One Last Talk: Why Your Truth Matters and How to Speak It

0

1. How to Think about One Last Talk

By Tucker Max

If you let it, this book will change your life.

But fair warning: you might not enjoy the process to get there.

I know I didn’t like it. More than once, I wanted to quit. But I didn’t, and I’m eternally grateful I kept going.

To understand what this book is about and how it can help you, you have to start with the man who wrote it: Philip McKernan.

When I first met Philip, I did not like him. Not at all.

We were both speaking at MasterMind Talks, an event for entrepreneurs. I went first, gave my speech, and did fine. Polite standing ovation, etc.

Then Philip spoke. He was supposed to speak for an hour. He went for an hour and a half.

But no one cared. Not even the organizer. They were all totally enraptured.

I was not. I’ve been doing public speaking a long time, and I wasn’t fooled. To me, he was arrogant, defiant, aggressive, and contemptuous. But even worse…he just pissed me off (as I’ve come to realize, this is a very common reaction people have when they first meet him).

But I have to admit, the audience was enraptured for a reason: he was good. Whatever I thought of him as a person, the man could speak.

Even though we weren’t competing for anything, I looked at him the same way you might look at an opponent; you can’t actually like them, but you can recognize they’re objectively good at what they do.

Later that day, we ended up talking. I started asking him questions. After all, I could play his game too. Let’s see how good he is.

Tucker: So, you’re good at dealing with people’s problems?

Philip: Well…uh, I’ve helped some people in the past.

Tucker: Okay, here’s what I think is going on with me: [fifteen minutes of a rambling, self-aggrandizing self-diagnosis]. So? What do you think?

Philip: That’s a great intellectual understanding of your issues. I have nothing to add. But let me ask you a question: how do you feel?

Tucker: I feel great!

Phillip: Okay. Then why bring this up?

Tucker: Oh, you know…just wanna see if you have anything to add.

Philip: If you feel great, then I’m sure you don’t need my help. But in my experience, people with great intellectual understandings of their issues are often the ones with little to no emotional connection to them.

Veronica (my wife): Yep, he’s right. That’s you.

To hell with them both!

Over the years that ensued, we spoke at or attended the same events several times, and I got to know Philip very well (which was much easier than I expected, because he’s very likable one-on-one).

As I got to know him more, I also started to see him work with clients, many of whom were my friends. When I saw the impact he had on his clients, my feelings about him shifted.

I’ve seen hundreds of business coaches, CEO coaches, life coaches—every sort of coach there is. I think most of them are completely useless (in fact, I think quite a few are destructive).

But the first time I saw McKernan coach, I was blown away. He didn’t have any of the attributes you would assume a good coach would have—except the most important: his method works.

When he coached, all the things I told myself that I didn’t like about him—his cheekiness, his arrogance, his defiance—all disappeared. Instead, I saw a man who was 100 percent focused on the person he was helping, totally without ego. He approached each client from a genuine place of curiosity, humility, and service.

His coaching was, in a word, beautiful.

The difference is that most coaches or therapists like that are soft and cuddly and weak. He was not. At the same time he was in this service mindset, he also had a fierceness and a determination to actually get at the core of what was wrong.

I’d never personally seen this combination before—a coach who was deeply kind and caring and supportive, but also relentless, demanding, and unyielding.

It was like he loved his clients so much that he refused to let them hide from their truth.

I’ll be honest: this also irked me. Understanding people and helping them see themselves clearly is something I consider myself good at. People ask me to help them with this stuff all the time. Yet McKernan did it in a way that was so much more effective.

So basically, people liked him more and he did a better job.

Screw him!

Eventually, I got past my immaturity and looked at what he was doing from a place of humble curiosity, and I was able to see the secrets of his coaching techniques. I’ll tell you exactly what they are—but you’re going to be let down. His techniques are actually easy to understand. They are just very difficult for most people to implement (that includes me).

He doesn’t try to guess what’s in people’s heads. He doesn’t force things on people. He just creates a space for people to feel comfortable exploring their own emotions, and then he asks the questions necessary to get them to look deep in themselves and recognize what they already know is there. And he holds them accountable to what they find when they look within themselves.

Like I said: simple to explain, but hard to do.

And that sums up this book as well.

***

One Last Talk is very, very simple to explain. I can do it right now:

If you were about to die, what would you say before you go, and who would you say it to?

When I heard him explain this for the first time, I got chills immediately. I knew where he was going and what this meant, especially coming from him.

I’ve been around death a few times, and it always plays out the same way: when people know it’s their time, everything they’d been keeping inside comes out.

They finally face the hard pain they’ve been avoiding. They finally speak their truth. They finally say that thing that needs to be said to that person that so needs to hear it.

One Last Talk is about bringing this forward in time. It’s about using the idea of death to create the urgency that people lack in facing their issues.

I honestly don’t know of any psychological, moral, or emotional frame that is more powerful than that.

Even though I was impressed by the idea and honored when he asked me to give a talk, I didn’t think One Last Talk would impact me all that much. I’m not the type to run from my issues, and I felt like I had done most of the hard work already—that I had faced my pain and had spoken my truths.

I spent four years in psychoanalysis, going four times a week. I spent a year and a half doing a different form of therapy. I meditate. I’ve done an immense amount of deep and difficult emotional work. The really, really hard work that is awful and painful. The work people don’t want to do.

How much could this impact me after all this work I’d already done?

Quite a bit. And yes, it was painful.

But it was also liberating.

My full One Last Talk is on YouTube, but in short, I got up on stage and admitted that I have real problems emotionally connecting with my wife and kids.

That sucked.

It wasn’t even admitting it to the world that was hard. Or even to my wife. For me, it was admitting it to myself.

I think this is difficult for many people, but it’s one of those truths that no one’s willing to admit because it’s shameful. I still feel deeply ashamed as I sit here and write: I have an incredible, wonderful wife and two beautiful, healthy kids—and I have real problems loving them.

Who admits that? I didn’t want to admit that!

But when I gave my One Last Talk, that was the truth that was staring me in the face, that I was not confronting, that I needed to speak.

I’m not going to tell you that One Last Talk is a replacement for therapy, or that One Last Talk is perfect, or that One Last Talk will solve all your problems, because none of that is true.

But if you approach this with real conviction and real sincerity, and you really try your best—you will change. For the better.

It happened to me. And I’ve seen it happen in dozens of others who’ve worked with McKernan or have gone through the One Last Talk process.

I could go on and on about how great this is, but the highest recommendation I know to give for something is not words—which is ironic, given that I’m a writer. No, I’m a big believer that if you want to really understand someone, watch what they do.

This is what I did for this book:

I delivered a One Last Talk myself, which required weeks of dedicated time on my part, and lots of travel—which I hate.

Of course, I had to actually face that truth and then speak it on stage, which was far harder than I thought it’d be.

I personally spent hundreds of hours helping edit this book.

I spent dozens of hours helping Philip and his team brainstorm about how to conceptualize One Last Talk beyond just in-person events.

I asked Philip to let me write the introduction to this book, and then I wrote it.

Measured that way—by the amount of time I’ve dedicated to it—I think One Last Talk gets the highest endorsement I’ve ever given a book.

Why did I spend so much time on this when it is not my project and I didn’t have to?

Because the message in this book is that important.

The way life works is that we all suffer traumas.

Something awful happens.

Or someone hurts us.

Or we get judged and shamed.

Or we hide part of ourselves, for any number of reasons.

Any number of other awful things can and will happen to us. After all, so much of life is pain and suffering.

This suffering is an inevitable part of life.

The question becomes, how do we deal with it? What do we do after the unavoidable trauma and the pain and the suffering?

The answer for most people—myself included—is that we run from that pain.

We do drugs, we sleep with lots of people, we make lots of money, we stay constantly busy. We do whatever is necessary to avoid the pain that will come from facing whatever hard truth there is in our life.

But all that does is bury the shame and the pain, and only for a little while. It doesn’t go away. It’s still there, and the longer you wait to surface it, the worse it is when it comes.

All I can tell you, as someone who’s done this multiple times with multiple painful traumas in my life—when it comes to pain, the only way out is through it.

But how? How do you get through it?

It’s not the only way, but One Last Talk is one of the best frameworks I’ve experienced to help me get through my pain.

If you’re in pain, if you have a truth to speak, if you want to get there but you need some help…this book will help you.

And it will change your life.

You just have to give your talk.

]>

Part One

Part 1: Why Your Truth Matters

]>

1.1

2. Your Pain Has a Purpose: Philip McKernan

I was really fired up about my first big speaking event.

Five people showed up.

I remember getting on my high horse, thinking, What is this? I didn’t sign up for this.

But then I caught myself and thought, Who do you think you are? You’ve never even spoken before!

I was there because somebody had overheard a conversation I was having and asked me to come speak to their group.

I pulled myself together and spoke as though there were 100,000 people in the audience. I gave my all.

Afterward, a guy came up to me and said, I’d like you to come and speak to my students.

I immediately expected he was talking about a business school or a college.

No. He was a headmaster at a high school.

I thought, No way am I going back to high school. I hated high school.

He kept calling me, so eventually I said, Okay, I’ll come with two conditions. One, that the students actually want to be in the room. It has to be by choice. And two, that you pay something.

I think it was five dollars per person, and we gave it to charity. But there had to be some skin in the game.

I showed up, and there were 20 kids in the room. Out of 170 kids total in the school, 20 chose to show up.

Within the first minute and a half, I used the f-bomb. Straightaway, that changed the energy. It was on purpose. I wanted the kids to know that I wasn’t like the other adults, that I wasn’t going to lie to them or play to the niceties. I was going to be real.

A half hour in, I was sharing some of my story—I left out all the bits I didn’t want to talk about, because I wanted to look cool. I wanted credibility in front of these students, and I thought highlighting the good parts of my life was the way to get it.

One student asked, Where did you go to college, and what did you study?

I remember looking at the young kid and thinking of a bullshit answer to give, something like, I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I didn’t want to go to college.

But the truth is that I did want to go to college. Not for the education, but to go with my buddies. I would’ve gone if I’d done well enough on my exams.

When I looked into that kid’s big brown eyes, I knew I couldn’t lie to myself or to these kids. Not anymore.

I said, I didn’t go to college. Laugh if you want, but I’m dyslexic, and I failed pretty much every exam I ever sat for.

They didn’t laugh.

The opposite happened.

At that moment, they stopped judging me.

There was an energy shift in the room. I could see it in their eyes. They saw me as human and weak and real. It was almost like all their skepticism left them, and they felt at ease with me and connected to me. They went from curiosity to love. Literally, there was love in their eyes.

They accepted me. For the first time, I felt accepted like never before, in any public forum.

For me, in that moment, the workshop pivoted. I let go of worrying about looking good. I stopped needing to sell them on who I was. It was possibly the best workshop I’ve ever run, even to this day.

This changed me. It helped me feel free to speak my truth without any judgment.

This was supposed to be a speech. But this changed it from a speech to a dialogue. I felt safe, so I opened it up, and asked them questions, and opened a dialogue with them.

And they, in turn, realized something: they didn’t just have to sit there and listen. They could share their truth too. Suddenly, my speech became a dialogue as the students began to open up with me about their parents and the pressures they faced.

This was a pivotal moment in my life.

This is the moment when I stopped telling my story. I stopped trying to look good.

Instead, I spoke my honest, painful truth.

This was the moment, despite my fears and my insecurities and my imperfections, I felt the world accepted me.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. When I was 15 years old, I told my mom I wanted to get rid of my name, Philip.

I thought that