I was an aide to a president US presidential candidate. Those campaigns I liked many of the candidates. I despised the campaigns. It was back in the eighties. And I came to feel and believe that they sought to win at any cost and no matter what they professed, and sometimes they did profess to care about people like mister Rivers or Mr.

Rich Harwood (38:12): Brundage or Mr. Petka or someone like my mentor now who I talk to on Sundays. And I was enraged, honestly. I thought it was a bunch of bullshit, really. I don't know what else to put it.

Rich Harwood (38:26): Like, I was enraged at, what are we doing here? This is more destructive than helpful. So, it's almost like a reminder of the healthcare system for me. And I was incredulous about it. So, that was one thing.

Rich Harwood (38:38): The second thing was I worked for a couple of nonprofits and I believed at the time, still believe today, that too many nonprofits live off of soft money, that they're not creating the impact they say they're creating, that too many people are unwilling to get dirt under the fingernails and do the heavy lifting that really needs to be done to help our society move forward.

Unknown Speaker (38:57): Sounds like a politician.

Rich Harwood (38:58): Yeah, I was frustrated by that. I was frustrated by that. And the third thing, we've talked a little bit about is, you know, I was a person of faith and my faith tells me I'm not whole unless I'm part of a larger community, that if you save one life, you save the world, that you are here on earth to take an imperfect world and try to make it more perfect to the extent that one can. That's our calling. It's called in Judaism.

Rich Harwood (39:25): And those things really mattered to me. They still mattered to me. So politics, nonprofits, my faith, my illness sort of conspired. And I came up with this idea when I was working on a presidential campaign. We were twenty, thirty points behind at the time.

Rich Harwood (39:47): And I had another mentor who helped me think about it, another guy, Carlos Galvis. And we would meet like an inn that had a place to eat, and it's where I courted my wife at the same place a number of years later, the Tabard Inn in Washington, D. C. And, you know, honestly, every person I talked to, including my parents, told me not to do it and tried to talk me out of it. They said, you're not well known.

Rich Harwood (40:17): You're just 27 years old. What do you know? This is gonna be too difficult. When I formed the institute, I didn't have an idea about like we want to create a widget and sell it. But it was that I put up on a whiteboard eight questions I was really motivated to find insights into.

Rich Harwood (40:37): What engenders authentic hope in people? What enables people to engage with other people? What are the kinds of leaders, to your point about leaders, what are the kinds of leaders we need that have trust and credibility? So there are eight of these questions. How does change really happen as opposed to like what we think happens?

Rich Harwood (40:55): And people say, well, you only if you're gonna do it, you're only allowed one question. I'm like, yeah, but the thing is these questions, it's the interdependence and the interaction and the dynamic between and among them that actually is what makes society go. And it's what creates meaning and relevance and significance in people's lives. So no, I'm not gonna pick just one question. That would create the type of fragmentation that I'm trying to get away from.

Rich Harwood (41:22): I'm trying to create a sense of wholeness, that goes back to my childhood. I wasn't whole, I was broken. I'm trying to create a sense of wholeness out of fragments and to see whether or not we can create a better path for communities and society to take moving forward, both what I would say now in philosophical terms, but also in deeply practical ways that enable people to come together and get stuff done. So that's what sort of motivated it. You know, honestly, I set little goals for myself.

Rich Harwood (41:53): Like if I'm working by myself in a year, you know, I should rethink this if we're not taking off. And last thing I'll say about this right now is we had a major breakthrough. We were fortuitous to do a mentor. Another mentor helped me with this guy named Bob Kingston, he's now passed away. I got connected to a foundation and they funded the first walk across the country that I did, the one I was telling you about.

Unknown Speaker (42:17): Yeah. When we released

Unknown Speaker (42:18): In 1990?

Rich Harwood (42:19): In 1990, and then it came out eventually in 1991, but the walk was 1990, and it hit big. Every we have over 10 boxes of clippings, of just clippings. That's a lot of clippings from this. I was on every major news thing. Wall Street Journal, New York New York Times had three editorials around it.

Rich Harwood (42:40): People picked up the report and started using it to teach at Harvard. I got a letter from the head of the largest newspaper company at the time and the most credible one, Knight Ridder Newspapers, saying, If you're ever in Miami, I wanna meet you. I'm thinking, Jesus, I'm now 29 years old. Are you kidding me? I made up an excuse to be in Miami.

Unknown Speaker (42:59): Told him,

Unknown Speaker (43:00): Of course.

Unknown Speaker (43:00): Gonna be out of Miami. I've got a meeting. Yeah. A meeting was with him. So one thing led to another and it just took off.

Unknown Speaker (43:08): I lucky.

Matt Gilhooly (43:09): What do you think people were drawn to? Your curiosity, your seeking of hope, providing of hope? What was it you think that people attached to?

Rich Harwood (43:21): I think, first of I was young. I was really young and I was ambitious. Like, not ambitious, like raw ambition. I was I wanted to get moving again. I mean, it comes back to They saw that I wanted to get moving and that I would do things to make it happen.

Rich Harwood (43:40): So that was one thing. But I think what they were attracted to was my sense of possibility and that my desire to try a different path forward and that I was innovating. I didn't pretend to have all the answers. I did say that I thought I had the wherewithal to figure things out or could figure things out over time. And I think people were really attracted to that.

Rich Harwood (44:08): And then as we took on more and more work, we became known for this. There was kind of almost a mystique around us at the time. And then people started to approach us with harder and harder challenges. And we hadn't taken those challenges on, but it had enough ingredients that we could combine and recombine and then also create along the way to deal with some of these things. And that's basically what we've been doing for almost forty years.

Rich Harwood (44:35): It's this over and over and over again. We we didn't create a single widget that we're trying to sell. We're a nonprofit, but it's that we're on a learning journey. Yeah. And we're learning about how society operates, but and exactly.

Rich Harwood (44:48): So I've written nine books now. Hope is in the title of almost every one of them.

Matt Gilhooly (44:53): Yeah. I mean, I think of being open there's something about leaders. There are different types of leaders, obviously. There are ones that call themselves leaders that maybe I would not call leaders that are looking to for the success. And what you're describing to me is, like, this is you're leading with openness and curiosity to help other like, genuinely help others and create all the things that you mentioned early on, and that's why you're successful is, you know, you're not, like, force well, you might be forcing some things, but you're not forcing the the meaning, I guess.

Matt Gilhooly (45:39): Like, it's it's in it's intrinsic in all that you're doing.

Rich Harwood (45:43): Yeah. You know? And it hasn't been a cakewalk. I mean, we've we've changed you know, as we've sort of evolved and learned certain things, we're like, oh, let's go over here and try some stuff, or let's go over here and try some stuff. And sometimes we're in essence almost starting all over again in terms of relationships that could support this work financially.

Rich Harwood (46:06): There have been times when, you know, there was another pivotal, I won't go into this, but only to say, I remember 2005, I hit a crisis point and this was another big turning point. And I had to really sort of figure out like, could this really work? Could I really continue to make a go of this? I'd already been doing it for twenty fifteen years at that point. Was it I felt like it was killing me.

Rich Harwood (46:37): Could I could I which was like a repeat of my childhood. So could I could I continue? And and luckily, I I I came to decide, yes, but there was a process involved.

Matt Gilhooly (46:48): Yeah. Why do you decide to continue? Is it faith? Is it all the pieces? Is it are you do you think of young rich when you're doing these things?

Matt Gilhooly (46:56): Like, what's what motivates you to do all that every day?

Rich Harwood (47:02): Actually, it's in the Bible. There's the burning bush, and God calls Moses forward. And Moses stuttered. He was deeply fearful. He had a lot of self doubt.

Rich Harwood (47:17): In other words, he was broken. And God says to him, you know, go release the Israelites from the burden of slavery, from the pharaohs. And Moses says, why me? And he wants to hide. And essentially what God says to him is, you know, Show your face.

Rich Harwood (47:37): This is no time to hide. That I'm asking you to step forward, asking you to be more than you think you can be. In essence, in a sense, imbuing you with a sense of confidence that you don't believe you have. And I'm asking you to account. I'm asking you to account.

Rich Harwood (47:59): You have a role to play here. And the bush, to me, some people could say that the burning bush is something to fear, that the fire is raging. And for me, it's not that at all. It's that the fire is burning, that it's alive, that there's a warmth that it gives, that there's a sense of that you can be more than you think you can be, but you're going to need to step forward, you're going to need to show your face, you're going to need to account for yourself. And honestly, Matt, again, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about the burning bush.

Rich Harwood (48:39): There are times when I feel defeated, when I feel worn out, when I feel worn down. And my first stop is to close my eyes, look inward, and to see this vivid image of the burning bush.

Matt Gilhooly (48:55): So it is I mean, essentially, faith is keeps you, you've already said that you're you're deeply connected to your faith, which I think is is as much of a reason to move forward as anything else. You know, I think, I'm not super religious or any I don't really ascribe to much of that. But when I do things that fill me up, especially now in my forties, I so much of what I'm doing, I think of that totally lost version of myself that didn't have a hand to hold, you know, metaphorically, didn't have a guide to like like, if he could see this version of me talking about things that I was so afraid to talk about or that I, like, made it through that very long dark period, I think of him, and he's the reason that I do these things, which sounds so cheesy, like, on the surface when you say it. But, you know, and curious. And and it's it's just like your story is so inspiring that, you know, you fought something that people told you you were gonna die, or they told your parents you were gonna die, and you weren't gonna live very long.

Matt Gilhooly (50:07): They called you names. They put you through horrible things. And, and here you are, maybe not as scarred as some may be and use or using those scars to help other people. And it's it's really commendable because there's so many times in your life that I think you could have folded and nobody would have blamed you for it. Not one person.

Rich Harwood (50:32): Yeah. But the other thing I think about to your point is, think about all the people I met in Flint, Michigan when I was working there after they lost 30,000 jobs and they kept getting up and stepping forward and they had this sense of hope that was just remarkable. Were the people in Newtown who kept going after the massacre there, they lost twenty first graders. So, in that town of 20,000 people was talking about this. You know, so honestly, those people, all these people, I find so inspiring.

Rich Harwood (51:05): Honestly, they're life giving. It's really it's quite remarkable what people do.

Matt Gilhooly (51:10): It you you probably see this a lot in in your years of doing this work is, like, the human spirit is, like, way more resilient than we ever could give it credit for. Like, I've talked to so many people about moments that I would never wish on my worst enemy of the things that they've gone through. And somehow, ten, fifteen years later, they're this this, you know, this version of you. Like, the things in the moment where you're like, how do I how do I just wake up tomorrow and do this all over again? And here you are doing all this thing, creating these ripple effects for the for the world in in a time when, if in my opinion, need it more than ever to create these communities and realize that even though we have different upbringings with different stories, different things that happened to us, there's so much more that we can relate to with each other than there is that that separates us.

Matt Gilhooly (52:04): So, I mean, thank you for what you're doing for the world.

Rich Harwood (52:09): Well, thank you for for what you're doing. You told me before we started this is episode, was it two fifty eight? Something like that. Is that right? So that's amazing.

Rich Harwood (52:19): And think of all the people who listen to this because of the conversations that you're generating and the space that you know, I've done a lot of podcasts at this point. You create a really special space. And I'm sure I know I'm grateful for it and I'm sure that your listeners are grateful for it. I'm sure the two fifty eight people who were guests alone, if you just think about that, all that they each individually got from talking with you is is really wonderful.

Matt Gilhooly (52:49): Well, I appreciate that. I I I say this without any joking. Each conversation that I get the opportunity to have heals a little part of me that I didn't know needed it. You're like, oh, that hit. So I I love to kind of wrap up these conversations with a question, and I'm thinking of the rich who was counting the seconds, the second hand, and the the minutes through every night.

Matt Gilhooly (53:12): And there's something that that 2026 Rich could wake him up at or pull him out of his trance at 04:19 every one morning. What would you say to him about this journey he was about to go on?

Rich Harwood (53:29): About the journey? I well, first, I think when you ask that, I think what I would say to him is I love you.

Matt Gilhooly (53:38): It's what you needed. Yeah. Reminder. Yeah. If only we had, when we were the young age, the voice to express what we needed and wanted and would and the understanding maybe of what we needed and wanted might not have figured that out, but I I hope that people now are modeling more of that for I'm sure you do that with you did that with your children.

Matt Gilhooly (54:08): You did that or you're going to do that with your grandchildren and spoil them as well, maybe more than you did your own kids, as you should as a grandparent. But, you know, I I think the awareness part is, like, I wish I had that awareness. I'm sure you wish you had some of that awareness as well, but it wouldn't have made us this version if we had it then.

Rich Harwood (54:29): Yeah. It's funny that you say that or important that you say that. I don't know if you feel this way. If you told me I could change certain things in my life, but I wouldn't be who I am today, and I wouldn't be doing what I am today. And in order to be who I am and do what I'm doing, I would have to endure the pain that I did.

Unknown Speaker (54:53): I would say, okay. Let's go through it again.

Matt Gilhooly (54:55): Yep. The harder thing that's a really hard thing to say. It's a really hard thing. I've had that that wrestling of saying it out loud because I never would want my mom to die. But, also, I wouldn't have learned all the things that I learned in this way and be this version of myself.

Matt Gilhooly (55:16): So I probably wouldn't jump in the DeLorean as much as I would want to, but, you know, it's it's a really hard thing to say out loud, but it's it is it is really important that we realize that all the things, all the decisions, good, bad, indifferent that we've made bring us to this version of ourselves. And and, you know, we should embrace that if we feel like we're aligned with what we wanna do. And it feels like you're you're very aligned with with what you wanna do for the last forty years you've been putting in the the care and the work. If people wanna learn more about, like, your institute or the 700 books that you've written, like, what's the best way to find you? Can they reach out to you and tell you their story?

Matt Gilhooly (55:58): Like, what's the

Unknown Speaker (55:59): Yeah. Two way

Unknown Speaker (55:59): to find you?

Rich Harwood (56:00): Yeah. Two concrete steps people would take. One is they can go to our website, the harwoodinstitute.org, all one word. There's stuff there, there's resources, there are things people can attend for free. We have a virtual event.

Rich Harwood (56:14): We have virtual events all the time so people don't have to leave their home. I come to communities and speak all the time. So go to the website, that's one. On the website, there's an email that you can click on and send us an email. And if you in the email or in the subject line, say message to Rich and then say, hi, Rich, and write me a note or tell me your story, even though it's a general mailbox, it does every all those emails, each of those emails do get to me and I read every single one And I try to reply to as many as I possibly can.

Matt Gilhooly (56:47): Yeah. I love that. I I like to encourage the listeners because I think there are a lot of listeners out there that we all have stories, but they haven't shared their story. And if there's some kind of little fire burning in you that something Rich said or something that in our conversation sparked something in you and you want to tell your story or how it resonated with you or how Rich's story resonated with you, reach out to any of us. Just tell someone your story.

Matt Gilhooly (57:13): There's so much power in it. I feel like things in my head are much messier and scarier than when I put them out of my mouth or on paper or something like that. And so I encourage people to just use the power of storytelling to to propel us forward because how we make connections. It's how we understand each other is through story.

Rich Harwood (57:33): Yeah. Great.

Matt Gilhooly (57:35): Well, I appreciate you. I encourage everyone to look in the show notes. I'll give them direct links to everything so that they can get to you. And I just wanna say thank you for being a part of this and going down whatever roads we went down as part of your story.

Rich Harwood (57:51): Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I'm grateful for the chance to talk with you and to to be able to do this together.

Matt Gilhooly (57:56): Awesome. Well, thank you again. I will be back next week with a brand new episode, and that's all. I'm gonna say goodbye. Thank you for listening to the Life Shift podcast.

Matt Gilhooly (58:06): If you wanna learn more, go to www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com. There, you can check out all the different episodes. You can check out the blog, some of the reviews for the podcast, and the LifeShift Journal. Links are there so you can purchase your own copy whether in digital or print format. Thanks again.

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