Discovering Hope and Empathy in the Face of Tragedy
Episode 31 with financial planning expert and 9/11 survivor, Dr. Nathan Harness
On the morning of 9/11, Dr. Nathan Harness was a young stockbroker starting his second day working in the World Trade Center. The events that unfolded that day have altered the world as we know it.
For Nathan, surviving this traumatic and life-altering experience has shaped how Nathehan approaches every aspect of his life and spurred him to a profession where he can help others. In the face of the darkest parts of humanity, Nathan witnessed sacrifice, empathy, and hope.
Dr. Nathan, Professor and Director of Financial Planning at Texas A&M, joins Wes Brown and Dr. Sonya Lutter today to share his remarkable story. He highlights the significance of living with intentionality, gratitude, and purpose and the role of empathy and resilience in shaping his character and teaching. Join us for this inspiring conversation that invites us to see the best in humanity and ourselves.
About Our Guest:
Nathan Harness, Ph.D., CFP® is an instructional associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and T.D. Ameritrade Director of Financial Planning for the Financial Planning Program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Harness brings years of financial planning experience to Texas A&M University. Since 2013, he has taught the Investment Planning, Retirement Planning and the Financial Planning Capstone courses for the Financial Planning program. Harness’ research interests include personal financial ratio analysis, household heuristics and wealth accumulation, and individual stock selection. He is published in Applied Economic Letters, Financial Services Review, International Journal of Business and Finance Research, Journal of Financial Services Professionals, Financial Counseling and Planning, and the Journal of Personal Finance.
Prior to joining the Texas A&M faculty, Harness taught at the University of Georgia in Athens. Most recently, he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of investments and financial management at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
Recommended Reading from this episode:
The Radical Elimination of Hurry – John Michael Comer
The American Story – David and Tim Barton
The History of Financial Planning – E. Denby Brandon Jr. & H. Oliver Welch
The Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
-
Dr. Nathan Harness 00:00
Going back into that moment where I come down into the mezzanine and I see all of these people helping one another. I really I'd experienced love, obviously, from my parents. I experienced love from people I grew up with, but I had never observed love in action from people who I did not know. I really believe it is an action. I think when you share hope, whenever you have an understanding of the value of others that empathy, then it does produce an action. And that action is kindness, care, love. That is what I remember most. I remember the tragedy. Of course, I never forget the sacrifice, but I got to see some positive aspects of love that were shocking. What a complex human emotion love is. I would have thought that that desire to survive would have created ruthlessness, would have created utter chaos. But that's not what I saw.
Wes Brown 01:08
Hello and welcome to analog advisor, where we explore how money shapes our lives, futures, families and communities. I'm Wes Brown and I'm Sonia Luter, whether you're managing your own family's wealth or just curious about the world of wealth management, this conversation will enlighten and inform. Thanks for being here and for tuning in. Let's get analog today. Sonya and I got the remarkable opportunity to connect with the professor and director of financial planning at Texas a&m, Dr Nathan harness. This episode airs on September 10, and for many of us, including our guests, this date, marks a delineation in our stories, a before and after. It's hard to believe that it's been 23 years since the attack on the World Trade Center. Dr harness, as he shares in this interview, was working as a young stockbroker in the World Trade Center on 911 throughout our conversation, he relays his experience of that day and how surviving this traumatic and life altering event has shaped how he approaches every aspect of his life and spurred him onto a profession where he can help others. He highlights the significance of living with intentionality, gratitude and purpose and the role of empathy and resilience in shaping his character and his teaching. This was an incredibly touching discussion to have, and we sincerely appreciated the opportunity to sit down with him. We hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as we did. Let's get Anna,
Wes Brown 02:31
well, Nathan, welcome. Thanks for joining us on the podcast. It's good to see you. Good to meet you.
Dr. Nathan Harness 02:35
Thanks for having me.
Wes Brown 02:37
Yeah, absolutely. Do us favor. Start at the top, kind of hit the high points of who you are, what you do, and what led to, what led to where you are today.
Dr. Nathan Harness 02:44
Yeah, I'm a professor full time first in my family to actually go to college, so it's odd to be the first to go to college and then just never stop going to college for a long period of time. But I currently am the director of the financial planning program at Texas A and M University. I've taught in this institution, in the system of this institution, for almost, gosh, it's been almost 15 years now. It's just shocking. I feel like I just graduated from my undergraduate degree, let alone leading undergrads now to this day. And what led me to this place? You know, it's, I think it's somewhat serendipitous journey. I don't believe in accidents. Honestly. I think everything in life has reason and meaning behind it, if you allow it to. So I think it's a multitude of events, you know, little nudges along the way that brought me to becoming an educator. I started out as a financial planner, really, I started out as a stockbroker, graduated with a degree, undergrad degree in finance, and thought knowing how to calculate the value of a security would be enough to help anybody's needs. So started as a stockbroker in Little Rock, Arkansas, and that's ultimately you know, where my story leads, through to New York and then coming back and becoming an educator. Was through Morgan Stanley, a particular stock brokerage company in Little Rock that sent me up to New York for some centralized training. It's great. That's
Wes Brown 04:15
interesting. I've been there, by the way, I've been to the centralized I was at Morgan Stanley back in oh seven so went to their main offices. We always out of the New Hampshire office, but I
Dr. Nathan Harness 04:26
think they shifted training for a long time. Every single person that came through Morgan Stanley would go to New York for training. They decentralized that, of course, after 2001 and moved it in, I think, into other regional locations. But there was a time when every single person that came through would go through formalized and I think, centralized training in the exact same location. So that was a little bit of, you know, I think the identity of the beginning of the profession for me, and understanding how to help people came through that lens.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 04:59
There's. Many interesting things to think about with working on a college campus, and how it seems like time never moves, in some ways, because it's the same cycle over and over again. So I can see your family being like, what are you doing? Nathan, it's time to leave college, but you just keep on going. Yeah,
Dr. Nathan Harness 05:17
they said that a few times actually. Are you sure that this makes sense to continue education? Honestly, getting my master's degree and then ultimately getting my PhD was not the plan. I went to a public library and took a Myers Briggs assessment. I never even heard what that was. I just knew that what I was doing didn't seem to match with the gifts that I thought that I had. So I was trying to discover who I was, and somebody said, the public library has something called Myers Briggs. You can take this assessment, and at the end of it, it'll give you a list of career items, things that you could do from a career perspective. So when took the assessment and it spit out all these different jobs, two of them stood out to me. One was CEO of a company, and I thought, I don't think I can go straight into the CEO role, so I'm gonna scratch that off. Results, they
Wes Brown 06:16
just open the doors. You just say, this is what it told me to do. I'm here. Briggs said
Dr. Nathan Harness 06:25
the other was to be an educator. And I don't think at that moment, I knew exactly what that meant, but I knew that it meant more education, so I began to look for places where I could get more education, not even knowing because I didn't have parents to say that knew. Go to this college or this college, I think, through what I would consider a providential scenario, I ended up at Texas Tech University, getting there and getting a master's degree in finance. I had no intention of getting a PhD. I wanted to be a portfolio analyst leaning more towards the technical side. And it would just so happen that I sat in a class with a guy named John Salter, who was also getting, at that moment, getting a PhD in finance. He switched, he was in a pivot point of switching to financial planning, and he said, You were a financial planner. So yes, he said, You need to come check this out. You need to meet this guy named Bill Gustafson. So the rest is history where I got drawn into people selling me on the idea of helping others. I think they saw through the Nathan's going to college for a little while to hide out and run from his emotions and some of the chaotic events that he's experienced to who he was and how he could have an opportunity to leverage gifts to help other people. I saw faculty doing that, and I thought, I want that. I want more of that you
Dr. Sonya Lutter 07:57
set yourself up very nicely. Nathan, to tell us about your story. Tell us about your first job. I've heard you speak about it before. It's very powerful, and I think the listeners would really like to hear about your time in New York. Sure.
Dr. Nathan Harness 08:12
So today, what I'm going to attempt to do is, instead of just retelling you a historical story, which I do at times, I'm going to try to tell you an emotional story, placing myself into it. So I'll apologize in advance, because when I do that, I open up Pandora's box of emotions. And I want to do that, and the reason is because my goal is for you and the listeners as well to connect to the humanity of those events, rather than the historicity of those events. So it does open up an internal emotional dialog, because I remember the day in emotional context, not just historical context. So I was not in New York for long. I had started working for Morgan Stanley, and literally had gotten there on Sunday. I remember being on a flight with a woman sitting next to me and telling her, this is one of my first times out of Arkansas. I've never been to the northeast. I'm super excited I'm going to go work in the World Trade Center. And she gave me all these places that I should visit while I was in New York, and as events would unfold, I got to New York on Sunday. 911 was Tuesday, so I did not have a lot of time to integrate into the city, to experience the city. I had just enough time to get a name badge in the lobby, a photo made assignments to my floor working on 61 so the morning of 911 it was about 846, in the morning, and I find myself staring out a bank of windows with a lot of other people on my floor, and as I'm. Staring past these people, I'm really transfixed, because in the sky around me there's office papers everywhere. I have no idea what's going on, nor does anyone around me. We've heard nothing. We've seen some nothing. We just see chaos, or the after effects of chaos and the air around us. So as I'm staring out the window. My boss on the floor, there's about 200 of us on the floor, snaps me out of this transfix gaze out the window and says, We need to evacuate our floor. So all of a sudden I go from new employee, super excited to be here. I think I had gone to New York really and truly, chasing a little bit of money and chasing relevance. I wanted to be relevant at the end of the day. To now, starting to feel a sense of heightened fear, of uncertainty of a new job and not knowing what was coming next. So he tells us to evacuate the floor, and I'm surrounded by people who are, you know, from larger cities. I came from a small town in Arkansas, they didn't seem to have the level of nervousness that I did. There was maybe a sense of casual nervousness as we all move towards the evacuation doorways. There's there was two stairwells in the World Trade Center on either side of our floor, and we all knew not to get into the elevator bank. We knew to get into the stairwell. So here I am finding myself entering into a stairwell with 1000s of other people, because people are coming down from above. Again, nobody that I had contact with at that time had any inclination what had occurred up to that point, not one. I think, what the next generation sometimes doesn't realize is that information didn't pass as rapidly. Although there were cell phones, not a lot of people had them, and we didn't use them for rapid communication in the way that you might see today, where you begin to text immediately. So the people around me, we were just taking a casual stroll down the stairwell on our way down probably felt like it was a fire drill. You know, one of those fire drill moments where you would find yourself back at work here in a little while. We'll play this out and see how it goes. I can remember myself, and this is where things begin to get very vivid. I remember looking up and seeing a door that read 44 I'm now at the 44th floor, so I've come from the 61st floor down to the 44th floor, and almost the exact moment that that registers in my brain, my building almost explodes with energy. The building gets smacked so hard that not only is it shaking side to side, it feels like it's shaking up and down and begins to lean. How far? I have no idea it could be feet, but it felt, when you're in the top of it like so much more than that, it cuts the power almost instantaneously. And that is really a pivot moment for me, where as a 22 year old, I believed that was my final moments like this is it? It's incredible what your brain does whenever it's under duress. And you think that these are the last moments, I think it goes into overdrive. I don't know all the chemical mechanics of it, but from my experience, my brain was eking out as many possible thoughts as it could. Some of them calculations and attempt to how do I get out of here? And some of them feelings and emotions of I'm going to die alone a 22 year old kid and a stairwell, and nobody will ever remember me. So I'm experiencing all of this at once, and just trying to get my bearing, but the lights are out. It felt like a coffin. You know that I had been trapped in a coffin with strangers who I didn't know. They didn't know me when none of us knew is that in that exact moment, a clock started counting down, and that clock had 56 minutes on it 56 minutes from that moment the building that I'm in falls. So we don't know this, obviously, we just know that extreme chaos occurred. I think it was this last year for me that I am now one year older than the number of years that I lived up to 911 which is a really weird doubling, right? This doubling for me has given me a real perspective. Maybe time has given me a perspective to go back and think about those moments. I'm processing really quick in those moments, but now I go back and try to piece together the events of the day and maybe even reflect on. Few themes, you know, themes that maybe I'll share throughout the remainder of this story. When I share with my college students, I try to integrate this into the understanding that I've come to, maybe not in the moment, not maybe not completely in the moment, but the understanding that I've come to through the character that I observed over the next 56 minutes and how critical those were to my life. I use an acronym a lot. An acronym is help. It's hope, empathy, love and peace. These were the characteristics I believe that I observed across those 56 minutes and then the days, the months and the years to come from that point going forward. So I'm on 44 you know, I'm almost 500 feet off the ground. Time really begins to slow, oddly enough, in that moment, and it's probably the adrenaline rush that's occurring, my brain, as I said, begins to split itself and have a lot of thoughts, and one of them that I remembered, not immediately after but later, was being a kid with my mom. I grew up in a small town. We had only one building that I knew of that had an elevator in it, and I was scared as a kid of heights, and I was scared to be in that elevator, and I remember it had a glass back to it, and it was only four stories up, and my mom taking me on there, holding my hand. We would go up and down, and she said, you're going to be okay. And it's weird, that was one of the very first thoughts that I had, was this image of being safe with my mom, her taking me up and down this elevator, and feeling, even in that moment like I wish she was here. I would don't wish that she would die. I don't wish that she would be experiencing what I was but recognizing the comfort that my mom had provided over all these years up to that exact moment in time, I had a lot of those thoughts that occurred very, very rapidly, slowly, the traffic began to move again. Seemed like it took forever. People had just stopped. It was a stalemate. Nobody could move. You're at the mercy of every single person. But 44 flights of people, the traffic begins to move. And I start to see things that are shocking to me. You know, piles of people's shoes off to the side because they were wearing high heels. Now, those things don't matter at all, wheelchairs that are empty, with doors open, where somebody had picked a person up out of a wheelchair and they had been carried down in front of me. Just a humanity, a community that was shocking to me, what was so leveling, and I think death does this. Death is the great equalizer. I think it
Dr. Nathan Harness 17:53
allows us to abate Arrested Development and feel what's happening in that moment in time. So no matter what your position was, you know, if you were that CEO, if you were a high flying stockbroker, if you were a computer programmer, or if you were a janitor, every one of those roles just became of the exact same value based off being in a stairwell in a moment of complete chaos and tragedy. It didn't matter what your position was in life, because every single one of us were equally helpless. That is a unique scenario. It doesn't play out all the time regardless of position, all of us were dependent on the person in front of us. It created a very unique, unifying element that was sad to go through, but at the same time, I'm grateful that I got to experience that in strangers, in a way that I just don't know that I would have ever seen in New York. You know, people, when I was going to New York told me, you're just going to be around chaotic, rude people who are not going to hold doors open for you, and yet that's not what I saw. I saw strangers who made extreme sacrifice. So as I kind of think back on that, I think it can be very hard in a moment like that to find hope, to find even any sense of hope, because you feel trapped. You're trapped in this moment of despair, be it situational, be it internal. Fortunately for me, that was something that I had thought through before the events of 911 so I had wrestled with internal hope well before that day. Sometimes I share with my students a little bit of how critical faith is to me, and I tell them that I have confidence. I have confidence in a hope that is anchored in a belief in the fulfillment of my faith that was really apparent in that moment, that I had confidence in. Even in the midst of extreme chaos, it was an anchoring a moment. As a matter of fact, there's a guy by the name of Paul, a philosopher that says that hope is the anchor of the soul. It's both sure and it's steadfast. I think that gave me this leveling foundation to respond to my condition in that moment, not saying it was perfect, not saying I didn't have any fear, because it did. But there was a permanence there that gave me a confidence we begin to continue to move person by person by person, and I could sense that there was urgency, even though, again, none of us knew the building's going down in 56 minutes, there was a sense of, we need to get out of here. We went from something more casual to something that was, now, we need to get out of here right now. It was around the 10th floor that smoke become begins to come up the stairwell shaft, and that's a really scary moment, because, remember, I have no idea what's occurred. Nobody around me has any idea what's occurred. We only know that we had an extreme shock. All of the power went out, emergency power came back on, and we have no communication below us. For me, I began to think about 1993 there was an attack on that World Trade Center in 93 and it was a bomb in the base. In the basement. That was all that I could think of, was there was a bomb in the basement, and we're going into fire. Some of the people around me said that. They said, We're going into fire. We need to go up. They can't get ladders up this high. We need to go up and they'll pull us up off the roof with helicopters, and some people did they turned around, I felt this overwhelming uncertainty in that moment. Was kind of caught in the fear of indecision. I remember touching each door, trying to feel if it was hot. I had a dress shirt on, and I was breathing through it. It was enough smoke for me to have to breathe through a shirt. So I was caught in this fear of indecision, not knowing what I should do, and I don't know if I would have turned around or not, but I do know this in that exact moment, I looked up and I saw for the first time a New York firefighter. I
22:23
And that that's the moment,
Dr. Nathan Harness 22:28
that's the moment, for me, that it's seeing sacrifice of the highest order. Everybody else is running away from event. Other people are running towards it. You just don't experience that very often in life. Firefighter tells me there's a way out. Tells All of us, there's a way out. You just got to keep going to me. It's those small acts of kindness. It's like a oasis in a desert. Because I felt like I was in a desert. I think, as I said, that hope of eternity was really strong within me. I was confident in that, but my hope is survival for that day had been fading rapidly, as were the others. It was those rescue personnel, I think seeing their faces, you know, many of us, many, many of us were saved because we were shown that there was a way out, that there was a way that you could survive this event. It gave you hope, hope in the present. So I tell my college students regularly that empathy is oftentimes earned rather than learned. I think when we share these types of circumstances, when we share these conditions, this is where, for me, at least empathy has been most found. It's not native to me. I wasn't born with that. It's something that was thrust upon me during specific moments I can, I can, maybe even cautiously tell you that I'm grateful for moments when I share adversity like this, because it has caused me to have a deeper understanding of other people than any other aspect of my life. Nothing else has taken me to these places before. I think even when you when you think about how we respond, that empathy is typically not built on a day. It doesn't occur just magically overnight when we are asked to respond during our highest times, our biggest moments where we're called to make the largest sacrifices, how we respond on that day is not magically determined in that moment. I think it's it's determined in the days, the weeks, the months, all the time, leading up to that in a life that we have that's marked by how we understand the value of other people. So I attribute some of that to even that scene. Moment in time of what I observed behaviorally in the character of the individuals who gave me my lifeline, those firefighters, I think, had given all of us a sense of hope, and we got to see heroism, I think of the highest order. I exited the stairwell knowing that I wasn't going into fire. And as I came out, I saw a mezzanine that had been completely destroyed. It was marble with glass everywhere on the way up the elevator that morning. Now it was blown glass, soot, dead bodies, bodies that had newspaper covering them up to give their final burial things that I heard my grandfather talk about in war was thrust into my life in the blink of an eye. But again, what I saw in the midst of that destruction surprised me. I got to see compassion. I got to see people who cared for one another in a way that shocked me. I just couldn't believe it. There was a lady in front of me who had her pantyhose burned to her legs, and you could see she was in immense pain. She was being, in essence, dragged by two other people, and yet they were still standing in a line like the rest of us, trying to find a way out. I couldn't exit out of tower two. There were too many window panes blowing out, and people were dying from debris, so we had to take a connecting pathway between Tower One and tower two. So I exited out of the adjacent tower. I remember sitting there and just pausing at the exit and a firefighter telling me, Don't look up, just run. And I just echoed when she said it. And so I ran into a sea of people, and I looked back, and for the first time, I saw what had happened. I did not know until that moment that there was a gaping hole above me in our building, and I could see flames coming out of it. I get this overwhelming urge to run, just run. So I started running. I don't know exactly which direction. I think some I ran West, but predominantly I ran north. It was about 15 minutes, and I thought I heard the National Guard. I thought it was a helicopter. I was coming. People were screaming. And what was happening was it was air pockets blowing out as tower two collapse. So it almost made like a the and I looked back and I could see the building disappear. It was just gone. I'd been separated from anybody I'd been working with. Didn't know where anybody was. Began to think we're in the middle of a war zone, and this is only the beginning. It took me a long time even just to inform people that I had survived. Pay phones were common at the time, but many of them had been knocked out. No lines of communication were getting through, and here I am, survived, but nobody knows. I'm not able to tell anybody, because I have no form of communication to tell other people. The last thing I want to talk about associated with just the events of that day, I think, is a few additional observations just about the character of people, as much as the event itself. That going back into that moment where I come down into the mezzanine and I see all of these people helping one another, I really I'd experience love, obviously, from my parents. I experienced love from people I grew up with, but I had never observed love in action from people who I did not know. And I really believe it is an action. I think when you share hope, whenever you have an understanding of the value of others, that empathy, then it does produce an action, and that action is kindness, care, love, that is what I remember most. I remember the tragedy. Of course, I never forget the sacrifice, but I got to see some positive aspects of love that were shocking. What a complex human emotion love is. I would have thought that that desire to survive would have created ruthlessness, would have created utter chaos. But that's not what I saw. I think the reason that I want to talk about this a little bit more is because of where I have seen decades later, at times, a little bit of a drift at times where, if. Feels that life is fractured, that there's more discord than there is discourse in our ability to communicate to one another. So I want to say that I have lived through a time where I stood shoulder to shoulder with Americans that were civilians. These aren't war buddies. These aren't people who signed up for this. These are everyday Americans that stood shoulder to shoulder during extremely trying times and were able to work together in a ragtag community to help one another. So I think there is love that we have for one another, even for strangers. It's just buried at times between the pretext of political discord, maybe even misplaced identity. It's hidden at times, and the trials and tragedies that we experience can sometimes quiet, and they can, they can quiet the noise, the echo chambers that separate us from each other. So I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for that, and I'm also grateful, I guess Lastly, for that sacrifice of the highest order that I saw that is a I sometimes say it this way to my students, the actions that I observed were able to get me out of the building that day, the character that was embodied through those actions has changed the way that I've walked every day since it's left a lasting impact in my life, and hopefully I could never repay in kind, the sacrifices that were were paid on my behalf that day, but what I can do is carry forward that character, multi generationally enculturated in my children and those that I come in contact with to create a remembrance that's more than a historicity. It's an extension of character. That is what I hope whenever I get an opportunity to retell a story like this that comes through is the incredible sacrifice of so many to give an opportunity for a kid from small town, Arkansas to be a college professor and have three kids and a beautiful wife in 22 years that were unexpected.
Wes Brown 32:16
That's incredibly moving.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 32:19
I'm over here crying because I'm listening to you tell your story again.
Wes Brown 32:23
Yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 32:24
it's an amazing story. Nathan, thank you.
Wes Brown 32:26
Yeah, really, thank you.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 32:28
I think one thing that people don't realize is those events are still so real, so fresh in your mind. It's been 23 years, and I hear you talk about it every 911 and yet we have people walking around college campuses today that were not alive, and that really is mind boggling to think that there are people who have never experienced such a thing, and how do they feel The emotion that you are projecting Is this real for them? I mean, the whole thing just seems so foreign for today's 22 year olds.
Dr. Nathan Harness 33:09
Yeah, I drove in this morning. I drive by every morning, same route, and I go by the George Bush Library. So I come in on Barbara Bush, drive right on the back end of that library, and on this huge building, they've cut out trees to where you can see through the trees and you can see the backside of the building. And there's a statement by George Bush, and it says this, let future generations understand the burden and the blessing of freedom. Let them say we stood where duty required us to stand. I read that sometimes I pull my car over and I just sit there, and I look at that, and I think about his generation, my grandfather's generation, that stormed the beaches of Normandy on D Day, that marched through the Arc de Triomphe, who survived the battle of the bulge, and I think how different their lives have been that generation. And then I look at mine, and I look at the events that we experienced, and I share this story again out of remembrance, but I also do it because there's an aspect of transference, a hope of understanding that it's not just words, but it's emotion these. These are real people, these. These aren't just names in a book. These were brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. That's what I want to be remembered, because when we can understand, I hope some of the humanity, I hope that we can avoid to the best of our ability, circumstances like this, again, we know that chaos, it shows up throughout our life, whether it be at the microcosm or the macrocosm, it's going to have. At some point. So I also want to show that there can be resilience and growth that comes even in the worst of times. I saw it in my grandfather. I've seen it in my father when he lost his youngest son. I see it in my life. You know, when I've overcome some difficult things that at times have felt like They've trapped me, but at other times, have been, in a unique way, propelling of understanding that has formed a bit of who I am today. So I hope that for my younger students, I mean, they went through covid, they've gone through some macro environments that shook their life up in ways that are unique. Given their age and what they experienced. They went through 2008 their parents, probably some of them, their parents losing their jobs, so they've experienced some moments of chaos, but you're right. Mass death occurring at once is just it shakes you to your core, because it allows you to see the reality that life is finite. I think that was an awakening for me that this doesn't as a 22 year old, every single thing in this world is finite, all of it, everything. And when you realize that, you start asking a lot bigger questions, and those questions for me had to do with origin, purpose and destiny. So I always encourage young adults as I talk through a story like this is man combat, Arrested Development, and don't ask small questions. Ask much bigger questions than you are today.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 36:40
No the point of your story that really got me today. I learned something new every time I talked to you. Nathan was your mom, and how when you were a child, that moment of her taking you up and down that elevator, how much that came into play for you later on in life. And this is a big thing for me, is, how is it that adults can be resilient, and is that something that you can just come upon, or are there moments throughout life to where we can build upon that and and knowing the patience that we can give right now to our children or to our friends could be life changing for them later on,
Dr. Nathan Harness 37:22
I think that about my kids just in a car ride, I know they're sponges. I never would have known that that moment in an elevator would have come back to me years later. My mom wouldn't have probably realized that in the moment she was helping a kid overcome some fears, what we do and how we transact, all sorts of engagements with our kids, and those we come in contact with can have a big, lasting event, and you may not even realize it in the moment. It just shows to me how important our actions can be, and it's a standard deviation, right? It's a duplicity. It can be damaging. Of course, we are resilient, as you said, but man, can it be uplifting whenever we share something special, whenever we take the time. That's the thing about these types of moments. Though, even I talked about empathy earlier, it's super inconvenient. It's incredibly inconvenient. So if you want to share and understand another person, you have to invest time. And that's our most precious asset, is investing time. So my mom took the time to take me to the local bank and go up and down the elevator. That was intensive. I'm sure she had other kids, but it had a lasting impression on my life. So I hope that I'm holding, proverbially, another kid's hand in the elevator daily, that I find somebody's hand to hold as they're going through difficult things, knowing that if we all did a little bit of that, the implications of of the cumulative at this
Wes Brown 39:05
point for you again, obviously these memories are the memory of those events is really present for you even 23 years later. And as you talk about thinking about the value of of moments like the ones you had with your mom, and how how those came back to you during those events. Like, how does that inform how intentional you are today? Like, at this point, is this just innate for you? Is this or do you flash back to the memory of your mom and the elevator when you were in that stairwell every time and think, Okay, this could be that for whoever I'm interacting with. Do you have to consciously do that? Or is that? Is that a pathway that's well worn for you at this
Dr. Nathan Harness 39:46
point? I definitely have to constantly do that. I have to bring myself back to center and back to purpose regularly. I have my own purpose statement. I recommend that, a lot with students, come back to what is your. Purpose have us spend some time thinking about it, and it gives you a lot of freedom. By the way, it allows you to say no to things, when you can come back to center and say, What is purpose for me? What does that look like? So no, it's intentional. I have to be intentional. And it's helped me to overcome even some struggles that I've had even anxiety and other things. I'll give you an example. Whenever I used to travel a lot overseas in other places, I would send postcards back to all my nieces and nephews. Why would I do that? One, because I wanted to share a moment with them. But two, I had to take the time to think about them and write an entire card. And I wouldn't do it quickly. It would normally take me 30 minutes to write the card. It take me another 30 minutes to find a post office, all those things, it caused me to think about another person for a period of time. I've tried to keep that exercise alive still to this day, to take time that I set aside to be intentional with my thoughts. Second thing that I do a lot of I read a book. Think it's called the radical elimination of hurry. I might be wrong about that title. The idea was that we're always in a rush, and we exist rather than live. And it, it was, you know, it struck me that I need to literally set an alarm, which is sad I do it though, literally set an alarm that stops me throughout the day, because I'm pushing forward so regularly that I just take a moment to be intentional. Because if I can find foundation in my own life, then my ability to help other people goes up exponentially. And then the last piece is, you know, as a college professor, a lot of people come through my office very regularly, and sometimes I will be very busy with other things. I'll have administrative duties or preparatory things that I need to be doing, and the door opens, and somebody comes by to ask a question, and it's easy to say, I'm sorry I'm busy, or I'm sorry I don't have time. And there are times where I have to set the boundary to say those words. However, I have attempted in my life as often as possible to make the investment in other people. And I can't tell you how many times something so simple as that led to a student opening up, telling me a piece of their life. My wife and I have been able to go to a lot of weddings and celebrate our college students because we've invested time in their lives. We've sadly been in moments where we've lost students, but I was so grateful for the time that I had together with them. So it was an intentional investment. My dad and Mother said we didn't have a lot of money. They didn't get to travel. They didn't get to go to very many places. The only time up to that moment where they had gone overseas was this exact moment they were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, and they had an opportunity to go to Europe, and they took it and they went, and here they are over in Europe, knowing that I'm in the World Trade Center, but not even knowing if I'm alive, their oldest son. They finally get word that I'm alive, and they struggle to get back to the States because flights stopped all around the world at that time, my dad wrote something, let's share it. At times, he said this. He said, the adversity of life is designed to shape us in a way that prosperity cannot. We never choose adversity. It is a divine gift. God allows it to come when and where it can do eternal good. And this is the piece that is on my wall right now in my office. Knowledge comes from learning, but wisdom comes from experiences. Understood. The requirement of that is that you set in your experiences long enough to try and find some wisdom in them, and so I take moments to reflect, I take moments to invest, and I try my best, and I'm not perfect at it. I try my best to have that reflect in the actions of my life. I've
Wes Brown 44:14
read who I'm reading, ruthless elimination of hurry. John Mark comer, right now? Yes,
Dr. Nathan Harness 44:18
that's the name of it. Yeah,
Wes Brown 44:19
excellent book. It's interesting. I think I might have shared this with Sonia recently. We were recently we I'm from Maine originally. So we went back to Maine, where I folks lived, this summer for a few weeks. I try to read every morning, and I kind of have a rotation of books, just because I get bored easily. But the three books that I had with me in Maine were George kinder's latest book, three domains of freedom, I think essentialism and the ruthless elimination of hurry, those are kind of the there's a through line there. She can pick up on that. But anyways, yeah, excellent book. And, you know, I'm thinking about the resilience that you seem to have. And you know, I was reading and I was actually talking with my wife. This morning, if we drop my daughter off at school about this, and we were talking about high schoolers kind of transitioning to college and just facing adversity. And one of the things I'd read a I'd read a post online about how, you know, some folks will go through a really trying or traumatic event and they're crushed by it. Think it was soldiers coming back from war. You know, 15% ended up with PTSD. Can't remember, I'm going to butcher the numbers exactly. But those that didn't seem to have been able to use those experiences as a catalyst for growth, and they were talking about the factors that led to that. What are the things that allow for that resilience, if I recall correctly, I think it was purpose, as you talked about gratitude, and then the other was social support. And sounds like you have a really strong family, and sounds like purpose is something that you've spent a lot of time thinking about or reflecting on. And I would imagine I just, I don't you didn't necessarily talk about it explicitly, but you seem like a really thankful guy. Seems like gratitude a big part of your personality. Are there any other things like that you would say helped you get through? Would you agree with that, in terms of the factors that kind of helped you turn this experience into something valuable, into wisdom, if you will. I'm
Dr. Nathan Harness 46:21
a linear thinker a lot, and I look for the 10 step program. If I just did this, it would pull me out of this particular situation. I, you know, doing research as Sonia does, to some extent, not as extensively. Begin to look for patterns. Begin to look for opportunities to scale and think differently, think outside the box, and when I get to my emotions, it's really difficult for me to do that. It's difficult for me to find those pieces and to untangle myself from myself. So across the last two decades, it's, I don't know that I had this journey that I could have mapped out so cleanly, but I can look back, I think, and see some of those trends, purpose for sure, having purpose intertwined with hope was critical for me. I think you're correct on gratitude. I tell my daughters sometimes that gratitude, most of the time, it's not a shift in position, it's a shift in attitude, more than it's a shift in position. So I try to think of that when I'm stuck or thinking I deserve more. I did a trip to Haiti not too long ago, and here I am in our own hemisphere, and I'm around the poorest, literally the poorest people in our entire in this hemisphere, in the Western Hemisphere, and you're looking at these people, some of whom are starving to death in front of your eyes like they're literally some of them are not going to be there weeks from now. And you it just puts it all into perspective, where I'm going to go home and I'm going to have a house for my car. I literally have a house that I keep my car in. We call it a garage. They would love to live in my garage. They would love to live in this house for my car. It's this just like shocking perspective that here I am with these people that have nothing, but they had some of the greatest joy I've ever experienced in the midst of that now they had a minimum standard that they needed, right? They were in poverty that was causing had disastrous consequences, and yet, in the midst of that, I got to see this joy and pain coexist. The only other time that I'd seen that so clearly is when my wife gave birth to my our son. I saw this extreme pain, and simultaneously, here comes joy in them, in the same moment, they coexist with one another, they commingled in a way in which I did not think was possible, and it got me thinking about just the gratitude that I can have. It doesn't mean that I can't have sorrow. It doesn't mean that I can't still have lasting implications of going through a traumatic event, but I can make a choice, and that choice is to have gratitude. So sometimes seeing my relative position, which comes in part through empathy of a shared condition, has been really helpful. I think I talked about reflection as well, just to be present, right? I find gratitude when I'm present when I'm here. And so I build that in a lot of anchoring that way. I also, you know, part of my purpose statement is to seek peace and find contentment in all economic and social conditions. So peace is an important component of that. I. Also believe that peace is most often an internal condition. We find ourselves thrust into environments where there's conflict everywhere, and I could allow that to disturb my inner sanctum, the peace that I have residing within me, or I could do the opposite. I could take the peace that I feel internally, and I can make it transmissible through the actions that I have. So I think when you find that in you, I would say, Promote it. Promote it all around you, and it changes your environment. So I I'm kind of rambling there. I don't have this linear progression. It's more an observation looking backwards and saying, those have been things that have been really helpful, and so I hang on to those things as often and as much as I can, and I promote them by creating boundaries and little little exercises, maybe even games throughout the day, that opens those up in my life.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 50:59
I think a lot of this points toward you have this really innate ability to perceive things positively, see the strength and positivity in various situations. And one of the things you said at the very beginning in your introduction is that nothing happens by accident, and regardless of one's philosophy around that statement. If you're able to put yourself in a mindset that something is not happening to you, it's something that's happened that changes the ball game, does it not?
Dr. Nathan Harness 51:34
Absolutely, yeah, it's again, it's that perspective shift. It's a unique perspective shift, even in the financial space, I believe in my life that it's not necessarily the money that I'm going to leave behind that's going to have the largest societal impact. I think it's the character that I espouse. It's what I enculturate around me that is going to last beyond my life. I mean, I ask people sometimes tell me about your triple great grandfather. They might be able to give me a couple historical pieces of data, but they don't really know who that person is. However, a little bit of that person resides within them because of the character that is passed down generationally from person to person. But that requires an investment. It requires a significant investment of time and energy and intention. You know, there's things that I want for my kids, there's things that I want for the people around me, but if I'm not intentional in pointing those out, making people aware of them and giving them like showing them as often as I can, people will recognize what you do way more than they'll recognize what you say. So you've got to espouse these things. And what I've found is even when I don't feel it, I become it. You know, it's it's. This doesn't always work for me, but sometimes when I'm walking in from my car, I park a ways away from the office, and I'm walking in, and maybe the day feels overwhelming, or I've had a frustration on the way to work, I find that if I just smile, take a deep breath, it seems to melt away a little bit. And I find that with other aspects of my life, that if I embody what I say that I want in society, what I want if I'm looking for peace. Peace is made most apparent in its absence, unfortunately. But I can be a part of spreading that through my actions, and I can believe it and embody it when I'm espousing it. Your
Dr. Sonya Lutter 53:42
acronym for help was amazing. I am definitely going to be using that one. And now I feel like you need an acronym for slow. So next time we talk, you need to come I'll build
Dr. Nathan Harness 53:54
out be slow. Be slow. Yeah, I'll, I'll build that. And you know, my life feels Hey, you get three kids, you get sports. We were taught. We started talking about this early. You get pulled in a lot of different directions. And I think it's really easy to find yourself going through life without experiencing life. And you have these things, these desires and wants, but you put them off to the side until something in your life brings enough quiet that brings things to a standstill, to where you'll actually look at those and do something about it. So I try to create just moments in my life to where I don't have to experience peaks and troughs, because most of our life is not found there. The majority of your life is found in the mundane moments in between. Overwhelmingly, it's not the peaks, it's not the valleys. So we look at those as anchor points that are transitional in their big moments that we oftentimes learn from. Yeah, but it's during those mundane moments that I think back to those and that I create small exercises of remembrance and action in my life that are the most propelling. And as I said, they are how I respond in the peaks and the troughs. It's the in between that gives me who I'm going to be when I respond to those circumstances. Fantastic.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 55:23
There's so many questions that we could ask you, Nathan, but I feel like you've done such a wonderful job sharing your story that I feel like we should conclude it with that
Dr. Nathan Harness 55:35
I appreciate the opportunity, and I thank you for sharing the story too, of of the individuals who can't be here to share that story. If you get an opportunity, those who are listening to go to New York and to see the 911 Museum and the memorial, just take a moment to remember the humanity, not just the historicity, and be grateful. Be grateful for sacrifice, even though maybe it feels like it didn't impact you directly. It did. It created a culture that I believe has impacted our entire country, and I know for sure it's impacted my life. So take a second when you're there, if you get an opportunity, and just rest in that for a moment.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 56:16
Can we ask you two final questions? Though? Nathan,
Dr. Nathan Harness 56:19
of course,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 56:20
they're the same ones for everyone, and I bet that you're gonna have amazing responses to these two. You've talked a little bit about some of the books that you're reading. Have read, what are you reading right now?
Dr. Nathan Harness 56:36
So I'm reading a couple of things. I told you. I completed the ruthless elimination of hurry. That was a fantastic book. Brought a lot of action items into my life. I'm also reading about three quarters of the way through the American story. It's by the Bartons and father son combo, and they just talk about the origins of America, if you think about how difficult it was for the pilgrims in their journey to America. You talk about a tough event that was a difficult event and had incredible resilience built into it as well. Another book I'm reading is not what I would call quite as exciting, but I have it right here on my desk. Bill Gustafson sent me a leather bound copy of the history of financial planning. Of course he did. I am going and you know, it's interesting as well, somewhat similar to thinking about the origin of our country, a profession that I love, going back and looking at what was the mindset. Why do people decide that we needed to coordinate and create something different than what it was, and I think when we understand a bit of the past, it informs some of what we are today. So I wanted to know a bit more about that, so I've been reading that some you've heard me say, I'm a man of faith. It's critical to my life, and if I truly believe that, then I become a truth seeker, and I look for truth. So I find a lot of truth in my life is found in the Bible. And I know that that doesn't relate to every single person, but for me, it is an anchoring part of my life, and it's an everyday part of a read that I'm involved in very regularly. I read a lot of academic texts probably aren't as interesting and fun for your for your audience, maybe for you Sonia, but for everybody else, a whole lot less interesting. I finished up a lot of books this summer. My goal is typically 12 ish books a year. Do you question, do you count listening to a book, reading a book?
Dr. Sonya Lutter 58:44
I count them the same. Yeah,
Dr. Nathan Harness 58:47
I do too. It's only way I can get through 15 plus books a year. So those are the those are the big reads that I'm currently in. I also like to read fiction as well, just cathartic, you know, to read something like that. So I reread, recently Ender's Game. This is fascinating to me, that somebody can create this whole world around kids, and the journey of that is an interesting book. I think
Dr. Sonya Lutter 59:14
there's a book that you would like. It's called Black was the ink, and it's another historical perspective, but it's modern day with a kid who flashes back 50 or 100 years. That's pretty cool.
Dr. Nathan Harness 59:25
I'll add that to the list. Thank you. Yeah,
Dr. Sonya Lutter 59:28
it's my favorite question of all. How do you build moments of authenticity into your day?
Dr. Nathan Harness 59:34
It's a great question because I think authenticity is so important. Number one is the hardest thing for me, and it's I've grown in it so it's not so obvious, but beneath the surface is a difficulty with vulnerability. So I would say vulnerability. I've built a community that I trust, people who I share life with, and. Okay, that's picked me up whenever the world feels heavy, and it's encouraged me to live authentically. So vulnerability has been key. I told I told my I told my daughter, she's very she's very powerful, but very quiet. I would define her sometimes with the word meek. And I think Meek is an overlooked word because it sounds negative, but my opinion is that meekness is not weakness, it's power under control, and that's what I love about what I observe and her I think about that with authenticity inside of vulnerability that I would also have directed purpose. I think I shared with you. I have a purpose statement. I have it hanging in my office. I attempt to say affix to that as often as I can. It's that Simon Sinek finding my why, coming back to center. It helps me to stay affixed to where I'm headed, and to live, I think, a bit more authentically. And then the last piece, I think, for me, is that I attempt to seek truth in all the places of my life, because I think it's really difficult to be real if you don't know what truth is. So I do my best, and I think maybe that was the pursuit of academia, is to look for truth in the spaces around me. Those are probably my biggest attempts at living an authentic life.
Dr. Sonya Lutter 1:01:38
It's obvious that you live very authentically, and the vulnerability definitely shown through today once again. Thank you very much. Thank you.