Explore every episode of the podcast Jim's Take

Nothing Is Real Anymore: Trust, Suspicion, and Thinking for Yourself | Jim Frawley

Description:

Trust is the glue that holds society together - yet it’s eroding fast. In this episode of Jim’s Take, executive coach Jim Frawley tackles why “nothing feels real” anymore and how to respond with clarity instead of cynicism. From AI deepfakes and manipulated narratives to algorithm-driven outrage, Jim maps the landscape and offers a practical way forward: rebuild trust locally, reduce isolation, and reclaim your ability to think.

You’ll learn:

• What’s changed: Why truth feels slippery in the age of AI voices, viral clips, and performative expertise
• Trust vs. suspicion: Suspicion is a stress response; it can keep you safe, but it won’t make you calm or effective
• Beliefs vs. truth: The illusion of knowing, awareness vs. understanding, and how to audit your assumptions
• Mental laziness: Stop delegating truth to algorithms and influencers - take responsibility for your interpretations

Two quick audits:

• Trust Audit: People, sources, and institutions you rely on - do they actually help you make good decisions?
• Suspicion Audit: Where you’re filling gaps with fear or imagination - and how to replace that with inquiry

In-person > isolation: Why real conversations, body language, and micro-interactions build trust faster than feeds

Humility, curiosity, intentionality: The skill set that turns skepticism into insight (without lapsing into cynicism)

Why listen: If you’re a leader, operator, or creative in New York / NYC or any fast-moving market, you’re making high-stakes decisions in an environment wired for distraction. This episode gives you a repeatable mindset to separate signal from noise, reduce stress, and act with integrity.

Subscribe, rate, and review Jim’s Take on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Watch and share the episode on YouTube.

More insights and coaching at jimfrawley.com

Title: Sober October and Sobriety Revisited

Description:

In this episode of Jim’s Take, executive coach and Bellwether founder Jim Frawley shares the story of why he quit drinking - and what happened next. It wasn’t about hitting rock bottom or joining a 12-step program. It was about accountability, honesty, and realizing he no longer liked what drinking brought to his life. From those first awkward days of saying “no thanks” to a beer, to rediscovering presence and clarity, Jim’s reflections offer both humor and hard truth about what it means to grow up and take control of your choices.

Listeners will learn:

• How accountability with someone you trust keeps you honest.
• Why giving up drinking leads to less stress and greater self-respect.
• How to handle social situations when you no longer drink - and why most people don’t care.
• The connection between self-care, maturity, and authenticity.
• Why quitting alcohol ranks among Jim’s top three life decisions.

Whether you’re trying Sober October, considering Dry January, or just questioning your habits, Jim’s insights will help you approach change without shame or pretense.

Subscribe, rate, and review Jim’s Take on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

Learn more at jimfrawley.com.

Title: That’s Not the Flex You Think It Is | Jim’s Take

Description:

Flexing. We all do it. The humble brag on LinkedIn. The “I never sleep” grind culture line. The social media post that screams, “Look at me.”

But here’s the truth: most of those flexes aren’t the wins you think they are — they’re red flags of insecurity.

In this episode of Jim’s Take, I dive into the difference between the personality you feel inside versus the one others actually see, and why the disconnect often leads us to “flex” in ways that push people away.

You’ll learn:

• Why insecurity drives most flexing behaviors.
• The dangers of cultural flexes, corporate buzzword flexes, and social media validation traps.
• How flexing impacts your credibility at work, in your community, and in your relationships.
• What true confidence looks like — and why self-assurance and presence matter more than performative confidence.

At the end of the day, authenticity and self-awareness aren’t just “nice to have.” They’re your real power, the foundation you need when life gets difficult. The only people who never look foolish flexing are the ones who don’t need to do it.

Listen now and learn why dropping the mask is the biggest flex of all.

Subscribe, rate, and review Jim’s Take on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Watch and share this episode on YouTube.

More at jimfrawley.com

Title: You’ll Never Be Ready - So Stop Waiting

Host: Jim Frawley

Theme: “Readiness” is a socially acceptable form of procrastination. Action creates readiness; waiting doesn’t.

Episode Summary

If you’re waiting until it feels safe, you’ll wait forever. In this episode, Jim dismantles the myth of “being ready” and shows why we hide behind planning, perfectionism, and permission-based thinking. Through real-world examples-from founders and athletes to new leaders-he outlines how progress happens in motion. You’ll leave with concrete tools: the smallest viable action, the 24-hour rule, the five-minute rule, and a practical way to separate skill prep from courage prep so you can finally move on the goals you keep postponing.

Key Takeaways

• Readiness is often code for wanting safety. Safety isn’t coming; momentum is a choice.
• Planning can be useful, but over-planning becomes fear disguised as productivity.
• Action before clarity: reality reveals itself only once you start.
• Separate skill gaps from courage gaps. Skills are trained; courage is exercised.
• Use deadlines, the 24-hour rule, and five-minute actions to force movement.
• Permission-based mindsets from school and work do not map to the chaos of real life or business.
• If you won’t act, stop pretending it’s a priority-reclaim the mental bandwidth.

Timestamps & Chapters

00:00 - Cold open: “You’re not waiting to be ready-you’re waiting for it to be safe.”

02:00 - Readiness as socially acceptable procrastination

04:10 - The brain’s safety bias and fear of social rejection

07:00 - Technical comfort vs. relational leadership: why many stall out

10:00 - Why life isn’t linear: business plans vs. reality

12:30 - Action before clarity: the feedback loop that actually builds readiness

15:00 - Three examples: founder, athlete, newly promoted leader

19:40 - Practical tools: smallest viable action, 24-hour rule, five-minute rule

23:30 - Skill prep vs. courage prep

26:00 - Deadlines, consequences, and moving past over-preparation

28:30 - Closing challenge: if you won’t act, take it off the list

Practical Tools Mentioned

Smallest Viable Action: Identify the tiniest step that moves the goal forward now.

24-Hour Rule: If you think of it, take some step within 24 hours.

Five-Minute Rule: Do one action that takes less than five minutes toward your biggest goal today.

Skill vs. Courage Audit: Write two columns-what skills you must train versus what actions require courage.

Hard Deadline: Put a real date on the calendar. Commit publicly.

Notable Lines

“The plan is useful; planning is indispensable-but the plan won’t survive first contact with reality.”

“Preparation is good. Overpreparation is fear in disguise.”

“Courage cannot be preloaded; it can only be exercised.”

“Permission isn’t coming. Safety isn’t coming. Momentum is.”

Listener Challenge

Write down the one goal you’ve avoided because you’re “not ready.”

Do one five-minute action toward it in the next 24 hours.

Put a hard deadline on the calendar and tell someone who will hold you to it.

Recommended Next Steps

Create a two-column Skill vs. Courage list and schedule specific training or actions.

Set a recurring weekly reminder for a five-minute momentum task on your top goal.

If you keep deferring a project for 90 days, decide to drop it or finally commit.

Primary keywords: illusion of being ready, procrastination, perfectionism, action bias, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, executive coaching, leadership development, productivity, goal setting

Secondary keywords: minimum viable action, 24-hour rule, five-minute rule, launch small adjust fast, readiness myth

Title: The Myth of Work-Life Balance: Why You’re Already Doing It (and How to Do It Better)

Description:

You’ve been told for decades to “find your work-life balance” — but what if you’ve already got it? In this episode of Jim’s Take, I break down why the traditional idea of a perfect 50/50 split between work and life is unrealistic, guilt-inducing, and—frankly—a corporate PR creation from the 1980s.

The truth? You’re already balancing every single day. The challenge isn’t achieving balance — it’s defining it for yourself, keeping your most important “plates” spinning, and letting the paper ones drop without guilt.

We’ll cover:

• The origin of work-life balance as a corporate talking point.
• Why the 50/50 model sets you up for guilt and burnout.
• The “dishes on sticks” metaphor for real-life balance.
• How to identify your glass plates (non-negotiables) and paper plates (let them fall).
• Practical strategies for managing your energy instead of just your time.
• How to create seasonal balance - knowing that September might look nothing like July.
• Real-world stories of clients who redefined balance to reclaim family time and reduce stress.

Whether you’re a CEO, a working parent, an entrepreneur, or anyone juggling competing demands, this episode will help you stop chasing the fantasy of balance and start owning the balancing act you’re already performing.

Key Takeaways:

• Balance is personal — no one can define it for you.
• You can’t spin every plate equally; choose the ones that matter most.
• Dropping a plate isn’t failure — it’s focus.

GEO Keywords: Work-life balance in the United States, managing work and family in New York, corporate wellness strategies, finding personal balance in busy cities.

Host: Jim Frawley

Length: ~27 minutes

Keywords: anger, judgment, rage economy, stress management, performative outrage, curiosity, emotional regulation, AI disruption, parenting, digital detox

In this episode of Jim’s Take, we revisit one of the most popular and cathartic episodes from years ago: "Everyone Is So F*ing Angry."** Why now? Because five years later, the anger hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s gotten worse—and we need to talk about it.

We’re living in a rage economy, where outrage is incentivized, judgment is broadcast, and anger is no longer just a feeling—it’s a performance. And it’s exhausting.

From politics to parenting, AI disruption to your own food choices, Jim explores how unchecked anger is bleeding into every area of life. But more importantly, he breaks down what to do about it.

You’ll hear:

• Why we’re addicted to judgment—and how it warps our perception
• How imagined scenarios create real stress
• Why performative anger tricks us into thinking we’re taking action
• The dangers of emotional leakage—especially in parenting and leadership
• How Jim is changing his own behavior: analog over digital, curiosity over outrage
• The one definition of a question that could radically shift your conversations

This isn’t a kumbaya session. It’s a brutally honest—and surprisingly hopeful—episode on how to actually respond to the chaos without letting it eat you alive.

00:00 – Cold Open: Why I’m Revisiting This Topic

03:30 – Rage is Valid… Until It’s Not

07:50 – How Judgment Fuels Modern Anger

13:45 – Rage Economy and Performative Outrage

17:30 – Parenting and the Bleed of Adult Emotions

21:15 – Why We're So Angry About the Wrong Things

23:00 – Asking Better Questions: The Antidote to Anger

25:20 – Final Thoughts: Where to Place Your Energy Instead

• “We are angry not just about what’s happening—but about what we imagine should be happening.”
• “Judgment is just anxiety with a superiority complex.”
• “You can be informed without being infected.”
• “Performing anger might feel like action—but it rarely changes anything.”
• “If you’re waiting for the world to fix itself before you live your life, you’re going to be waiting forever.”

• Audit your media and emotional inputs. Turn off the rage machines.
• Replace assumptions with genuine questions. Be curious before critical.
• If you're angry about something, define one action you're taking in response.
• Stop imagining how others should act. Start deciding how you will.
• Be mindful of what energy you pass on to your kids, coworkers, and partners.

Stream and subscribe on your favorite platform, or listen at https://www.jimfrawley.com

Honest, no-fluff advice on how to actually enjoy networking and use it as a strategic tool to prepare for change—especially in the face of AI and workplace disruption.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Jim’s Take, we tackle one of the most anxiety-inducing but essential career skills: networking.

Not the elevator-pitch, hustle-your-way-to-the-top kind. But real networking—how to make human connections without feeling like you’re selling something.

Whether you’re preparing for changes in your job due to AI or just want to build relevance and optionality in your career, this episode is your no-BS roadmap to building meaningful relationships that matter.

WHAT WE COVER

• Why networking isn’t about selling—it’s about relationship equity
• The best time to network (spoiler: it’s when you’re on a high, not when you’re desperate)
• Why elevator pitches are garbage
• The hidden ROI of human connection
• How to enjoy networking—even if you’re anxious about it
• What it means to build “relevance insurance” in the age of AI
• Finding your people, not just “important” people

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Networking isn’t a transaction. It’s a long game built on trust, generosity, and shared curiosity.

Relationship equity is one of the most powerful tools for adapting to change. Start building it before you need it.

People don’t remember what you say. They remember how they felt when they were around you.

Authenticity > Authority. The most magnetic people are the ones who show up with curiosity, not credentials.

Enjoy the hour. Your only job when networking? Find a conversation you’ll enjoy. Everything else follows from that.

JIM’S HOT TAKES

“If you’ve still got an elevator pitch—throw it in the garbage.”

“Most people wait to network until they’re desperate. That’s too late.”

“Networking is how your reputation travels when you’re not in the room.”

“If no one outside your team knows what you do—you’re not as secure as you think.”

“Your polished elevator pitch doesn’t hold a candle to enthusiasm, presence, and being real.”

HOMEWORK THIS WEEK

Get out of the house. No agenda. Just go somewhere—coffee, a run, a parent group—and talk to someone.

Don’t try to be impressive. Try to enjoy the hour. Ask a good question. Make someone feel heard.

That’s networking. Everything else is noise.

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE

The concept of “Relevance Insurance”

Social response to AI and job security

Jim’s Central Park “Networking Without Networking” 5K idea

Why proximity and alignment beat hierarchy and power in relationship-building

Finding clubs, activities, or communities where you genuinely enjoy being

QUOTE TO SHARE

“You don’t need to be interesting to be valuable in a networking conversation. You need to be interested.”

EPISODE TITLE:

Pride Is the Point: You’ve Already Done the Hard Part | Jim’s Take #151

DESCRIPTION

We’re surrounded by pressure to “move forward” at all costs—new goals, new challenges, new technologies. But what if the secret to knowing what’s next… is looking back?

In this episode of Jim’s Take, executive coach and speaker Jim Frawley challenges you to reclaim pride—not the arrogant kind, but the personal, powerful kind that reminds you what you’re capable of.

Jim introduces a tool he calls the “Posdoc”—a personal highlight reel of achievements, meaningful compliments, and proud moments that help anchor you during uncertainty and motivate you through change.

Whether you’re navigating a career pivot, battling imposter syndrome, or just trying to figure out what really matters, this episode will reconnect you with your own story—and show you how to use it as fuel.

You’ve already done the hard part. Now it’s time to own it.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why most people avoid taking credit for their accomplishments (and how it hurts them)
• How hustle culture and false humility sabotage your ability to lead
• How to build your Posdoc—a document of powerful proof that reminds you who you are
• How to use pride as a compass for making your next move with purpose
• Real-life stories about pride, personal wins, and the unexpected power of compliments

TOOLS & RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Posdoc – Your personal proof of capability (explained in depth)
• Thought prompts: "What have I done that I’m genuinely proud of?"
• Mindset exercise: Take 5 minutes to write down 5 wins—big or small

WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR:

• Executives and professionals seeking clarity during transition
• Individuals feeling overwhelmed by AI, automation, or rapid change
• People battling imposter syndrome or burnout
• Coaches, creatives, and leaders ready to reconnect with their own value

RELEVANT KEYWORDS & PHRASES:

• How to use pride as motivation
• Overcoming imposter syndrome
• Executive coaching tools for self-confidence
• Self-awareness during career transition
• Personal growth after layoffs
• Building self-worth in uncertain times
• Realistic positivity podcast
• Self-reflection and personal leadership

CONNECT WITH JIM:

Instagram / Twitter / TikTok: @jimfrawleyny

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfrawley

Website & Coaching Inquiries: https://www.jimfrawley.com

CALL TO ACTION:

This week’s challenge:

Write down 5 things you’re proud of. Start your Posdoc.

Then tell one person. Say it out loud.

You’ve done more than you think. Start acting like it.

Jim’s Take Episode 150: The Philosophy of Failure — Are You Even Dreaming Big Enough?

New York | Global Coaching | Personal Growth | Business Mindset

Description

Failure isn’t real. Not like you think it is.

In episode 150 of Jim’s Take, executive coach Jim Frawley tackles one of the most misunderstood concepts in business, personal development, and life: failure.

Is failure actually what you’re afraid of—or is it what people will think when you fail?

This episode dives deep into:

Why our definition of failure might be sabotaging our ambition

The real fear behind perceived failure: social judgment

How identity, self-worth, and external validation tie into risk-taking

Why trying—and being seen trying—is more powerful than outcome

How to redefine failure on your terms so you can finally move forward

This isn’t your typical motivational talk. It’s a philosophical, brutally honest exploration of why you may not be dreaming big enough—and what it takes to stop playing small.

Keywords

failure philosophy, growth mindset, emotional risk, overcoming fear of failure, executive coach podcast, Jim Frawley, NYC coach, authentic leadership, why people fear failure, how to redefine success, Carol Dweck mindset, fear of judgment, self-worth and ambition, mental performance, try and fail, coaching podcast 2025, public failure, risk tolerance growth, purpose-driven living

Topics Covered

[00:00] Why episode 150 matters—and why we’re talking failure

[02:15] Are you really afraid of failure—or just of being seen failing?

[06:40] How we define failure (and why most people never actually do)

[10:05] Emotional risk and what’s really stopping you

[15:30] Failure and identity: who’s writing your success script?

[20:45] Growth mindset and the power of “yet” (Carol Dweck insight)

[24:30] External validation vs. internal motivation

[28:55] Micro-risks: how small moves can change everything

[32:40] Why “not trying” is the real failure

[35:20] A new framework: define your success, own your effort

[38:45] Final challenge: what would you do if no one was watching?

Mentioned in This Episode

Carol Dweck’s “Mindset” – The psychology of success and the power of “yet”

Bill Burr’s commentary on who really gets to be called a failure

Real-life coaching insights from Jim's experience with high-performers

This week, we're flipping the script.

In a world that’s endlessly screaming for your attention—but rarely in your interest—it’s time to talk about healthy selfishness. This isn’t about giving up. It’s about giving up on the noise, the “shoulds,” and the imaginary expectations placed on you by people who don’t share your values.

When nothing matters the way we think it does, we get to decide what actually does. That’s freedom.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why we’re so stressed (hint: it’s not your inbox)
• How other people’s imaginations are running your life
• The real meaning of “nothing matters” as liberation, not nihilism
• Defining healthy selfishness—and how it makes you a better person
• How to filter your decisions through your values, not societal pressure
• A challenge to say “no” to one thing this week, and “yes” to yourself

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, judged, distracted, or pulled in a hundred directions—you’re not alone. But this episode is your permission slip to simplify, focus, and prioritize the one person who truly needs your attention: you.

Key Quote:

“The world is screaming for your attention, but rarely in your interest.” – Jim Frawley

Topics and Concepts Mentioned:

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and self-actualization
• Ethical philosophy and enlightened self-interest
• The burden of “should” and how to reject it
• Simplicity as a strategy for peace and clarity
• Leading with yourself as the foundation for fulfillment

Weekly Challenge:

Pick one thing to deprioritize. Say no to something that doesn’t matter. Say yes to yourself.

Connect with Jim:

Website: www.jimfrawley.com

Instagram | Twitter | TikTok: @jimfrawleyny

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimfrawley

Episode 148 – Marketing is Breaking Us: The Cost of Constant Influence and How to Push Back

Keywords: marketing fatigue, digital burnout, attention economy, wellness strategies, New York podcast, personal development, mental clarity, stress relief, modern lifestyle

Summary:

In this explosive episode of Jim’s Take, Jim Frawley takes a hard look at the overwhelming barrage of marketing messages infiltrating every part of our daily lives—from inescapable airplane ads to influencer-driven nonsense and fake "choices" built to manipulate you. With over 10,000 ad impressions a day, Americans are drowning in noise—and it’s wrecking our focus, wellness, and sanity.

Jim dives deep into:

• How marketing has shifted from suggestion to manipulation
• The psychological toll of constant distraction and digital noise
• Why tipping culture, fake discounts, and "dynamic pricing" are subtle behavioral traps
• Real-life examples from airports, emails, self-serve beer taps, and beyond
• Actionable ways to reclaim your peace: opt-outs, tech boundaries, and curating your life

This episode isn’t just a rant—it’s a call to reset. Whether you're in New York or navigating life in any modern city, this is a wake-up call to reclaim your autonomy, restore serenity, and stop letting algorithms dictate your life.

Listen now and start cutting the noise. Serenity isn't for sale—but it's still possible to find.

Episode Title: Are All of Our Problems Social Problems?

Episode Number: 147

Host: Jim Frawley

Keywords: social wellness, mental health, fear of failure, social anxiety, belief systems, social comparison, loneliness, imposter syndrome, personal development, human connection

Episode Summary

In this thought-provoking episode of Jim’s Take, Jim Frawley explores a radical idea: most of our personal challenges—fear, anxiety, even financial stress—are actually rooted in social disconnection.

Jim breaks down how the overlooked pillar of social wellness impacts everything from our self-confidence to our day-to-day decision-making. Whether you're feeling the pressure of performance, struggling with insecurity, or wondering why comparison is eating away at your joy, this episode offers a clear framework to reframe the problem—and solve it at its social core.

This isn’t about being more extroverted. It’s about being more honest, connected, and human.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Why social wellness is the missing third leg of the wellness stool (alongside physical and mental health)

How the fear of failure is actually fear of judgment

Why imposter syndrome is a social problem, not a personal flaw

The role of comparison in both financial dissatisfaction and life anxiety

How performative social media behavior erodes confidence and presence

The importance of a personal belief system to combat external validation-seeking

Why your social circle may need an audit—and how to do it with clarity, not blame

Actionable steps to reconnect with people through small, no-agenda interactions

Outline

– Introduction

– The missing pillar of wellness: Social health

– Why we ignore social wellness (and what it costs us)

– The challenge of adult friendship and social effort

– Reframing fear of failure and judgment

– Imposter syndrome: You know enough

– Financial stress and the trap of comparison

– Social media’s false promise of relevance

– The five people closest to you—and why it matters

– Building internal beliefs to withstand external noise

– Micro-strategies for low-pressure connection

– Final thoughts on connection, meaning, and how to be human

Notable Quotes

“We are not afraid of failure. We’re afraid of what people will think when we fail.”

“Without internal conviction, we’re always seeking external validation—and we never find it.”

“You don’t have to be a social butterfly. You just have to be human.”

Connect with Jim

Website: www.jimfrawley.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jimfrawley

Instagram: @jimfrawleyny

Twitter: @jimfrawleyny

TikTok: @jimfrawleyny

In this episode, Jim breaks down something we’ve all lost touch with: leisure—not vacations, not performative “self-care,” but the daily, essential ability to check out and truly recharge.

From the illusion of optimized rest to the guilt we carry when we’re not being productive, Jim explores why doing nothing might be the most human thing you can do today. If you're burnt out, stuck in hustle mode, or just can't remember the last time you lost track of time, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why most of us have forgotten how to relax—and how that’s hurting us
• The difference between looking relaxed and actually being at rest
• How the wellness industry has co-opted leisure and turned it into another job
• Real-life examples of “micro-leisure” that require no agenda, no outcomes, and no tracking
• Why true leisure is the antidote to burnout, decision fatigue, and societal edge
• The radical idea that doing nothing… might be exactly what you need

Quotable Moments:

• “Rest has become another job. Even our candles come with to-do lists.”
• “We took hustle culture, put yoga pants on it, and called it self-care.”
• “If your rest has a reason, it’s not rest. It’s just disguised ambition.”
• “Leisure isn’t lazy. It’s human.”

Challenge to Listeners:

Find 15 minutes today. No phone. No goals. No productivity hack. Just exist. And if that feels weird… that’s probably a sign you need it.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Listening to full albums (like Led Zeppelin or Wu-Tang) start to finish
• Sitting in silence, people-watching, or browsing a bookstore with no plan
• The difference between personal development and disguised productivity
• Philosophical reflections on meaning and presence

Subscribe, Share & Review:

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who needs a reminder that it's okay to do nothing—and don’t forget to leave a review wherever you listen.

Why does it feel like everyone is constantly on edge? In this episode of Jim’s Take, Jim explores the steady erosion of civility in modern life. From political hostility to comment section outrage and tension in the workplace, he breaks down the core reasons we’re seeing less respect and constructive dialogue—and what we can do to change that.

Jim examines three key forces driving today’s decline in civility:

• A divisive political climate
• The rise of digital communication and loss of human nuance
• Escalating stress and pressure in everyday life

He challenges listeners to reflect on how they respond to difficult situations, and whether they want to be remembered as someone who fuels division—or someone who brings people together.

• Why civility is more than just politeness
• How political polarization has normalized disrespect
• The impact of social media on empathy and accountability
• The toll chronic stress takes on patience and behavior
• Misconceptions around humility, empathy, and vulnerability
• The importance of interacting with people who think differently
• Why leading by example matters more than ever

• 85% of U.S. adults say the tone and nature of political debate has become more negative (Pew Research Center)
• 88% of Americans believe political incivility is a serious problem (Georgetown University)
• Research shows digital communication reduces emotional cues, increasing misunderstandings and perceived rudeness
• The American Psychological Association reports that high stress levels are linked to increased irritability and decreased civility

• Don’t wait for others to model civility—be the example
• Replace assumptions with honest questions
• Engage with new perspectives, not just familiar ones
• Practice self-reflection instead of reacting impulsively
• Consider reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to ground your perspective
• Think long-term—civility builds relationship equity and trust over time

“You don’t need to wait for someone else to set the example. Be the example. Get your manners back, smile, and take a deep breath. Civility starts with you.”

civility in modern life, political division, social media and empathy, workplace communication, technology and behavior, stress and conflict, how to be civil, reclaim civility, Jim’s Take podcast, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, political discourse, digital communication, Marcus Aurelius, personal growth podcast

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The world feels like it’s on the edge of something big—markets are swinging, costs are rising, and everyone has suddenly become an economic or political expert. In this episode, Jim takes a deep dive into capitalism's chaotic nature, how it shapes our daily lives, and what we can do to take control amidst uncertainty. This isn't just about economics—it's about how we respond to change, where we spend our money, and how to reclaim financial and mental peace.

• The unpredictability of capitalism and its impact on daily life
• How to navigate economic uncertainty without falling into fear
• The hidden costs of convenience and how small fees add up
• The psychology of consumerism and how marketing shapes our spending
• Why companies push artificial scarcity and dynamic pricing models
• Rethinking tipping culture, hidden fees, and unnecessary expenses
• How to shift from being a passive consumer to an intentional spender
• The importance of simplifying your life and reducing unnecessary purchases
• Strategies for regaining control over finances and decision-making
• The mindset shift needed to survive and thrive in turbulent economic times

• You have more control than you think – The key to navigating economic chaos is shifting from reactive to proactive decision-making.
• Small costs add up – The extra fees, tipping culture, and “convenience” charges are draining wallets daily.
• Consumer psychology is powerful – Companies are designed to keep you spending, but recognizing their tactics helps you make better choices.
• Simplicity brings peace – Cutting back, decluttering, and making intentional purchases can lead to a better, more fulfilling life.
• Stop waiting for others to fix the system – Governments and corporations aren’t going to change overnight, but you can adjust your approach right now.

• Take a hard look at your spending habits—where is your money going?
• Identify one convenience fee, service, or unnecessary purchase you can cut out.
• Consider what “simplicity” means to you and how it could improve your quality of life.

• Have thoughts on this episode? Want to share how you’re navigating capitalism? Send Jim a message—he’d love to hear from you.
• Follow for more insights, updates, and future episodes.

"This too shall pass. But in the meantime, let’s take control of what we can." – Jim

Episode 143: Belief Systems Amid Insane Changes

Welcome to Jim’s Take!

In this episode, Jim dives into the evolving landscape of belief systems as we navigate the relentless chaos of change. With nearly 45 days into a new presidency, he unpacks the leadership lessons from a change management perspective while addressing the rising tide of anxiety and uncertainty in today's world.

What to Expect in This Episode:

• Grading Leadership in Times of Change – A no-holds-barred assessment of the early days of the new administration, focusing on leadership, communication, and decision-making.
• How Do We Respond to Change? – The emotional and psychological impact of political and economic instability on individuals and businesses.
• The Power of Belief Systems – Jim shares six core beliefs that have shaped his approach to navigating uncertainty, inspired by past experiences, including the 2008 financial crisis.

Jim’s Six Core Beliefs:

1. There’s Nothing That Can’t Be Done – Overcoming limitations and embracing possibility.
2. There Are No Rules… But There Are Right and Wrong Ways to Do Things – Understanding consequences and ethics in decision-making.
3. Always Make Sure the Last Person Gets Home – The responsibility of supporting others in times of crisis.
4. There’s Always Room for One More – Embracing inclusivity and the importance of community.
5. Heaven and Hell Exist—But Not After We Die – Living authentically and staying true to personal values.
6. This Too Shall Pass – Recognizing the transient nature of chaos and focusing on resilience.

Key Takeaways:

• The importance of focusing on what you can control amid external chaos.
• How personal beliefs serve as a filter for decision-making and emotional resilience.
• The role of authenticity, trust, and action in building a more grounded and purpose-driven life.

Final Thoughts: Jim reminds us that the way we consume and respond to information shapes our daily reality. Instead of getting caught in the noise of political drama, social media, and anxiety, shift your attention to meaningful action—whether it’s personal growth, fostering human connections, or staying true to your values.

What’s Next? Stay tuned for the next episode, where Jim will explore the chaos of capitalism and its implications for inequality and systemic change.

Thanks for listening! If you found this episode insightful, share it with someone who might need a fresh perspective. See you next time!

Episode Summary: In this captivating episode of Jim's Take, Jim welcomes the incredible Ronan Rooney, a thought leader, author, and philosophy enthusiast from Ireland. Together, they dive deep into concepts of the authentic self, enlightenment, and finding meaning in a chaotic world. From Ronan’s journey through family business, personal struggles, and philosophical explorations to the practical ways we can reconnect with our true essence, this conversation is packed with insights.

Key Topics Discussed:

1. Ronan's Story:

• From running a third-generation family business to exploring life's big questions.
• Facing financial collapse, personal setbacks, and discovering resilience.
• Writing books endorsed by global leaders like Deepak Chopra and Robin Sharma.

1. The Authentic Self:

• Understanding what it means to live as your authentic self.
• How conditioning impacts our decisions and the journey to strip it away.
• Indicators that you are living authentically—peace, fulfillment, and alignment.

1. Meditation and the Gap:

• The importance of meditation in reconnecting with your essence.
• How small, consistent practices can help access the "gap" between thoughts.

1. Challenges and Growth:

• Why struggle can be a tool for growth and creativity.
• Insights on appreciating life’s miracle and overcoming fear of change.

1. Finding Meaning and Nirvana on Earth:

• How we can individually achieve a state of grace even amidst global turmoil.
• Exploring perspectives on interconnectedness, spirituality, and divine expression.

1. Enlightenment and Beyond:

• Balancing the quest for enlightenment with living a full and vibrant life.
• The evolving consciousness of humanity and embracing a paradigm shift.

Notable Quotes:

• “The authentic self is expressing who you truly are—your best traits, free from external conditioning.”
• “You don’t have to wait for the world to change. You can hold a state of grace amidst any turmoil.”
• “Life is a miracle, and we’re here to enjoy it while learning and growing through challenges.”

Practical Takeaways:

• Daily Practices: Begin your day with a brief moment of reflection before the first thought sets in. Incorporate 15-30 minutes of meditation daily to connect with your true self.
• Self-Reflection Questions:
• What beliefs or values are truly yours, and what has been conditioned by others?
• What brings you peace, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose?
• Appreciation Over Gratitude: Cultivate appreciation for the miracle of life and your own potential.

About Our Guest: Ronan Rooney is a writer, speaker, and consultant passionate about philosophy, metaphysics, and self-discovery. He has authored multiple books on conscious awareness and personal growth, with his latest work focusing on deepening our connection to the authentic self.

Connect with Us:

• Subscribe to Jim’s Take on your favorite podcast platform.
• Share your thoughts and questions on this episode on social media using #JimsTakePodcast.
• Follow us for updates and exclusive content.

Join us next week as we continue exploring ideas that challenge, inspire, and empower. See you then!

Episode Summary:

In this deeply inspiring episode of Jim’s Take, we are joined by the extraordinary Claire Bowes from Northern Ireland. A mother, business owner, and music teacher, Claire shares her powerful journey of resilience and determination following a life-changing event. Blinded at the age of 15 in the 1998 Omagh bombing, Claire has not only overcome unimaginable challenges but has redefined what it means to live fully.

Claire discusses her journey from trauma to triumph, including founding the Omagh Music Academy, her philosophy on embracing discomfort for growth, and the profound joys of simple pleasures. This conversation is a testament to human strength and the importance of community, support, and self-determination.

Key Topics Covered:

• Claire’s life-changing experience and the lessons learned about resilience.
• Overcoming challenges as a teenager and pursuing independence.
• The role of family, community, and support in her recovery and growth.
• How Claire challenges herself to grow beyond her comfort zone, including her recent trip to New York.
• The importance of normalcy and appreciating life’s simple pleasures.
• Her ongoing research into helping visually impaired children memorize music.

Guest Bio:

Claire Bowes is a mother, business owner, and founder of the Omagh Music Academy, which offers music lessons to individuals of all ages and abilities. A passionate advocate for resilience and growth, Claire is currently pursuing a PhD, researching how visually impaired children effectively memorize music. Her journey is an inspiring example of turning adversity into empowerment.

Connect with Claire Bowes:

• LinkedIn: Claire Bowes

Claire’s Book Recommendations:

• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig – A thought-provoking novel about life choices and second chances.
• The Magic by Rhonda Byrne – A practical guide to cultivating gratitude and transforming your mindset.

Listener Challenge:

Claire’s story is a reminder to embrace challenges and ask for help when needed. Take a moment this week to step outside your comfort zone and reflect on the simple joys in your life.

Follow and Subscribe:

Stay tuned for more inspiring conversations on Jim’s Take. Don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast to help others discover these meaningful stories.

Closing Notes:

Thank you for listening! Reach out to Claire, support her research, and join us next time for another insightful episode.

Episode Title: 2025 and the Battle of Apathy

Episode Summary:In this reflective final episode of 2024, Jim dives into an unexpected theme: apathy. As we transition into 2025, Jim opens up about his personal struggles with motivation, emotional detachment, and the overwhelming noise of modern life. He reframes the new year not as a time for hollow resolutions but as an opportunity to confront apathy with intentional engagement, presence, and personal meaning.

What You’ll Learn:

Defining Apathy: Understand apathy as more than just lack of interest — it’s a response to overwhelm, burnout, and disconnection.

Root Causes: Explore how social, professional, and personal pressures contribute to emotional disengagement and what drives feelings of “not caring.”

Intentional Disengagement: Learn how to identify and ignore external chaos while focusing on what truly matters.

The Power of Presence: Discover why presence is essential to finding meaning and how intentional focus can help combat apathy.

Actionable Steps for 2025: Jim shares his personal strategy for confronting apathy through meaningful goals, mindful activities, and redefining personal priorities.

Memorable Insights:

"External chaos drives internal chaos — but you can choose what to engage with."

"The future is a hoax if you can’t be present."

"Life has no inherent meaning — our purpose is to give it meaning."

"The antidote to apathy is intentional confrontation — with ourselves, our routines, and our values."

Key Takeaways for Your 2025 Reset:

Define what you truly care about — and why.

Prioritize presence over perfection.

Engage meaningfully with people, passions, and personal goals.

Disengage from external pressures that drain your energy.

Looking Ahead:Jim shares his ambitious goals for 2025, including writing new books, competing in the Lake Placid Ironman, and running the New York City Marathon — all fueled by a deeper connection to purpose and meaning.

Challenge for the New Year:What do you care about — and why? Take time to reflect, define, and act with intention.

Final Thoughts:Thank you for joining Jim's Take in 2024. Here’s to a meaningful, intentional, and connected 2025. See you next year!

**Podcast Show Notes: Jim’s Take - Episode 139**

**Title:** Should There Be Billionaires? A Reflection on Wealth, Society, and Change

**Episode Summary:**

In this thought-provoking episode of *Jim’s Take*, Jim explores the complex question: *Should there be billionaires?* Drawing inspiration from a bumper sticker he saw years ago, he reflects on capitalism, wealth inequality, and societal change. This isn’t just a theoretical discussion—it’s a deep dive into how unchecked capitalism, privatization, and societal expectations are reshaping our lives.

**Key Topics Covered:**

1. **The Origin of the Question:**  

  - How a bumper sticker sparked deep reflections during a run.  

  - The evolving relevance of the question in today's world.

2. **Capitalism and Wealth Accumulation:**  

  - Arguments for and against the existence of billionaires.  

  - The balance between hard work, value creation, and societal responsibility.

3. **Economic Inequality and Societal Impact:**  

  - The erosion of basic human rights like access to water, food, and healthcare.  

  - Real-life stories of healthcare denial and corporate profiteering.

4. **Societal Unrest and Systemic Failures:**  

  - Why economic pressure and unmet needs fuel societal frustration.  

  - Reflections on historical and current examples of societal breakdown.

5. **The Role of Government and Corporations:**  

  - How government and corporate responsibility intersect—or fail to.  

  - The need for systemic reform and collective accountability.

6. **Personal Responsibility and Action:**  

  - Simple steps individuals can take in response to societal challenges.  

  - The importance of self-sufficiency, advocacy, and creating positive change.

**Memorable Quotes:**

- *“Unchecked capitalism erodes the foundational needs of society.”*  

- *“What’s enough profit? How do we recognize when we’ve done enough?”*  

- *“We’re humans—we need a lot of things, and we’re not quite meeting that for people.”*

**Call to Action:**

Have thoughts on the episode? Share your perspective on societal change and economic responsibility. What do you believe needs to change—and how can we, as individuals and communities, take action?

**Connect with Us:**

- Website: www.jimfrawley.com  

- Social Media: @jimfrawleyny

**Thank you for tuning in!**

Join us next week for another deep dive into the issues shaping our world.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Jim's Take, Jim is joined by Sharon McNulty, founder of Joyful Spaces and a multi-award-winning professional organizer with clients worldwide. Sharon, a master-level certified coach trained under Marie Kondo, shares her journey from a busy single mom overwhelmed by clutter to a black-belt organizer transforming homes and businesses globally.

Sharon dives into the philosophy behind creating joyful spaces, discussing the emotional and psychological impact of clutter and disorganization. She emphasizes the importance of intentionality, simplicity, and abundance, offering practical steps to organize your space and life effectively. Whether it’s managing sentimental items, decluttering your workspace, or teaching kids organizational life skills, Sharon’s advice is rooted in compassion and actionable wisdom.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How your physical environment affects your mental and emotional well-being.
• The key differences between managing a home versus a workspace.
• Sharon’s step-by-step system for organizing by category, not by room.
• Practical tips for letting go of sentimental items without guilt.
• How to maintain a joyful and functional space after the initial organization.
• The connection between simplicity, abundance, and a less consumerist mindset.

Episode Highlights:

• [03:15] Sharon’s background and journey to becoming a professional organizer.
• [07:30] Overcoming the overwhelm of clutter and embracing intentional simplicity.
• [15:45] Sharon’s philosophy on abundance and breaking free from a “lack mentality.”
• [25:10] Addressing sentimental items and the importance of starting small.
• [30:40] Applying these principles to workspaces and home offices.
• [42:00] Sharon’s practical advice for getting started and staying consistent.

Quotes:

• “Your home should be a space you’re proud of—a place that sparks joy and supports your life.”
• “Clutter isn’t just physical; it’s emotional. Creating joyful spaces transforms your mindset.”
• “Start with what you love and let the rest go with gratitude.”

Resources Mentioned:

• Sharon McNulty’s Website: joyfulspaces.co.uk
• Follow Sharon on Instagram and Facebook: @joyfulspaces
• Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn: Sharon McNulty
• Book Mentioned: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Connect with Us:

• Follow Jim Frawley on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and BlueSky. 
• Have questions or topic suggestions? Email us through our website at www.jimfrawley.com

Thanks for Listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with a friend who could use a little extra joy in their space! Don’t forget to subscribe for more inspiring conversations.

Episode Summary:

In this short yet thought-provoking episode, Jim dives into the concept of struggle—not as a source of trauma, but as a necessary and fulfilling aspect of life. With technology and AI taking over much of our effort, Jim challenges listeners to actively seek purposeful challenges to maintain their sense of value and self-worth.

Drawing from personal experiences, philosophical reflections, and insights from a recent tech conference in Manhattan, Jim explores why embracing struggle is essential for growth, resilience, and pride in one’s accomplishments.

Key Discussion Points:

• Why Struggle Matters:
• Struggle helps us define purpose and value in an increasingly automated world.
• It fosters self-reliance, mental resilience, and emotional regulation.
• Insights from the Tech Conference:
• Highlights from discussions with experts in AI, social good, and cybersecurity.
• Jim’s take: While tech advances are exciting, we need to prepare for their human impact, particularly the diminishing experience of struggle.
• Struggle vs. Trauma:
• Clarifying the difference between healthy, intentional struggle and life-altering trauma.
• Examples of productive struggles: parenting challenges, athletic goals, and professional obstacles.
• Parenting and Struggle:
• Stories about encouraging kids to overcome challenges, like crossing monkey bars or potty training.
• Lessons for parents: Don’t do everything for your kids—let them experience the reward of effort.
• The Workplace Connection:
• Why many employees feel disengaged at work: a lack of projects they can take pride in.
• How employers can foster meaningful struggles to increase engagement and fulfillment.
• Examples of Intentional Struggles:
• Running marathons, solving puzzles, starting a business, or stepping out of your comfort zone socially.
• The reward isn’t just achieving the goal—it’s the journey, discipline, and growth along the way.
• A Call to Action for 2025:
• Jim’s challenge to listeners:

1. Choose a struggle that excites you.
2. Set a plan to tackle it.
3. Reflect on the pride of accomplishment.

• Struggles can be physical, mental, or social—find what works for you and embrace it.

Memorable Quote:

"Home is a place for comfort, but if we stay there, we miss the experiences that help us remember who we are."

Times are changing. With information moving so quickly, and higher expectations of employees for their organization to “have their back,” executives are stuck between a rock and a hard place to navigate what’s appropriate and best for the business, their people and the company’s values.

Pairing this with the idea of individual executives (or front line employees) having their own “brand,” there is often a conflict between the personal views of people that make up and are representing the company. 

Often it’s no big deal, but when politics enters the workstream every four years, the emotional challenges of navigating difficult conversations on philosophy, economic theory, social justice and more can overwhelm the group. 

It was never “ok” to speak politics at work - it was something that was left to individuals to believe what they wanted. In a way, it was a protection for us to not have the uncomfortable conversations we didn’t want to have. Similar to religion and even sports, emotions overtake logic, and most conversations don’t end well. 

But with the rise of never-ending information, opinion presented as facts, beliefs presented as truths - the game has changed. And many of us - from leadership down to the front line - are expected to navigate a political landscape with no real value in the end game. 

Here are some tips for navigating political conversations at work. Whenever we have a list of “tips,” I like to ask questions - as you are the one who will be lying in the bed you make.

There is a well known epidemic of loneliness in the world, and the increasing levels of change are exacerbating the challenge.

I'd argue there are three things needed for wellness: Physical health, Mental health, and Social health.

We were happy to be joined by Janine Kutliroff, CEO of Brya, a company focused on helping people build healthy and active in-person social connections.

Janine's comments will resonate to almost everyone - I hope you enjoy.

The Goddess is Back! Jim and Sam have a good discussion on the personal accountability of being social, how we build our own communities, and have a small battle royale on the value of in-person vs. online social groups.

I recently took an Ayahuasca journey - eight days at Spiritquest Sanctuary in Iquitos, Peru. As requested, I've recounted the journey -from what Ayahuasca is, to why I picked Spiritquest and how the Amazon tradition was helpful, right on through the visions and the purging.

Jim gives his take on the "desperate need for relevance" - our innate desire for value, acceptance and belonging. As the world evolves, we are fearing being left behind ... and our fears drive action and behaviors. Come for the social media bashing, stay for tips on how to build in person social resources (thus building your relevance).

Episode 131 - Jim and Catherine break down "technology truths." We are on the precipice of technological change unseen before. How do we prepare for change when we don't know what change is coming? Jim and Catherine break it down.

Resiliency is a buzzword. But it's necessary. Jim sits down with Catherine Murnin, founder of The Wellbeing Pathway, to chat realistic resilience, why it's important, how we should think about it and build our own plan.

Ahhhh middle management. Where you get to sandwich between theory and reality, with outrageous expectations and mitigated work life balance. This episode has a nice venting session on Middle Management, why it sucks, and strategies/responses we can use to dictate our next career path.

In our second of four interviews with Catherine, we cover Creativity with Purpose, and how creativity is a massive drive to our wellbeing. Come for the reference to Seamus Heaney, stay for the learning on how creativity is everywhere (not just where you think).

Let's cover the biggest issue in corporate nobody is talking about: Insecurity.

Not just a simple "impostor syndrome" conversation - but what causes it, what drives it, how we react to it, and how to identify it in other people. Change the game with your interactions on this episode.

In our first of four conversations, Catherine and Jim outline how to build ideal connections and community, based on aligning with your personal values and motivations.

In the journey of our careers and social lives, the pursuit of a "seat at the table" has become a familiar phrase, symbolizing recognition, validation, and influence. However, like so many age-old metaphors, rarely do we take the time to look beyond their assumed surface-level meaning. Many still work tirelessly in hopes of earning a place here, without fully understanding exactly what it is they’re after, or what it may require to get there. 

In episode 124 of "Welcome to Jim's: Take Happy Week," Jim delves into the concept of gentle leadership, initially expressing skepticism towards the latest leadership trend. However, the episode explores the relevance of gentle leadership in today's discourse on leadership and personal development, emphasizing its focus on empathy, kindness, and collaboration. The host discusses the origins of gentle leadership, drawing parallels with the concept of gentle parenting, which gained popularity years ago.

While acknowledging the benefits of fostering psychological safety and creating environments where individuals can thrive, there are potential drawbacks. Excessive focus on empathy can lead to entitlement and an inability to cope with life's challenges. Furthermore, the episode emphasizes the importance of setting and maintaining high standards, challenging individuals to meet expectations while providing support and guidance.

Ultimately, Jim encourages a nuanced approach to leadership, incorporating elements of civility, respect, and accountability. They stress the necessity of balancing empathy with discipline and holding individuals accountable for their actions. Despite initial reservations, the episode concludes with an affirmation of the value of gentle leadership when understood and applied effectively.

Welcome to 2024. We are going to kick it off with lots of isms. 

Shedding the collective dumpster fire of 2023, much of what I’ve been hearing is that people are looking to start anew in 2024. Again. Just like last year. And the year before. I’m seeing a recurring theme. 

The theme … and this is something I’ve been dealing with … is that there seems to be a cynicism infiltrating much of the conversation style over the past six months to a year. 

On a recent run (a Dopey run, more on that in the show) - I was reminded that much of our perspective is impacted by the experiences around us. But our perspective needs to be protected at all times - it’s what makes us unique - and while it should evolve, I would argue a healthy perspective is one that embraces optimism and hope. It’s what drives us to accomplish and try more. 

A lyric from Vinegar Hill by Black ‘47 stuck with me on the run: “When faith is gone, all hope is lost.” And we have lost faith. I’m not making a religious stance - although you can take it that way. But we have lost faith beyond that standard view. We have lost faith in our institutions. Our educational system. Our neighbors and what we believe is true. And, we have lost faith in ourselves.

We don’t have all the answers - and that’s OK. But as the world continues to evolve around us - our belief system - our faith in ourselves and our ability to get shit done - is what’s going to drive us out of whatever dark place cynicism takes us. 

Skepticism is good - I encourage it. It shows we think. But skepticism evolves to cynicism too easily, and we must be aware that without faith in ourselves and others; without hope that things will be better, without a recognition that we are capable of writing our script - we are going to be spending our days in a negative tornado of cynicism. 

It can start small - more on the show about how a short run changes my entire thinking paradigm - but it’s necessary if we are going to be successful in 2024. 

Enjoy the week!

Today the topic is time – how we think about it, frame it and manage it. 

Productivity appears to be the name of the game today, which becomes an incredibly frustrating aspect to focus on. We never feel productive enough, the end of our work time seems so far in the future, and our fleeting day to day never really meets our expectations to catch up to our long term goals and priorities. 

But when we think about a 30 year (or 20, 15, 10 or 5 year) horizon, we can break things down into a different sort of framework. When I put a 30 year view, rethought as only 360 months, something changes in the way I approach it. 

And when we think about where we wish to be, recognizing progress is an important part of making sure we are heading in a direction that is meaningful to us. Our context changes over time, our views and priorities shift, and a constant dialogue with ourselves is vital as we look to progress and push forward. 

From goal setting to ambition – this podcast covers the loop, and gives you a number of different questions to ask yourself as you move forward. Enjoy!

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Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you, episode 121. It’s good to see everybody again or hear everybody again, or just know that you’re listening. It’s a wonderful thing. Today we’re talking about time in this fun, philosophical kind of, well, not really philosophical, but kind of philosophical way, um,  time management. It’s almost a new way to think about time management and a little perspective on time and how I feel like there is so much, especially from a social media standpoint, so much pressure to take action and do all of these things and things are changing so quickly, and how do I do this and how do I do that? And I have to get things done, and I have to do all of these things. And perspective really helps as we go through these types of things.

0:46

And so,  you know,  I was talking to the team, um,  and I’ve talked to clients about this too,  you know, oh,  do I really want to do this job for another 30 years and what do I have? And I’m only 35, I wanna go to 65, or I’m 45 and I’ve only got 20 years, or whatever it is. Um,  and there’s,  you know,  30 years seems like so far away, especially if you’re in your early thirties and it’s,  you know,  double the life that you’ve already had. And it seems,  you know,  think about all the experiences you’ve had over time, and there’s a lot of time that you can, you think you have a lot of time, I guess. And then there’s this other side of the coin saying, you never know when, when the, the good world is gonna spit you out. And,  you know,  you’re only on this rock for a short amount of time, and how do you, how do you get more done with the time that you have?

1:30

And it’s more pressure we put on ourselves. And,  you know,  when I think about a 30 year time horizon, it’s only 360 months. Um,  and when I think about 30 years, there’s only 360 months. It, it kind of says it’s not a lot of time.

1:46

And,  you know,  my, my daughter, she’s coming up on six, so she’s five now. That’s what, 60 months? 60 months are gone already outta those 360. So that’s, um, you know,  so how are you thinking about your time horizon?

1:58

That’s what I wanna talk about today. Is it a 30 year horizon, a 20 year horizon, a 10 year horizon? Uh,  I’m 45, 44, something like that, somewhere in my mid forties. And so I probably have, like, you know,  we always, in work, we think about our horizon to the age of 65.

2:18

Um,  and that’s a built in assumption that we have, right? Oh,  I have to do this until I’m 65 and then I can retire. And, uh,  I got 20 years left and, and maybe 15, maybe whatever. I like to think about it until I’m 60.

2:31

The youngest of our kids is gonna be 18, close the doors, I get freedom and life is gonna be good <laugh>. Um,  but the 65 thing is interesting. If, if,  you know  why we picked 65 as a retirement age, and I learned this a long time ago. There was this,  you know,  retirement coaching thing that I had done. And, um, you know,  the age of 65 came.

2:54

Here’s a quick history lesson. The age of 65 as a retirement came from Adovan Bismark back in and fun knowledge aspect of it. The reason they picked the age of 65, Adovan, Bismarck wanted in a position Germany as like the premier, um,  cosmopolitan place in Europe. And so he came out saying, Hey, if you work until you’re 65, once you’re 65, the state will take care of you. And it was supposed to be this nice big thing and,  you know,  look how, look how forward thinking we are.

3:20

But the reason they picked the age of 65 is something like,  less than 3% of people lift past that. And so it wasn’t gonna be this big financial impact on, on the business, but it, or on the, on the state. So it took this big, it was, it was more of like,  look at this good pr we could get out of it. It’s not really gonna impact us, but it took fire and say, oh,  we can work until 65 and, and do it.

3:39

That assumption’s going away.  You know,  as you look at people who get to the age of 65, they still have plenty of value. They still have lots of things to do. They still want to work. They still need some kind of purpose. Um,  and when we get to 65, you’ll find that there’s just a lot more to be done. And you’re not just going out to pastor and you’re not just gonna die in 10 years and, and do whatever. People are living longer and everything else.

4:01

So, um,  when we think about time on the long-term horizon, uh,  I heard a good quote the other day. Some guy named Kevin Kelly, I have no idea who he is, not the Kevin Kelly. I know, I actually know a couple of Kevin Kelly’s, but none of those, I don’t know who Kevin Kelly is, but I heard this quote. Um,  we tend to overestimate what we could do in the short term and underestimate what we can do in the long term.

4:23

And that’s,  you know,  when we think about saving for retirement and, and all of these things, we kind of, it sneaks up on us, right? All of these things sneak up on us. Say, where did the time go? And we need different mindsets to accommodate for this.

4:36

We need, um, you know,  a long-term kind of vision, a, a short-term vision, a, a one year vision, a quarterly vision, a monthly, a weekly whatever it is, a daily. Um,  and we have to change our mindsets on each of these because who we are as an individual actually changes.  You know,  one of the things I learned when I was becoming a coach is,  you know,  you set all these goals for yourself and you make a little bit of progress on one of these goals. You actually become, if your behavior changes, which it will, you actually become a different person, you’re gonna make different types of choices over time as you become a different human being and a different person. And context changes, the world changes.

5:18

You get kids, you get,  you know,  you buy a home, whatever, you, you get all of these types of things. And so we have to do this constant reevaluation on what’s relevant and what’s important to us. And part of that reevaluation is to recognize the progress that we’ve actually made. And we lose sight of all the things that we’ve accomplished over a period of time. And, and when I, I speak to clients who are frustrated with, um, you know,  20 years at corporate, and who am I and where am I going? And there’s never a discussion on the progress that they’ve made.

5:50

And that’s usually where I like to start.  You know,  let’s talk about where you were and, and where you’ve become. Mm-hmm. Um,  and when we look at our to-do lists and all the things that’s not getting done,  you know,  just throw it away. Um,  it’s so cathartic to just throw out half your list. Um,  there was always this lifetime goal to, to be able to speak French and I, I don’t think I’ll ever speak French, and that’s okay, <laugh>.

6:13

Um,  because here’s what happens.  You know,  there, there’s a lot of research on deadlines, um,  and we put these arbitrary deadlines on ourselves and, and sometimes it helps you take action, right? And that’s the point of a deadline. We, we set this deadline, and I’m a procrastinator and I get this, this, this little spark of creativity whenever something’s due the next day. And I, I’ve been thinking about, and that’s just how I like to operate.

6:35

And I, I could do things really quickly and really well, um,  with these deadlines. However, pushing things that we don’t really want to do or that aren’t really going to happen to the, whatever this task is to a deadline, it creates stress. So some research finds that it lessens creativity because of these things that you don’t want to do. Um,  and so how do you just get them off and get them off of your list?

6:58

Whether you just take whatever short term action you have to do to push it back, or do you actually change it, um,  or delete it or, or whatever it is that you want to do. So we are people, we are, we become what we prioritize over time and what’s important for us and what’s a priority for us, changes over time. And so when we think about I’ve got 360 months, 240 months, whatever it is, it gives you a different kind of, oh, you know  what, in five months could I get this kind of progress? And what kind of progress am I looking towards,  you know,  some bigger goal of whatever it is that I wish to do. And, um,  one of the books that I always like to read, I probably read it annually or at least I try to, is called the War of Art. And I like the War of Art. It’s by a guy named Steven Presfield, and he wrote it for writers in terms of getting past writer’s block. And I, I feel like it’s, when we think about progress and what we need to do and what we wish to do and what we hope to do and all of these types of things, um,  he has something, he, he calls the resistance.

8:03

We always have a reason why we can’t take action on some of the things that we actually want to take action on. Work is more important, or this thing comes in, or we’ve got this stupid shit on instant,  you know,  social media, whatever. We’re watching these videos, all these things could fill our time, the new Netflix series, whatever it is. And some of those are good in their place, right? Sometimes we need to just check out and do that.

8:25

But, um,  if we think about these things as just resistance to what it is that we’re looking to accomplish over the long term, preventing us from making the progress that we wish to make. I just met a woman the other night. I was doing some speech at a local library who’s been wanting to write a book. She’s probably in her early seventies.

8:41

And she, I wrote all these different things and I haven’t, I said, well, why don’t you just write it? And she’s got some kind of block of resistance, um,  whether it’s fear of what other people will see or what whatever. Um,  and so when we think about our long-term priorities and what short-term steps can we take to get there, and that different type of mindset, um,  is an important exercise to go through. And it’s almost like a weekly or a monthly kind of conversation that you have with yourself is, am I making the progress on the person that I wish to be? And if not, what do I have to change?

9:13

Right? It’s the happiness equation. Happiness equation are expectations times satisfaction equals happiness.  You know,  most people when they say they’re not happy, they’re actually not satisfied. And when they say they’re not satisfied, they look externally and they say, well, I’m not satisfied cuz this person’s doing this and workplace isn’t giving me this and, uh,  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they’re never talking about the steps that they could take or the progress that they made.

9:34

And so when we think about how to take action on progress that you could do, the first question is, do you need to, um,  we crave instant gratification. We, we crave,  you know,  this, this, um,  idea that,  you know,  I work hard and I should get something. Um,  but most of us don’t really know what working hard really means, if I’m gonna be honest. Um,  and it’s a psycho, it’s a real psychological challenge.

10:00

Long term goals are a psychological game that you have to play with yourself. It’s a, it’s a philosophical game in terms of what are the, what are the real hard questions that we should be asking ourselves? And, um,  yes, deadlines are important, but you have to hold yourself accountable to the things that you wanna prioritize. And that’s kind of the message that we have to do when we think about time. There is an ongoing dynamic, long-term versus short-term. There was a may he rest in peace, uh,  Peterson, his last name was Peterson.

10:30

He used to be the head of executive coaching at Google. He spoke at one of our conferences and, and I may have shared this on the podcast before, but he had this grid of questions that you could ask yourself, and he shared it with us and said that we could share it. I give him credit whenever I do share it. Um,  where each day you asked, did I accomplish what I need to accomplish today? And what could I have done better? Right?

10:49

Two simple questions, takes two seconds. But then he is got a weekly question, similar vein this week and next week, monthly question, quarterly question, annual question, tri-annual question, decade questions. And when you get to those types of decade questions, it’s, am I doing the things that I wish to do? Am I the person that I wish to be? How can I disrupt myself and how can I question my assumptions?

11:11

And these are questions that we should be,  you know,  put ourselves into this system where it forces us to recognize the progress that we made to date. But then we could say, all right, this is where I wish to be in a year, six months, or whatever it is. And then what are my,  you know,  what do I, what decision do I have to make today? What does that have to be done in a week?

11:30

And, and all of that. So, um,  when we think about time management, when we think about doing time, when we think about responding to time and, and making sense of purpose and all this shit that we like to talk about, um,  time management has its place, but often we think about it too tactically in terms of, I have to get these things off of a to-do list. Time management also is about recognizing progress and recognizing a bigger picture. And when we think about ambition and when we think about where we wish to go and what’s important and what’s priority, what do we believe?  You know,  you hear me talk about what do we believe all the time? These are our discussions that we have to have with ourselves.

12:07

Otherwise, um,  time management and Teslas and everything will burn you and they’ll burn you out. And,  you know,  360 months, 30 years is a long time. If I go,  you know,  I’ve got 360 months until I’m 75, that’s wild. Um,  now what am I gonna do to make ’em count in a way that, that I’m gonna be proud of?

12:25

And and part of that is work. Part of that is,  you know,  when we think about work and, and the work that we do and how ambition is going out of, out of the workplace, there is work funds, other things, right? And, and so how do you fill your life with those types of things, not to be too kind of hippie and theoretical and blah, blah, blah,  you know  what I mean? Um,  so anyway, that’s my fun kind of exercise to think about is, is what does time mean to you and what are the long-term and short-term angles that, that you get to play with and, and struggle with?

12:55

And, and just put a reminder in your calendar, put it in your phone, right? Ask yourself these types of questions. And I’ll put, I’ll put, um,  Mr. Peter, I forget his first name, unfortunately it’s not Doug Peterson.

13:05

It’s, um,  I’ll find it, but I’ll put it on the website or maybe I’ll link to it with, with the post. Um,  these are good questions to ask yourself in terms of are you progressing in the wish in the way that you wish to progress? And when we think about that happiness equation,  you know,  expectations, where do you expect to be? And are you satisfied with what you’ve done to get there?

13:24

Did you do your best? And if one of those things, if the answer is no, then you have, that’s an accountability measure to say,  you know  what, it’s not a happiness thing because we think other people have to make us happy. It’s about satisfaction, it’s about accountability. It’s about what decisions can you make today because the person you become tomorrow is a result of the decisions that you have to make today. And that’s on time and that’s fun. And so, have a wonderful week. Think about your time, and I look forward to speaking to everybody soon. Have a great week. Thanks.

My commentary on my own mental health has been shared before, from my philosophy on it, to my own challenges with dark places and how to respond to massive levels of change. As it’s Mental Health Awareness month, I figured I would add one element to that mix: the reminder that our own mental health is our own responsibility. 

Mental health means so many things to so many people that there is no one single solution to solving it, and unsolicited advice on wellness, without your context, doesn’t do anyone any favors. 

We have so many things done for us in our life, that we often forget we still have to take action for our own development and wellness. If we wait for other people to step up for us, we will find we don’t get what we really need or want. 

More on the podcast – I hope you enjoy it – and, as always, I’m here to chat.

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3, 2, 1. Welcome to Bellwether episode 120. It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. So let’s talk about mental health. It’s been a topic of mine a bunch. If you’ve listened to the, the podcast in the past, if you’ve heard the Ted Talk, if you heard any of those things,  you know,  mental health is one of my core components of, of how to remain relevant, I guess I could say in, in the new economy. And so, um,  it’s an important month.

0:29

I think it’s an important thing to, to prioritize and it’s an important thing to discuss and it’s an important time to remind. And I love the fact that it happens in May because the weather’s beautiful and you get outside, at least here in the Northeast, and you go outside and you kinda want to be healthy. You want to be well, you want to do all of these things. And particularly right now, there is a need for, for significant mental health work amongst all of us. Now, I will not say what you’re supposed to do cuz everybody’s very quick <laugh> to tell you how to be mentally well. Everybody’s got their opinions on how you should operate on the things that you can do all these solutions without the context of what makes you so spectacular and wonderful.

1:15

And so I’m not gonna go into that today. I will, however, uh,  talk to you about some of my particular challenges. I will talk about the framework that I use to kind of get myself out of these ruts and to make sure that I’m maintaining some kind of mental wellness and, and continually discuss and converse with myself in this kind of crazy way. But it’s fun.

1:33

Um,  but I definitely want to touch on it because it is so important. Because the struggle is real for many, many people, especially my clients. Uh,  corporations are trying to do what they can, or at least the people in corporations are trying to do what they can to help their people at work. Uh,  but at the end of the day, we’re all responsible for, for the bed that we lie in.

1:52

And so, um,  I will kick that off by saying we have a responsibility to ourselves to be mentally well. And this is not,  you know,  we know it, we hear it, and it’s not an easy thing to do, especially with the world changing and workplace changing and all this noise coming in from social media and this noise coming in from the news and this noise coming in from everywhere else where anxiety is just piling up and piling up and piling up. Um,  so it’s incredibly difficult for us to focus on it when so many other things are going on. Now, when we think about life in general, and I tell this to, to corporate when we’re doing workshops and everything else, we are what we prioritize and we can only prioritize so many things. Like  at work, if you wanna prioritize mental health, then how is that kicking off every meeting with a discussion about mental health, whatever it is, right? You don’t have to have a full discussion, but  you know,  what are you doing to be well this week and what are you doing to be well this week?

2:48

And what challenges are you working on? And, um,  there are ways to do that in an appropriate kind of work appropriate way, but we have to do that for ourselves. Now, it doesn’t mean,  you know,  when we say we are what we prioritize with the result of our decisions, with the result of the work we do ourselves. Um,  it doesn’t mean it’s all or nothing, right? And a lot of times we hear,  you know,  I work in a toxic workplace, so for my mental health, I’m leaving.

3:10

It’s not this all or nothing component. And oftentimes when we think about what’s driving our negative mental health, we’re so focused externally at blaming other things. We’re not focused on the decisions that we’re making and the opportunities we’re not taking to get ourselves to where it is that we need to go. Um,  we are the result of our decisions of our internal, it’s called an internal dialogue. What, what’s the conversation you’re having inside of your head based on what do you need? What do you need in this particular moment? And  you know,  the framework I laid out in the TED talk, the physical, the mental, the social areas of preparation for change, it’s the same.

3:49

And you could also argue a financial one. Um,  it’s the same with our, with our overall health in terms of not just preparing for change, but in terms of how are we living our lives,  you know,  from a physical standpoint, are you doing what you need to do? Cause that impacts your mental health from a social standpoint. Who are the people you’re surrounding yourself that impacts your mental health? It’s this kind of nice little web grid, um,  however you wanna call it, right?

4:12

Something. It’s a system. We’ll call it a framework, we’ll call it whatever it is that we want. But from a mental health standpoint, from a mental health focus, uh,  there are three categories that I like to put in. One is the self-love aspect, two is the self-care aspect, and three is the belief system. And these are my three, as I was figuring out a long time ago what my mental health needed. And, and  you know,  I, I did podcasts on this back during the pandemic. Um,  how I quit drinking and, and how that benefited my mental health and how I needed to quit drinking in order to do that. Um,  how the Ironman helped me go into a dark place and pull myself out of it.

4:54

Um,  and going through these exercises of what, what system do you need bespoke to you, you have to fill in these gaps, right? Self-love on what you think about yourself. Nobody can tell you what to think about yourself. And it’s a challenge to do this because we know all of our dark secrets.

5:10

We know the, the, the fears and the failures and the opportunities we didn’t take and the mistakes we made and the relationships we broke. And, um,  and that’s a painful, difficult conversation to have. Um,  but it’s also a good conversation to have so that you can embrace who you actually are. And the, the Russo quote I give everywhere, I’ve probably said it a hundred times on this podcast that he wrote in a letter to his friend, how can one be satisfied with anything in life if they’re not satisfied with the one person that they can never be separated from?

5:41

And that’s you. And we’ve got this happiness challenge, we’ve got a satisfaction challenge. We’ve got,  you know,  am I making right? Choices, challenge, and you always make right choices, right?

5:51

It’s based on the context that you have and you’re making the best decisions that you can in the moment. And when we’re comfortable with ourselves and loving ourselves and recognizing that we do have value and articulating that value to ourselves, we don’t have to shout from rooftops. So be being comfortable with who we are as an individual is one fundamental step. And that takes work. It’s not easy, right?

6:13

Because we all have, I’ve got dark demons, you don’t even want to know my demons. But it, and it took me a long time to get through that. And it took me,  you know,  a lot of, um,  thought and challenging myself. And,  you know,  just because it happened in the past doesn’t mean it has to happen in the future. And, and you can change your perception of yourself over time, but you have to get this dialogue going with yourself. From there, once  you know  who you are and you’re comfortable in embracing the fact that you have imperfections, everybody’s got them, then we move into the self-care, which again, is bespoke to you. What do you need?

6:45

What do you need in any particular moment to help you with your self-love to help you with whatever, uh,  anxieties being thrown your way, whatever macro change is happening in the world, or financial challenges we have, or, um,  stress from the kids or stress from work, whatever it is, right? The stress is coming in from everywhere. Stress is our biggest challenge. What’s the care that you need?

7:08

Is it, do you need to meditate? Meditate? Do you need to go for a walk, walk? Do you need, uh,  some time in the woods? Go spend a week in the woods. What, whatever it is for you,  you know  what gives you a really good charge?

7:20

You know,  what regenerates you in a really meaningful way? And again, it goes back to the prioritization. How do you prioritize that? Also, not easy, right?

7:32

We have obligations, we have family, we have work, we have all of these types of things. It doesn’t mean that you have to leave all of it behind and go out to the desert and meditate for a week, but there are little ways that we can do that, um,  where we can really focus on what it is that we need. How do we use that to, to embrace ourselves and, and get ourselves back on the right path? It’s also not a quick fix.

7:54

It doesn’t, some, it’s not something that just happens,  you know,  once you do, oh,  I’ll meditate for five minutes and everything’s good. Uh,  but generally what it is in terms of self-care is it, it balances out that stress to say,  you know  what? I just need a 30 minute recharge, or I need a two hour recharge, or whatever it is. Um,  that’s what we all need on a very regular basis, like  almost daily. What is it that you need to kind of recharge? And, um,  if it doesn’t happen daily, it should happen multiple times a week.

8:20

And then finally you’ve got your belief system is what do you believe? This allows us to love ourselves. It allows us to be open to the fact that we might be wrong. It allows us to recognize that we don’t have to be right all the time. That a lot of the stress and anxiety I deal with, um,  with clients or help them deal with is this desire to be right all the time and correct people and defend these ideas that they don’t necessarily actually believe.

8:44

And it’s a, that’s just a form of anxiety that nobody really talks about. And so when you recognize that a belief system is just beliefs and you understand the questions you can ask to say,  you know  what, maybe I don’t actually believe this, or if I do believe it and you believe something different, that’s okay. So having a dynamic belief system in place, which also is an ongoing malleable thing that takes constant work, these are fun discussion frameworks that we can go through and challenge ourselves every day. We could pick a little tiny thing and learn about ourselves to allow us to really take responsibility and control of, of what it is and, and what we want to do. So this has to be bespoke to us, okay?

9:25

This is your framework, self-love, self-care, belief system. And in order to have these really, really good internal conversations, it helps to surround ourselves with, uh,  people who can help. It helps to surround us with, uh,  people who have different ideas than you, right? There’s a, there’s a lot of talk about male mental health in the workplace, um,  which is good because men just don’t like to talk about it. Uh,  I don’t like that we’re telling everyone that they have to talk about it, right? Everyone’s got an opinion on what you need to do for your mental health.

9:56

Um,  but I will say to the guys, um,  sometimes it helps to have a female perspective or a different ethnicity or whatever this,  you know,  whatever this different kind of view is to recognize that it’s not all on your shoulders, right? And, and people are dealing, everybody’s dealing with some shit. Everybody’s dealing with difficult things. And when we understand that, it takes the pressure off a little bit, right?

10:16

We only have this short period of time on the planet. We only,  you know,  each day is 24 hours in a day. There’s only so much you could do.  You know,  there’s a cathartic exercise to say, what am I actually responsible for?

10:24

And what am I holding onto that I don’t have to really hold onto? Um,  mental health comes in so many different buckets. There’s,  you know,  drug abuse, alcohol abuse and all that. That’s a mental health challenge. There’s the insecurity, the anxiety, there is the stress from work, the stress from, um, uh,  from change, just,  you know,  what’s AI going to do? And, and we question ourselves as human beings and what our value is.

10:49

And when we can anchor ourselves in order to find value, in order to articulate value to ourselves, um,  we have to take ownership of ourselves and our response mechanisms. And we have to say, and I mentioned this in in the TED Talk, many of us don’t go from adolescents to adulthood. We don’t make that transition. And it’s very difficult to do it because everything is done for us today. But the difference, a therapist told me this once, the difference between adolescents and adulthood is in adolescence, people do things for you.

11:22

Adulthood is when you take responsibility for your actions. And many of us, we don’t have to make that transition. And that’s damaging to us. And it, it’s this, it drives addition. It’s this unseen kind of anxiety to, to where we feel like we’re not in control. And it’s because we’re not actually taking responsibility for who we are as a human being and the choices we’re making and the decisions we’re making and all of that. Um,  now I’ve had my problems.

11:45

This was eye-opening for me, right? Where it’s,  you know  what, we talk about all of this stuff, but we don’t actually take action. And I actually had to take action and I finally said,  you know  what? I’m gonna stop drinking and I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that. And when we do things every day or every week or every month, we make these decisions to say, this is what I need to do. It’s not about saying I can’t do anything else, but you do it within the context of the world that you have around you. And those are the decisions that we have to do.

12:14

So mental health, um,  means so many things to so many different people and there’s no one single solution to solving it. But it’s that dynamic discussion with ourselves on what you need, the decisions you’re making. Um,  everything in life is a choice. Everything is is a choice. Waking up and going to work in the morning is technically a choice. Waking up next to your spouse every morning is technically a choice. Um,  being a parent to your kids is technically a choice, right? You can abdicate these responsibilities whether you like it.

12:51

I mean, it’s not a nice thing to do <laugh>. Um,  but ultimately it’s a choice. And,  you know,  I choose to be a father every day. I choose to be married to Gabby every day. I choose to do this work every day because I know it’s good for me. And how do you go through,  you know,  what is it that’s giving you some particular challenge right now?

13:10

For me, going back to the parenting theme, my house is a mess. I’ve got two kids. I love being organized. My house is a shit show right now, and it drives me nuts. I can’t walk throughout my house without stepping on a toy or something like that. Drives me bananas. My decisions right are all right. What do I have to get cleaned up in order to kind of clear my workspace and all those other types of things so I can focus and I can do whatever it is that I need.

13:33

It could be anything, right? But we have to be hardcore reflective on what it is that we need in a particular moment so that we’re then able to make the decisions that we have to make so that we can progress and make the decisions and take the actions that we actually have to take. This is something, um,  that is a forever exercise for you. Um,  and I love the Oscar wild quote quote, the aim of life is self-development because we’ve forgotten the greatest responsibility, which is a responsibility to ourselves. And that is it. That is ultimately what life is about.

14:05

We have a choice, we have a decision, and we have a set amount of time where we can enjoy each moment.  You know,  I was talking to someone, well, this is almost like my dating kind of analogy is, you go on a first date and then you decide if you want to go on a second date with that person. And if the second date goes well, you decide if you wanna go on a third date with that person. You decide if you wanna go on a fourth date with that person. You go to work each day, your first day, you’re like,  all right, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna go back.

14:31

If at any point you don’t wanna go on a fifth date with that person, you end the relationship. That’s it. And you make the changes that you have to make. It’s the same with anything else that you’re working on is,  you know,  how do you enjoy your particular moment? How do you enjoy the family? How do you enjoy the work? How do you, those are decisions that you have to, to work on. And it’s not easy.

14:51

It’s difficult because other people make it difficult, right? I’m more far more introverted than I am extroverted. So I will tell you, going into a group of people generally makes things worse, <laugh> than better. But sometimes it could give you a real charge if  you know  how to enjoy the people around you and the moment that you’re in and what you’re doing.

15:07

And, and that’s a challenge that you have to, how do you enjoy this next hour of your day? What’s, and we do things we don’t want to do because we have to do them, right? We have obligations. How do you enjoy it and how do you figure that out?

15:20

So mental health is, um,  it’s big and it’s, I I think it’s a, a great time in May to reflect on what it is that you’re working on and, and your particular challenges. And, um,  and as always, I’m gonna be here for you if, if there’s anything you want to talk about, even just for someone to listen to you vent, uh,  the amount of people who call me every day just to vent. Um,  it’s why I can’t get any of my work done, but it’s, um,  but I know it’s meaningful and I know it’s helpful and it’s, it’s, it’s very, very good. And so find your people to help you with this.

15:51

Um,  but you’re ultimately the person who’s gotta make those types of decisions. So good luck with it. I’m here to help. Um,  I’ve got resources on the website. There’s all kinds of stuff that you could do and, and just kind of reflect and, and go through those, those types of exercises. So, um,  as always, reach out if there’s anything I can do to be helpful for you.

16:08

Enjoy your month, enjoy the month of May, and enjoy being mentally well and enjoy the fun. I mean, it’s, it’s super fun to go through what I tell people at the beginning of a coaching engagement. It’s super fun because you get to work on yourself and what, what’s cooler than working on, on yourself and, and making you the center of attention for yourself, cuz you are the most important thing to yourself. And that’s good.

16:29

And so do it. Take care of it. Love yourself, do good things. I am here if you need me.

16:33

I will talk to everybody soon. And next week we’re gonna talk about time. We’re gonna go through the time exercise. Do  you know  30 years is only 360 months. It’s not a lot of time.

16:46

Um,  it flies just 360 months. And if you were to kind of anchor that out, I’m a planner. Uh,  we’re gonna go through that kind of fun time exercise and we’ll talk about that next week. So, uh,  I look forward to chatting everybody soon. And thanks for your time. Chat soon.

Like many other buzzwords, the word ‘empathy’ has been thrown around so much that it has begun to mean something entirely different. When we hear the word empathy, we often think it to be something that is entirely positive and helpful, but what if this is not the case?

In reading Paul Bloom’s Against Empathy, I’ve found that much of the assumption around empathy can be misplaced and misunderstood. 

Empathy has its place. And, of course, it has value – when put in the appropriate context. But ultimately, what many executives I speak with are finding (paired with very interesting research), a misinterpretation of empathy is forcing us to lose sight of a bigger picture. We are so focused on an individual that we can make irrational decisions that aren’t beneficial to a larger initiative or organization. 

From actually promoting biases (we are empathic with our own type of people) to innumeracy (this one person is more important than the 100 or 1000 others) to increasing our stress levels (increased empathy has shown higher suffering later in the week), our perspective can be skewed with too much empathy. And with organizations going full-tilt in training and learning initiatives towards promoting empathy, businesses can be hurt and negatively impacted due to this misunderstanding. 

Empathy is good from a moral and humanity perspective, but it must be paired with logic, reasoning and compassion. Our learning and development initiatives need to provide empathy training within context, and teach the additional skill sets with it. 

As the world changes so quickly, and the very important recognition of the human beings that we work with, we have an obligation, from a business focus, to differentiate logic and emotion, and use these inputs to inform effective decisions to help businesses survive. Those that don’t will surely be left behind. 

More is on the podcast, and it’s a fun exercise to think, ourselves, about our own ability to feel, to give weight and compassion to others. Rather than blindly follow a basic learning agenda, we all know that context is vital as we build our own philosophy on interpersonal activity and relationships. I’ll leave that as your thought of the week!

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Hey folks, welcome to Bellwether episode 119. Today we’re talking about empathy and the case against it. <laugh>, if  you know  me, pause for a second. Did he say that right? Did he say what? I think he’s gonna say, no empathy. No empathy.

0:18

If  you know  me,  you know  me well, um, you know,  my feelings on buzzwords and how generally when something is everywhere, it’s often misinterpreted and taught in the wrong kind of way. And we, we think about things and we overdo it. We completely overdo these things. And I read an interesting book recently by Paul Bloom, uh,  I think it’s called Against Empathy.

0:40

Um,  and it makes a really compelling case. And I, I instantly went to the workplace and, and the things going on in the workplace about how, um,  we’re, we’re, we’re teaching and pushing too much empathy, that it’s affecting the way our businesses can move forward. And, um,  and so like all the buzzwords, humility, vulnerability, um,  resiliency, all of these have been, have been just thrown around so much that they’ve lost their meaning and they start to mean something entirely different. Um,  and, and we often think of it as,  you know,  naturally positive and helpful, but as the meaning changes, we don’t really mesh those two things together.

1:19

And so, um,  empathy has its place. I have to start off, empathy has its place, but when it comes to being a good person, when it comes to making good decisions, we need to think of something. We need to use something different besides empathy. And one of the, I mean, the biggest challenge I have with empathy is a lot of it becomes down to the word should. I think the word should be eliminated from the, the English language.

1:42

It’s so judgmental. And, and,  you know,  to say that you should do something, it should be something, uh, you know,  I hate that and, and, um,  can’t stand it. So I, I don’t like to use that, but a lot of empathy. Um,  but a lot of, a lot of these buzzwords should, isn’t a buzzword, but humility, resiliency, empathy, vulnerability, all of these, I mean, those are kind of like the main four.

2:06

I’m sure there are others. Um,  and they just get blasted. People say, oh,  this is a buzzword, and let me do a, a, a training on it and a coaching on it. And it’s just the surface level.

2:15

I, I read psychology today and I’m gonna put it out. And, um,  there’s no full understanding of what these words really mean, and it leads to negative results. And that’s what I think is happening to empathy. And it’s beyond the workplace. It’s,  you know,  it’s in society and everything else. Um,  so let’s talk about, let’s, I guess I should kick it off by telling you that empathy is good, but there are many meanings of empathy.

2:39

And empathy is good when it’s contained within its compartment, I guess we’ll call it, we’ll call it a compartment. Um,  some people would say it means kindness and goodness in a broad sense, and I might agree with that. Um,  some believe it involves understanding people. And, and there’s a morality point of it. Um,  the way Paul Bloom defined it in his book against Empathy, um,  he said it was feeling the feelings of other people.

3:16

And I have a quote here. It says, by empathy, I mean feeling the feelings of other people. So if you’re in pain and I feel your pain, I am feeling empathy toward you. If you’re being anxious, I pick up your anxiety.

3:27

If you’re sad, I pick up your sadness. I’m being empathic. And that’s different from compassion. Compassion means I give your concern weight, I value it, I care about you, but I don’t necessarily pick up your feelings.

3:38

And this is an important distinction. Um,  when we think about the workplace, and we think about beyond the workplace, actually, we’re all human beings. We’re all interact with community. I don’t know why I always say it’s for the workplace, but it’s, um,  when you give someone someone’s concerns weight, and you show value, and you show respect, that’s compassion.

3:58

We don’t need to take this work on ourselves, and we need to compartmentalize it within the bigger picture. And I’m gonna give a few examples of how empathy can be negative, um,  and misinterpreted and, and do that. But  you know,  initially, right, we pick up someone’s anxiety, we pick up someone’s negativity, we pick up someone’s sadness, we try to do all of these types of things. And, um,  first of all, you can’t.

4:26

You can’t, right? All you could do, one of my favorite sayings is we don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. So we can’t really fully pick up the feelings of anyone else.

4:35

1

All we’re doing is punishing ourselves when we see someone else have a tragedy or a problem or a challenge or something like that. Um,  so when we take a look at the studies, one, it increases stress on you, the empathic individual. And I, I am an empathic individual. I know what you are thinking.  You know,  there’s a thing called cognitive empathy, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. It’s like,  I can kind of guess what you’re thinking. We’re the only species on the planet that could do that.

5:04

1

It’s kind of neat. Growing up in a family of six kids, you kind of know, you get feelings down pretty quickly. Um,  so when we think about the studies one, um,  it increases stress studies who are shown empathic, uh,  items at the beginning of the week. So increase suffering later in the week rather than good items. We seek out the negative. So when we’re teaching people to be more empathic and telling people to be more empathic, we’re actually telling them to look for suffering and pain.

5:36

So that’s not a good thing, obviously. Um,  studies that show when, when coming to making decisions, empathy is the spotlight that, uh,  helps you focus on one small inconsequential thing while missing the bigger picture. So your decision making is affected. Um,  we have this inability to pair,  you know,  it’s emotional.

5:59

Empathy is emotional. And when I do a lot of work with my clients, we’re talking about the logic versus emotion kind of conundrum, right? What makes sense? Where’s the reasoning behind that? Um,  but stress is emotional and everything else as well.

6:11

And, and, um,  how do we avoid letting this emotion, takeover fairness and, and smartness and, and reasoning and, and everything else. So, um,  so there’s a lot of studies that show that empathy used in the wrong context can be negative. And I’m sure if you paused and thought for a minute about the misery that is your life, <laugh>, um,  the, the stress that we feel, I’m sure you could probably make a link, um,  to empathy driving a lot of those things up, up the channel. Now, it doesn’t mean don’t care about other people, it’s not what I’m saying, of course. Um,  but let’s go through some of these.

6:56

I’ve got a few categories, um,  that Sade put in, and it, it’s really, really good. Uh,  first, your bias steers your empathy, um,  which is wild. So most of the people pushing for empathy are also the ones speaking a lot about unconscious bias and all of these biases that we have in the workplace. Empathy is really tied up a lot in the diversity and inclusion thing. Um,  and it should not be okay.

7:26

Um,  and we see that a lot.  You know,  we saw that with, um,  I always go back to George Floyd because that’s when it was just so visible and, and loud. Um,  and the discussion was there. White people were actually paying attention.

7:41

So I always kind of go back to that. Um,  but we, when we talk about empathy, we’re empathic to, to people like us, right? We are empathic to people. We, we’ve got our little communities and we’ve got the people that look like us, and we’ve got all those types of things. And so when we tie it up with diversity and inclusion and empathy and everything else, the people on the receiving end of your empathy almost want to throw it out the window and say, you don’t understand what I feel.

8:08

You don’t understand these types of things. And, um,  and we saw that with George Floyd and all the white people were trying to be empathic to black people. And, and <laugh>, in conversations I had with, with black people that I didn’t know, they were like,  shut the hell up, right? This isn’t like,  you don’t get it, you just don’t get it, and you’re not gonna get it because you haven’t grown up and lived it.

8:27

And so, um,  we feel less empathy for people who aren’t in our own culture because we connect with our, our people, we connect with our fellow humanity, whether it’s people of the same language, people of the same skin color, people of the same hair, color, eye color, whatever it is. Like  that’s, um,  it doesn’t mean that we’re disruptive to that, but we’re,  you know,  we’re social beings and we have our little kind of groups and, and, and we do that. So, um,  people who aren’t in our culture, you see tragedy, you see pain, you see all of these types of things, but when they’re across the sea, it doesn’t really matter to you, right? You see, you get a little bit of sadness, but then you move on with your day, you see it like down the street or with your neighbor, and all of a sudden it’s a different kind of level. So, um,  when we think of empathy, it’s, it’s generally focused on a single person, one person where I’m feeling what you’re feeling and that one person is a spot, gets a spotlight on them, and you get this one big light on this one person, but there are so many people not included in the spotlight.

9:35

And so that bias that I is naturally built into that to say, I’m just focused on you. I don’t care about anybody else. Those people out of the spotlight are very relevant as well. Which brings us to the next challenge.

9:46

Beyond bias is en numeracy. Because we only care about one person, it forces us to not care about the a hundred or a thousand or, um,  bigger picture people. It forces us to make bad decisions, maybe unethical decisions. Um,  there’s this constant, and I think about this in terms of corporate, right?

10:05

And, and kind of an example that’s not really about empathy, but it’s about more about the one person type of thing. Um,  there’s this consistent pendulum swing at work. We get power to the people, um,  power to the corporate, power to the people, power to the corporate. And, and what we see now with the people who wanna work from home is saying, I’m more productive. Working from home is, is generally the line that goes, I wanna work from home because I as an individual and more productive, the business wants people back. Because fine, you as an individual in your little silo, magic world may be more productive. The business collectively is not more productive, which is why we want people back in the office.

10:43

And, um,  and just like that, in that same way, empathy focuses on one person, not the many other things that are relevant, not the bigger picture, not, it skews your perspective. It skews your general productivity. It skews your focus to say that this is, we’re giving more weight to this one individual than it should probably be. Whereas there is a bigger organization going on, there is a bigger picture going on. And how do we rather than say, I give your concern weight, let me input this into the bigger picture of what the business is. Fine, you wanna work from home, maybe it is two days a week, but there is a bigger picture business picture of doing everything else. Um,  fine. You have this concern or challenge, um,  or sadness or pain or whatever it is.

11:25

I will recognize that I give it weight. Uh,  I feel compassion for you, but at the end of the day, there’s a bigger picture than just you. Um,  which is a little dark and, and a difficult way to say it, but it’s true. And that’s the way to do it. Um,  but there’s also another aspect to this in terms of using empathy, um,  to manipulate other people. And that’s the one last thing that I’ll, I’ll throw in before we go on to kind of what to do with, um,  really good empaths. And I’ve known this from experience because I am a really good empath. Um,  and I never thought about it like this, is, I always used to joke that I can make people do whatever it is that they didn’t want to do. Um,  and generally it was around drinking. Like,  I can get, we’ll go out, Hey, let’s go party hard, let’s,  you know,  whatever. Um,  but in this Machiavellian sort of way, really good people at really good empaths can manipulate other people to, to different types of mens.

12:33

Now I’ve chosen to use my, my wicked powers for good <laugh>. Um,  not everyone who’s an empath has this, right? There are, they call dark empaths, right? And they’re high in, they’re narcissistic and they’re psychopaths and, and whatever. I’m not, I’m not that crazy.

12:48

1

I’m, I’m probably halfway there, but I’m not fully crazy. Um,  but it, there is this phenomenon that, that people can manipulate other people by using empathy to get them to do what they wish them to do. Uh,  and in, in a sense, it’s not, empathy is not the opposite of self-interest. It, it’s actually very well tied into self-interest.

13:10

Um,  and so that’s just an interesting kind of side point just to kind of drive that hammer home on why the empathy thing is misinterpreted. Um,  or at least too big. It’s too big. Um,  what are we looking for in an organization, right?

13:22

We, the training that comes on why empathy is so important, and, and we’re teaching this to kids and feel the other feelings and everything else. What we want from an organization is we want security. And that you have my back. Um,  not that you feel my feelings, right? I wanna be respected as a human being. I wanna be heard, but I don’t want, I, I don’t want, um,  pity. I don’t want people to say, oh,  I know how you feel because you don’t. Um, um,  and so when we think about structuring a culture or raising our children, uh,  how do we, how do we pair this, this fine distinction, um,  in terms of developing our personal cultures around us and developing our leaders and managers at the workplace and, and, and getting our kids raised and and up.

14:13

Um,  what does empathy really mean? And how do you teach a child to recognize someone else’s feelings, but not take that on, not take on the feelings, compartmentalize it, recognize it, bigger picture. How do we teach not just empathy, but also logic and reasoning and compassion, right? All of these things go in to understand all of,  you know,  that’s fine that you feel this way.

14:42

I recognize that it’s a, a challenge and, and everything else. Um,  here’s how I may be helpful within the context of something else. Like,  there’s, there’s a way to do that. We have to give ourselves lanes, um, um,  and what’s appropriate, especially in the business sense.

14:54

Cause that’s always just where my head is. Um,  but from there we have to review what empathy really means. And, and I do think probably if you were to take a look at your l and d program and what they’ve got on empathy, you could probably just throw it in the garbage, um,  <laugh> because we’ve all sat in these things. Here’s my, here’s my thing on it.

15:13

And  you know,  I probably shouldn’t have waited till the end of this, but like,  my problem is nobody likes these learning and development things that are out there right now because we’re being told what to do. We’re to being told to be empathic. We’re to being told to do this. We’re being, we should be this, and you should be that. Nobody wants to be told what they should be.

15:28

And that’s what makes it so annoying, and that’s why people don’t like it. And when we’re talking about empathy, what we should be doing is explaining empathy within the context of reason and logic and compassion and everything else, so that people can make their own interpretation of what’s appropriate within the context of whatever situation that they’re in. And the person teaching it has to understand what the hell they’re talking about so that they can answer the questions and do the follow up, and get people to fully understand it so that they can articulate their own individual kind of thing. So that’s my, anyway, that, that was just a little aside. Sorry about that. Um,  anyway, have a great week. It’s good fodder for thought, right?

16:07

1

And, and I’m, I told my wife I was gonna do this, and sh and she’s been challenging me. Everything. She’s like,  empathy is amazing. Empathy is so important, and we’re all human beings. It’s empathy, empathy, empathy. Um,  and we’re going toe to toe on it. She’s asked me a couple questions I couldn’t answer, so I still have my research to do as well. Uh,  but this is an interesting book against empathy.

16:25

It’s, um,  I think it’s valid, I think as we all work towards developing our people and the instant assumptions that we’re making on what’s appropriate from an educational, adult educational perspective, and what are we, um,  pushing for in a culture, right? Empathy has just been thrown in. We just assume that it should be there, maybe not. Okay.

16:48

And let’s, let’s kind of replace it with something a little more, a little more reasonable. So have a wonderful week as always. I wish you the best. And, um,  speaking of it’s mental health awareness month.

17:02

So do good things for that. That’ll be the podcast next week. Have a wonderful week. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks everybody and see ya. Bye.

It’s been a quarter of mayhem, and as I take a restock of where I stand, I’m excited to share all of the things we have been accomplishing. 

First, we did Not a Webinar with Bess Freedman, launching the new program to provide candid insights from executives that are rocking the new economy. 

Right after, I was off to Northern Ireland, where I had the privilege of speaking at TedX Downpatrick, at the incredible St. Patrick’s Centre. 

The speech was focused on Personal Accountability, and how we have an obligation to ourselves to prepare for change, even when we don’t know what change is coming. The speech, only 12 minutes in length, gives a framework of reflective questions to help us get along. 

More on the podcast, but it goes without saying that some things are crazy right now. It’s up to each of us individually to lay down the bed we lie in. 

Enjoy the week! 

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Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for joining again this week. We are on episode 118. Back at it, it’s been a busy quarter, and now that’s all behind us and I’ve got so many updates and so many good things to talk to you about. And, uh,  today I want to talk about two things. One, I just recently did a TED Talk, TEDx down Patrick. Um,  so I’m gonna tell you a little bit about that and the lessons I learned from doing that.

0:31

Um,  and also a little bit on personal accountability, which is kind of what the TED Talk was about, um,  in one aspect, but then was also in in terms of others. So it’s been a bit busy. Few weeks if you haven’t been following or if you haven’t been following, I’ll, I’ll give a quick recap. We had our first, not a webinar with Best Friedman.

0:51

It was awesome. Um,  she’s an absolute rockstar, so if you haven’t checked that out, check it out. It’s online. We did a live stream.

0:58

We had an in-person audience. The reason I did that, not a webinar, we’ve got seven more that are gonna be queued up, um,  is that I’m so tired of the webinars being inundated by webinars that, um,  I, I half joke, I say it partly in jest, but they’re just not good.  You know,  we’re inundated with these webinars. So I wanted to create an event, um,  with just real talk from people who are doing really good things and that’s what not a webinar is all about. And so, uh,  Bess really lived up.

1:26

She set a very high standard for the rest of the guests. They’re gonna be very cool. They’re gonna be announced soon. The week after that, I was on a plane over to Northern Ireland, um,  which was amazing.

1:38

It started in Belfast. And, and the reason I went over there, I was invited to speak at the TEDx event in down Patrick in Northern Ireland, which is a little bit south of Belfast. Um,  had an amazing time at Belfast. Got some nice tours of, of community centers, and we had this great dinner and, and I met some really good people.

1:56

And, um,  amazing. You, if you’ve heard the podcast before,  you know,  my love affair with Belfast and how much I love Belfast and, and how I think it’s one of the coolest cities out there. Um,  I, I’d almost call it like the Brooklyn of Europe <laugh>. Um,  it’s just so cool, uh,  and it’s done amazing things and great, amazing things are coming out of it.

2:15

But the TED Talk, if you’ve ever wanted to do a TED Talk or if you’re ever interested in kind of how the sausage is made, um,  Catherine Muran was the, the curator, they call them curators of people who put it on. And it’s a series of speeches. Um,  and there are crazy rules on the speeches in terms of what you can speak on and, and how to get approved and, and there’s time limits in all kinds of, of stuff. Uh,  it was at an amazing place called the St. Patrick’s Center in down Patrick in county down. Um,  it’s just below the down cathedral. It’s this center where if you go around the back, St.

2:54

Patrick’s actually buried there, which is neat. So I gotta see St. Patrick’s grave, which is,  you know,  I I, you’d be hard pressed really to find a, a more famous saint. So that’s kind of cool. Um,  also in that same grave as, as St. Bridget, who’s the other patriot saint of Ireland. Um,  and it was just this cool center just on the history of St.

3:11

Patrick. And you could learn all about St. Patrick and all this good stuff, but they had this nice little theater TEDx events. My understanding is that it’s limited to only a hundred people in the audience, which was a perfect size, I think. I think that’s a really good, uh,  a really good thing. And, and so eight speakers, I wanna say eight speakers, great topics. Um,  everything from a, a woman who started an Irish dance school to an accountant who teaches people accountancy.

3:38

Uh,  but he, he’s also really told his personal story with his family and, and how much he loves his local area is really of a historian. Um,  other coaches spoke a, um,  a disability advocate spoke. She had an incredible kind of perspective in terms of what our assumptions are in terms of what’s appropriate for just the way we structure things from, from an architectural standpoint and, and how we think about people with disability. And so the, the talks that are gonna be coming out are meaningful, and I think people will get some really good, really good tangible aspects out of it. What I spoke, the, the title of the speech is Thriving Amid Constant Change, A Personal Accountability Framework.

4:21

And it’s just my jam. It’s like,  how do you prepare for change when you don’t know what change is coming? And macro change requires a focus on the micro individual, and it’s what the book Adapting Emotion was all about and incredibly relevant today, especially as we look at AI and the massive amounts of change that are coming through. That’s really what I jumped on, is we’re so focused on the change externally that we’re never really focused on what we can control, what we can, what our responsibility is to ourselves, um,  and the personal accountability of taking care of ourselves so that we’re best able to prepare for whatever change comes, like  things like AI or, oh,  I don’t know, pandemics and, and whatever else. And so I walked people through the framework that I’ve done on the podcast before, but I added in a few extra, uh,  quick stories why I quit drinking, and, um, uh,  a good story at the end that people really love. And I’ll talk a little bit about how I met my future self, which was a little wild. Um,  and just walking them through the physical aspect of what’s so important for,  you know,  as we prepare for change and get ready for whatever change is coming, we have this obligation to ourselves that we never really take the obligation for ourselves. We’ll do anything for other people, but we never do anything for ourselves in order to make ourselves in this healthy selfishness type of way.

5:37

And so the focus on the physical, of course, the diet, fitness, sleep, we all know it, we ignore it, but it <laugh> it’s one of those things that we have to focus on. What are we eating? Are we eating the right things? Um,  how are we active every day? And get some sleep, get that good sleep.

5:53

But beyond the physical, the fun stuff is the, the mental preparation, the self-love. How can anyone be satisfied in life if they’re not satisfied with the one person they can never be separated from? Um,  and finding satisfaction with ourselves. And that takes work, a lot of work all the way to self-care. And that’s where,  you know,  my story of why I quit drinking and, and the benefit to my family and my business and everything else.

6:17

And then belief system, which you’ve heard me talk a lot about, is what do you actually believe? And, um,  that’s not a simple question, and it’s a question that needs to be answered all of the time. And it’s a constant discussion with ourselves. Again, obligation to ourselves to answer these questions for us. Uh,  and then finally, the social aspect of, um,  who’s our support system. Take the time to think about who your support system is and, and who are the micro interactions to make sure that we’re part of a bigger world and, and remind ourselves that there’s something bigger than us.

6:48

And, um,  and then the newbies, the new perspectives to challenge our belief systems, to challenge the things that we think. And I mean, that’s kind of surface level. Um,  I only had 12 minutes to kind of speak, but surface level, those are the things that I really went into. And giving that framework, this like three by three grid, um,  that’s a constant.

7:09

I constantly go back to this when I’m dealing with change or managing change or, or feeling my frustration or overwhelmed something. There is, there’s a component in one of those that I can probably reflect on and, and take some tangible action to get myself above whatever the drowning that I feel and, and the difficulty that I feel. And I ended it with not to ruin the TED Talk, cause I want you to watch it should be up, I think it’s gonna be published next week. I hope it’s published next week, um,  was my, my hike to Bear Mountain, um,  that I do every year. I do it every October on the anniversary of when I quit drinking around that time where I take this hike up to the top. It’s the Major Welch Trail. It’s all through Bear Mountain, and you get up to the top and you can see Manhattan in the distance.

7:53

And I pack a lunch and I plan my, we my week, my year, my month, whatever it is, and,  you know,  reflect on what’s challenging to me,  you know,  what’s really present in my mind. And last year when I did it, uh,  I was leaving. I I was just, there was a lot going on right in my head of what I wanted to accomplish, and I couldn’t really focus. And so I ate my lunch and there’s always a lot of people up there if you don’t get up there early enough and everybody’s kind of taking their stupid selfies and, and, um,  it’s not always the greatest place to, to reflect. And so I wrapped up my lunch and took in the view, and then I was leaving and this guy stopped me. Uh,  and I don’t know if I talked about it on this podcast, maybe I did, sorry if I’m repeating a story, but this guy stopped me. He was like,  Hey, can you take a picture of me?

8:34

And he had biked up to the top of Bear Mountain, um,  which is significant, I would say, I’m not much of a cyclist, but he biked up and, uh,  he said he wanted to prove to his wife that he made it to the top. And he was kind of joking and he was real, real, um,  chatty. And, and I wasn’t, um,  my head wasn’t there, right? I wasn’t really open to much discussion, but this guy didn’t need any prompting and he just kind of loaded up and it was almost like he was delivering a message to me.

9:02

And he ended it with, well, so he told a story, and this is why I think I met my future self. His name was Jim. He was in his seventies. He had quit drinking a number of years before he realized that he wasn’t meeting his obligations. Like  he, he basically told me my life story, which was wild. And he ended it, and he just looked at me like,  dead set, like,  you’re an idiot.

9:23

He said, if you wait for somebody to do anything for you, you’re gonna be dead in a box before it’s done. And that was like,  I, it was hitting me so fast. I almost want, I remember thinking at the moment, I gotta tell this guy like,  this is exactly what I needed and I didn’t. I was like,  okay.

9:37

And I just kind of took it and walked away. And, um,  and that’s,  you know,  when we think about personal accountability, um,  and this threw me for a loop, the whole, I take a two hour hike back right through the woods. Like  this is a, a whole half day exercise that I do. And, um,  it’s a two hour loop behind the mountain back to the car. And, um,  it was all I could think about is what am I waiting for someone else to do for me?

9:59

And as I think about all the work that I want to do, all the things that I wanna accomplish, and this is probably relevant to you as you listen to this, is what are you thinking about wanting to accomplish and do? And we get this frustrated. We talk about purpose at work, we talk about all this stuff, and we’re just frustrated. I hear from clients all the time and don’t get the feedback that I need. And  you know,  the question is, how do you get the feedback that you need?

10:19

Then? Do you change the questions you’re asking? Do you change the people you’re asking?  You know,  what are the steps that you can take?

10:25

Because other people aren’t thinking about you. Other people aren’t going to say, Hey,  you know  what, I’m gonna take the time to make sure that you are set up and the way that you need to be set up. Nobody does that, and it’s something I always knew, but we just kind of ignore it. We know it, but we ignore it. And, um,  and <laugh>, as I was writing the speech and I sent it out for feedback, and one person wrote back, and I didn’t say it in Ted Talk, but it shows, when you hear someone, when you hear your future self tell you, it, it hits a little different.

10:56

And with things changing so quickly, AI’s changing so quickly and the the workplace changing so quickly, people being laid off and we’ve gotta restructure the organization and, and how do we get the team motivated and how do we do this? And we’re all thinking about all these things that we need to do, but we’re so focused externally. We’re never thinking about what do I need to do? What do I need to do as a leader to get my people to think differently?

11:20

You can’t force ’em to think differently. They have to do this through an exercise. You have to bring them through it. How do you prioritize these things?

11:27

You know,  I just give feedback for an article in terms of wellness, how,  you know,  everybody wants to prioritize wellness. Uh,  we talk about it at work, we talk about wellness at work, we talk about all these things, but it’s never a priority, right? We prioritize the things that are really important out of wellness is really important. You have to prioritize it.

11:44

That’s your accountability to yourself. How is that the first thing that you do every day? If learning is your priority, how are you learning every day? And I’ve had had clients who have started every meeting, like,  if you wanna talk about wellness and you wanna prioritize wellness on your team, every team meeting should start with what are you doing to make yourself well?

12:04

And that’s the first question, go around. And if it becomes the habit and everybody’s thinking about it, everybody knows they’ve gotta come to that meeting talking about what’s making them well or not well, or I need help with something, or whatever it is. Suddenly when it’s top of mind and it becomes a priority, that’s how the things change. So often we start these initiatives and, and it’s always secondary to getting the business done, but when we realize that well employees make good business decisions and we could prioritize this, the first thing, it’s a five minute exercise at the beginning of a meeting, or what are you learning today?

12:35

Or, or what is a question that you have that somebody else could be meaningful for? I do the Adam Grant thing, giving and taking. Everyone has to give something and take something.  You know,  what are we teaching our employees and our teams and ourselves? How is this,  you know,  we think about presence, we think about reflecting in the morning, we think about meditation, we think about all these things, but there is an action that has to happen, and it’s our responsibility to do that. And so it was a nice exercise to go through, to write the TED talk, to write the whole kind of story of my philosophy on what I need from a wellness perspective that I think could be relevant to other people on that framework that people can use to, to ask these questions of ourselves.

13:13

That’s, that’s the fun part. And so look out for it. It’ll be coming up soon. I hope you enjoy it. I would love your feedback on it. Um,  and that’s, yeah, that’s just me spitting a little bit.

13:25

And I’m gonna get back into the habit of doing these podcasts. Um,  I’ve got some just interesting things that I’ve been reading about how we’re misinterpreting empathy and, um,  how do you finish things. And so these are all gonna be topics I’m gonna be talking about in the next few weeks. And, uh,  I look forward to it. And if you want me to cover anything, I’m happy to do it. But there’s,  you know,  I, it’s funny, I go through these cycles of doing podcasts for a period, and then I go back not doing podcasts because I’m going back learning and thinking about other things, and then I can reinvent and do, uh,  more, more topics to talk about. So if there’s anything you want me to cover, I’m happy to do it, um,  because it, it seems to be resonating, which is nice. So, uh,  have a wonderful week. Look out for the TED Talk.

14:04

Remember, what, what can you do to be accountable to yourself and what can you learn for yourself? This was a quick one. And, and, um,  more to come. Lots more to come. There’s so much to learn and so much to focus on and so much to do.

14:14

So, uh,  as always, I’m here to help. Feel free reach out. I’m happy to help you in any kind of way that I can. And, uh,  enjoy your week and I will talk to everybody soon. Thanks. Have a good week. Bye.

That feeling you’ve got? The one where you think it’s stress and frustration? I’ll re-frame it … for many, it’s fear and anxiety, otherwise known as vulnerability. 

So many words, I know. But if you know me, you know I talk about the change thing constantly, and we have a slight luxury in the fact that we can recognize things are changing faster than we can keep up … so we are able to create a strategy to adapt. 

But while creating our individual strategies, we also could use a little direction. We crave direction; there is comfort in someone telling us that things are going to be OK. Like JFK telling us we can get to the moon, we, as a society, need someone to help quell the anxiety, recognize our vulnerability, and charge us up to get to the next level. 

And while there is no shortage of experts telling you HOW you are supposed to be (without context), there is a glaring gap in the category of “gurus we can trust.” Everyone seems to be selling this fix or that fix, or promote ideas that are self-serving to their ego. It’s rare to find someone who can balance the “what’s best for everyone” with their own self interest in an appropriate way. 

It takes transparency, conscience, altruism, and trust. And while we develop ourselves and build – this trust difficult to come by. 

Now, it’s easy to state that “other people should be shining examples for us.” We can’t dictate what public figures should be, while not expecting them to do it to us. However, these people exist already, and it’s up to us to find them. It’s our responsibility to filter the noise that coming to us as we create our strategies. We click the follow or unfollow button. And as we look to get our influence and developmental information, remember this: garbage in; garbage out. 

So – this week, rethink the info you are getting; and if the people you follow are really worth following. There is are obligations that come with being a public figure; yet many seem to neglect or ignore this. Self-interest and promotion often conflict with what’s best for the audience. 

SO – that’s the thought this week … good luck with it … and have a great time cutting back the follow list.

Ohhhhh the AI thing. It’s bananas. It’s crazy. It’s going to destroy humanity. And it’s so much fun. 

Today’s podcast – how AI will affect the future of work. But not in a bloviating, imaginary way, which is how much of the AI discussion is happening (paired with doom and gloom of the end of the world). But more of a measured, tangible and smart way to approach it, from corporate leadership to the individual being affected. 

It’s not hyperbolic to say that AI is similar to the rise of human life on earth. That sounds wild, but it’s also accurate. This is a pivotal point not just in the workplace, but in how society operates. It’s not going away. On board yet? Good. Let’s get to the bigger things. 

Those bigger things include YOU. AI has been around for a while, behind a nice user experience model (thanks, Google!) that has allowed for some adoption. With the explosion of ChatGPT, many people are rushing to dictate and use some AI models to influence what they are looking for. 

Initially, this will create a lot of noise in the marketplace (“Robot – write me a blog!”), but as we get past the newness of this, it will then influence workplaces in larger, more dynamic ways. 

What’s important to note here, and this is the crux of the podcast, is that while AI will change everything about work, it’s up to us, as individuals, to control our positioning in this new world. 

Yes, corporate leadership is looking at how to leverage AI (and they should). But you, as an individual, should be spending your time learning about it and using it, because without doing so, you will be left behind. 

We all have a lot to learn … AI is no exception. Your future is dictated by choices today. More to come on AI, but here is a good start.

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I’m Jim Frawley, and this is Bellwether. Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for being here. Episode 116, 17, something like that. We’re talking about ai. If I had my robot working, I’d know what episode it was. Um, <laugh>. Let’s talk about AI in the future of work. It’s not something that we can ignore. It’s something that I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time on the podcast. I’ve talked about it a little bit, but I haven’t really done a dedicated episode on it.

Uh, I speak a lot to clients about it. I speak a lot to non-clients and audiences about it, and it’s, um, it’s a very exciting time. This is great. Um, what I wanna cover today, I’m gonna give you just a brief overview to level set because there’s a lot of noise flying around in terms of what AI is and how it’s transforming and all of that good stuff. Let’s talk about how AI is affecting work today.

Let’s talk about how it’s work affecting you and work tomorrow. And then we’re gonna wrap it up in a nice little bow and, and we’re gonna set you off on your way and it’s gonna be great cuz you’re gonna be ready to deal with it. Um, here’s, here’s just a level set on ai and what I think about ai. This is, I’ve heard it said this way before and I completely agree with it.

It’s similar to the rise of human life on earth. And that’s not hyperbolic. Like this shit is legit and crazy and important and huge and it will not go away. And so we can’t really put our head in the sand. Can’t put your head in the sand. Silly ostrich. You have to embrace it. You have to adjust to it, and you have to get prepared for it. And right now it’s kind of irrelevant, right?

It’s all just doing small tasks that it can do for you. Is, is the way most people have imagined it. Social media content and writing kids books and creating pictures and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And basically it’s just being used to create noise. That’s all it is. It’s just a lot of noise. We’re seeing all the social media content, apparently. It’s also writing Valentine’s Day cards. That’s great. We’re using it in these little things.

Creating your meal plan and your workout plan and all this stuff. And there’s all kinds of things that you can do, uh, where it’s basically gonna compile information and it, and it’s great. Okay? That’s wonderful. Uh, but this will evolve and grow. And it’s starting to do that into ways that have much more meaning. And that’s what I wanna talk about today. I want to talk about that much more. Meaning let’s chat about you and let’s go.

All right? Because this affects everybody and full stop. This affects everybody. Um, and so, so that’s it. So let’s talk about the current state, right? It’s creating noise. A lot of industries have already embraced ai. They’re doing work with it. It’s not, it’s been around for a lot of auto automation. Google’s been doing it. Think about your maps and all these types of things. The apps, it’s been around, it’s made life easier.

The challenge AI has always had is we, I mean, this has been talked about for decades. The challenge has been human adoption and user experience was the big play for ai. And Google was very good about that. And they’ve done it. Apple’s very good about it. Um, but now it’s kind of evolved. Humans have caught up a little bit. And so now it’s, you know, the timing is ripe for this kind of thing.

And, and ai, uh, OpenAI and chat, G p t and all that stuff is, you know, we feel like we’re ready to jump in. And this is kind of the new one, and it’s just the starting point, but it’s been around for, for a long time. So, um, and OpenAI has been around for a long time. They’ve done a lot of work too that, that you’re probably familiar with. So, um, a lot of misconceptions about ai.

Um, but I think the reason we have so many misconceptions is because we don’t fully appreciate the scale of what’s possible with ai. Most of us are just kind of getting, catching up and getting up to it. The people who have been really knee deep and and arms deep in AI for the past, you know, bunch of years can talk about this scale. Will it destroy humanity? Some will say yes, I think probably not.

We’re adaptable people or we’re at least 50 years out from that as it goes. Um, <laugh>. But, uh, but AI will make life fundamentally different within the next 10 years, if not five years, if not three years. And so what is important to remember is that humans are adaptable and it’s very unsettling. AI is very, very unsettling in the workplace and what it’s going to happen. And will we remain relevant for our individual, right?

There’s the macro and the micro and we’re gonna talk about individuals and everything else. A lot of people are going to be left behind in this. And so I don’t want that to happen to you. I want you to be, uh, I want you to be there, but we are adaptable. Um, some people are not. And that’s a fact and that’s gonna be harsh. And there’s going to be a, um,uh, a feeling of, you know, we’re being left behind and we’re gonna fight it and we’re gonna stick to the old way.

So if you’re thinking about the old way and how you want to clinging to it and do that, you’re probably gonna be one of those people who are gonna be left behind. And that’s a fact. And that adds more fear. And so that’s why we fight. And we say we don’t, don’t take this away from me and all of this. This is societal change problems that we’re gonna have to discuss and deal with, but we’re gonna keep it just to, you know, we’re gonna keep it to the workplace and, and talk about that.

So what I would encourage you to do is embrace it, don’t fight it, um, and learn it and get really, really good with it. Because this is, this is the future of ai and it’s the future of work and it’s, it’s going to change everything. So let’s talk about benefits cuz we’re just ripping through this. This is, I’m gonna try and do this episode in less than 15 minutes, um, and tell you everything you need to know in 15 minutes.

Um, potential benefits. Let’s talk about the benefits of ai. One, increased productivity and efficiency. That’s the easy play. That’s it. Um, this is a goldmine for businesses, goldmine for businesses. Um, however, at that same time, generally what’s a goldmine for a business is very uncomfortable for individuals. And that’s something we need to remember. So it will make you productive, it will make you more efficient and will do all of these types of things.

But what does that mean for you, the individual? And we have to kind of figure that out. So businesses are going to invest heavily in AI because AI will supplement the 25% of workers they’re going to keep while they shed 75%. And the money is going to, you know, filter up the top. That’s what businesses do. We can resent it, we can hate it, we cannot like it, but that’s just a fact.

And it’s the way the world goes and that’s the way life exists and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, um, companies are looking at how to utilize AI in different types of ways, and they are going to lay off people. People are expensive, they’re slow, they make mistakes. AI does not so well yet, you know,you know,you know where I’m going to. So, so that’s that. You’ll hear a line about how you’re gonna have increased job satisfaction with ai, um, <laugh>, and it’s a nice little PR pitch.

You know what some people will, some people will, a lot of people won’t. And here’s why. Um, AI is going to eliminate all the mundane tasks that we have to do. Great. So let’s talk about job satisfaction and mundane. There is comfort in the mundane. There is comfort on the days that we wanna mail it in at work and we just kind of push papers and we just do whatever and we’re like, okay, and I did some work and whatever, I’m kind of mailing it in today and that’s it.

Um, and so we like that. However, the question is, will that keep us up to pace with everybody else, right? So the, this is going to force us to kind of go, go, go, go, go. We’ll use AI to do this and we’re gonna create more. We’re gonna use AI to do this. We’re gonna create more, we’re gonna do more. We’re gonna do more. We’re gonna do more. And that’s exhausting. That’s exhausting.

Um, if I go through one more, there’s a flower shop. I mean, I keep meaning to take a picture of, you know, work hard today. So tomorrow’s great and it’s kind of this go, go-go mentality, really driven by the coaching industry about this growth mindset. And we have to do more and we could do more today to fix tomorrow. And it is exhausting. Okay? So, um, we have comfort in the mundane that’s going to be eliminated because AI could do a force and it should, okay?

But it’s not gonna mean that we could just sit around and do nothing. We’re going to replace it by creating more work based on this AI and do that. So, um, job satisfaction does not come from the mundane. We have to talk about that as well. So yes, AI will eliminate the mundane and increase job satisfaction. That actually means the same thing. Here’s what I mean by that. Job satisfaction comes from creating work.

Job satisfaction comes from ownership of something that you wish to accomplish and seeing it come to fruition, that’s job satisfaction. If we eliminate the mundane tasks and just get assigned more of stuff we don’t really want to own, we don’t really want to do, that’s not really, AI’s not really going to help job satisfaction. So what we have to do is change our thinking and change our mindset, which we’ve talked about on this podcast before about creating work and creating ideas.

And that is, you know, when we clear out the mundane, it’s actually a good thing, but we need to refill it with something that’s not bs. And that’s what we have to, that’s the human thing that we have to figure out for us. Each individual is what are we going to create and not just be a passive, all right, well this is done. What are you gonna give me to do now?

And yes, boss, please give me more work. The, the days of being just a passive observer, endurer, I can’t say they’re over, but it’s not gonna be solved by ai because if you’re just gonna let it be replaced with more of this mundane and you know, just get assigned stuff and do stuff that you don’t actually want to do, then you’re just gonna be just as miserable as you are today. So that’s life.

Welcome, welcome to it. Something I learned way too late and we’ll see more people take the risk of being entrepreneurs and all of this type of stuff. It’s very, very difficult to do, but we have to make this effort and see fruition. That’s purpose. That’s meaning, that’s exactly what, you know, everybody claims to want, but it takes work to get there and that’s not really what everybody wants to do. Um, so that’s that.

So when we think about benefits of ai, increased productivity for the business, yes, painful for the individual, but what’s good for the individual is the elimination of mundane tasks. You’re gonna lose that comfort. But if you’re open to it, we have to create more work and do those like really human things to challenge it and make AI reach its full potential so that we could do those things together. Um, there will be new opportunities for work in AI for those in your fifties, you’re probably a little too late, let’s be honest.

You’re not really going to adapt to it, but there is a major transition time. Okay? So when I say that is what, what, what do new job opportunities look like? We generally think about kids coming out of college and how can they code and program and do these different types of things? Fine, but you can’t have new jobs and programs until you understand how to use it first. And so that’s step one.

Rather than worrying about what’s 10 years down the road about will I be relevant, start today, play with ai. It’s free open. AI is free to play with, play with it. Learn the new ways of thinking and how to adopt it and come up with new ideas. That is new opportunity right there. So when you’re looking to build something and, and how does AI come in and how do people come into it?

It’s emerging of two capabilities. What can you think up and how can you think about these things in new ways? And how can AI execute on this and challenge and elevate it and do it in more, do it in more unique creative, different types of ways. That’s what’s going to be relevant in the workplace, at least in the short term. And when I say short term in the next decade. So yes, new opportunities are going to be here.

It’s up to you to learn it. Okay? You’re watching TikTok videos of all these people doing these new things and you know, that’s great and you say, oh, that’s cool, and then you don’t do anything. Uh, you’re gonna be left behind, right? You actually have to practice this and do it. It could be anything. Write me a marathon training plan, write me, you know, all those things I said at the beginning, those silly little, you know, whatever.

See what output you get. If it’s not good enough, then you have to change it the way you ask it and give it different types of parameters. We’re thinking in terms of parameters, we’re thinking in terms of theory, and then how do you give really specific direction and expectations so the robot can understand it. This has implications on interpersonal skills as well. So these are the types of things that we have to learn today.

And it’s a fun exercise. It’s actually a lot, a lot of fun to do that. So when we think about opportunity, that’s one of the things that we have to do there too. Um, let’s talk about skills, right? Cause I’m getting to the 15 minutes. I might go to to 20. I’ve got an outline and I’m, I’m blasting through and you know, sometimes I could go deeper. If you want me to go deeper, I’m happy to do that and reach out and I will go really, really deep.

Most people don’t pay attention for 45 minutes, so that’s why I don’t do it. Um, let’s talk about the skills that are gonna be in high demand, okay? As we just talked about that transition to learning AI and all of that, um, there are a couple things we have to learn about skill sets. AI is ultimately the result of human work. Okay? That’s it. It compiles it thinks it, spits it back out, and that’s it, it’s a lot of those, those types of things for now, okay?

Um, skills that will be in high demand in how you could do it. The first, you know, as I think about it, and I wrote this down and I hate this term, but growth mindset, um, learning new skills. We hear this a lot. We need a growth mindset and we need to be thinkers and blah, blah, blah. How that manifests is difficult. Creating a growth mindset. Most people don’t know how to digest this.

Creating a growth mindset’s kind of like work on your listening skills. It sounds nice, doesn’t mean shit, okay? It doesn’t mean anything unless you give it meaning. So we need, basically what growth mindset means, is we need to ask a lot of questions and assume we don’t know the answer. That’s growth mindset in a nutshell. Okay?Um, it means not having any answers, it means losing your assumptions. That’s where we have to, we have to strip ourselves down here.

That’s growth mindset is not building on what we have from the past, but stripping it away and learning what to ignore so that we could be open to new ideas in the future. Um, I have more and more conversations, personal conversations, not necessarily work conversations with more and more people who are getting much more aggressive in, in having the right answer and being right. And I recognize that this is just a fear of what’s happening, right?

They just spit out what they heard either on a news channel or, or something else. They have no context. They have this belief that they’re trying to pass off as truth because they’re trying to hold onto an old idea because they’re unsure of what’s coming next. Growth mindset. We have to shift and shed those assumptions and lose it and be open to the fact that maybe somebody’s got something better than what we think.

That is incredibly important today. So that’s that. Um, it’s basically insecurity, okay? I mean, that’s when we hold onto these old ideas, it’s, it’s an important thing holding onto these old ideas. It’s insecurity in its purest form, okay? So shed those, those assumptions and do that human-based skills, what makes you uniquely human are going to be incredibly important. Yes, we could talk about empathy and we could talk about, um, all those things, but real creativity is a human skill.

Interpersonal skills, problem solving, right? It’s ultimately, um, we still need humans. AI is still ultimately the result of human thought. Okay? So how can we be creative with using AI and elevating these types of things? AI is supportive. How we interact with other humans is incredibly important. So sales, jobs, psychological work, um,you know, all of these types of skills are gonna be very, very important in the workplace. We should be working on those.

Get out and meet more people, be more social, right? We don’t have to, this isn’t like you have to go back to school and, and take these classes. It’s literally interpersonal. Learn how to have a conversation. Again, get out and network. How do you strike up? Strike up small talk. I hate small talk, but we still have to do it. It makes us part of a bigger world. These types of skill sets that we have to kind of say what makes us human, other people and our relationships make us human.

And that’s what do we create and how do we think about new ideas and all of these types of things that’s humanity and that’s really, really good. Um, and facilitators, facilitators are going to be important, right? When we think about project management, getting things done, how do we finish things? AI will be doing work, but project management’s much more than just Excel sheets and, uh, Trello boards and all that stuff. It’s about working with people to get things finished.

And that’s project management and that’s gonna be, you know, very important. Um, and the ability to think, we have to think that skillset has gone away. It’s a very kind of flighty kind of statement, but the, the ability to think has gone away because we haven’t had to think over the past few years. A lot of people will jump in and tell you what to think, but we haven’t had to think over the past few years.

Technology has kind of muffled that quite a bit. And so how do we think and, and encourage this philosophical, you know, how do you become philosophical? How do you think this is, you know, every day just pick a different random question and just think it through to till it’s just beaten into the ground. We should be able to think not about what’s right, but what’s possible. Um, and those are the skill sets.

So as we go in, what are we at here? 17 minutes. Sorry, I’ll wrap it up in like two and a half minutes here. I’ll do it under 20. Overcoming the challenges. There will be challenges to ai. Change is uncomfortable. Um, and the ultimate goal, I guess for, for government, for business is to make this transition as smooth as possible for the people. That’s your role right now. So that I’m speaking now to the businesses, to the government.

That’s, that’s that employee prep begins. Now, even if you’re planning to cut your workforce by 50, 60, 70%, which is going to happen by the way, people, that’s going to happen in the next bunch of years. Um, people staying still need the skillset, okay? And as you train these employees and teach these employees these new ways of thinking, more roles and divisions will come up. So you may not have to actually lay off all of those people that you can manifest and build your businesses in different types of ways.

So some of these skills, the educating of your employees and the training of your employees, these are skillsets we don’t typically think of in the workplace of skillsets. We have to teach belief systems. How do you articulate what you believe? This isn’t the typical kind of corporate top down. This is the messaging I want you to have. How do you get people comfortable with expressing their ideas? That is a skillset that we have to teach.

Um, how do you articulate question thinking? How do you think and reframe ideas? This is the new type of, of educating that we have to do. And that’s something to invest in today so that AI can, people know how to use the ai. This is part of your business transition. This is part of your people strategy. PS this is exactly what we do. So you can call us and we’ll just, we can make it easy for you.

We know exactly what to do. We’ve got the program, we’ve got the set, we could do this. Um, and so that’s it. So AI in a nutshell, as we’re wrapping up here, coming up on my 20 minutes, this is a lot to take in, A lot to take in. AI is going to basically what I’ve just told you in the past 20 minutes, AI is gonna fundamentally change everything on this planet.

Um, if you don’t embrace it, you’re gonna be left behind. This all sounds very, very dark, but there is possibility. We are adaptable, we are unique, we are special snowflakes, we have capability, but it’s going to take work, okay? On the business side, business owners, business leadership, this is an investment you have to make for your employees. It’s going to help your business. It’s going to change your business. It’s necessary for your business.

It’s an investment. It’s a new line on the balance sheet. You’re gonna have to do it from people. You’re gonna have to do the work. You’re gonna have to create, you have to understand ai. That’s your responsibility. It’s to get yourself ready so that you’re relevant to the workplace so that people are going to want to hire you and people, people are going to want to retain you. This is a point where we’re going to see a bifurcation in society, in the workplace, everything where there’s the people who understand it, the educated and the people who don’t.

Okay? So this is very, it’s a very, very important time. The bifurcation is going to happen soon. You could do it. I believe in you. I’m here to help. Reach out anytime. Good luck with ai. Good luck with the world <laugh>, and here’s your, your big nugget for everything. Um, I’ll touch on this more, right? I’ll, I’ll do more podcasts on AI in the future of work. It’s going to be so big.

We, we can’t ignore it. We have to embrace it. So good luck with it. I’m here to help. Reach out anytime and I’ll talk to everybody very soon. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for listening. Now, do something for yourself. Bellweather is much more than just a podcast. Join us@bellweatherhub.com where you can read riveting articles, view upcoming events, and connect with other interesting people. I look forward to seeing you out there soon.

Spicy headline? Yes. 

I will kick this off with this statement: diversity and inclusion in the workplace has become not only increasingly relevant in recent years, but increasingly important as well, and for good reason. A diverse and inclusive workplace not only benefits the employees who work there, but the organization as a whole. Research shows that diverse organizations are more profitable, resilient and successful than those that haven’t quite caught up to modern times.

That said, there is an undercurrent that is hushed and not spoken about in the open as much as it should, and that’s what’s to do with the white men in the office. Because traditionally, when we talk D&I, we aren’t talking about the white guys. 

Much more detail in the podcast, but there is an emotional challenge for men, who had expectations of promotions and ongoing success, that feel that they now have opportunities denied them. 

It’s a touchy subject to bring up, and while some would say, “yep, tough life,” others would say that there are better ways of going about it. 

It’s a perfect example of macro change inflicting specific challenges onto micro situations. But while we should encourage more Diversity and Inclusion programs, we should also encourage the dialogue to ensure that resentment doesn’t build within the organization. 

Stats, examples, details on the episode – would love your commentary – and look forward to chatting soon!

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Welcome to Bellwether. Thank you for being here. Episode 115, what are we gonna do with all the white guys in the office? Very hyperbolic, very spicy hyperbolic title. I know I’m gonna go with it. Apologize for the cold, please bear with me while I do it. Um, yes, spicy topic. There’s a lot of white guys in the office. This is not an attack on white guys. This is actually a serious thing that, uh, I’ve talked to a lot of clients about.

And this is, um, there’s this undercurrent that we need to address. Um, I’m gonna kick this off by saying diversity and inclusion programs are necessary. They are great. They’re not only increasingly relevant, but they’re increasingly important. And we’re learning a lot about what’s, you know, what can change in the office and what’s possible with a more diverse workforce. And, um, how much benefit a really diverse workforce brings. And, uh, companies and individuals working in diverse workforces are, are more productive.

They’re more profitable, they’re more, uh, culturally aligned. The culture’s more dynamic. The measurement is there, the science is there. It’s all very, very good. And I love the diversity and inclusion programs that are going on. That’s great. So research is there definitely worth it. Definitely important. We still have a lot of work to do. That said, there is an undercurrent, this little hush hush kind of not spoken about really in a certain type of way, as, as much as it should, is what are you doing with the white guys in the office?

Because when we’re talking about diversity and inclusion programs and diversifying leadership and diversifying the things that really matter, when we talk about diversity, the first thing that comes to your mind is generally not a white guy, <laugh>. Um, and the the philosophy behind that is that, look, and I had a conversation a long time ago, Eileen Scully was on, she wrote a book, um, she wrote a book about the, uh, the workplace and, and women in the workplace.

And basically what she said on the, the, the podcast, which resonated with me, is everything about work was built by white men. Okay? And that doesn’t work for everybody. And now, as the world’s changing and catching up and doing all of these types of things, um, we need to, it’s not set up for women. It’s not set up for black people. It’s not set up, you know, it’s not just creating work.

There’s an environment within which we work. And so that’s evolving and that’s changing, and it’s very, very good. It needs to change. Um, workplace and leadership has traditionally been run by white guys, right? And there have been some, you know, and I I’m saying white guys, it’s mostly men. Uh, we’re seeing more, if you take a look at leadership teams, right? The head of HR is generally a woman. The head of legal is generally a woman, but exceptions, you know, obviously exist.

But if you take a look macro at the, the world, it’s, most CEOs are men and most COOs are men. And, um, and that’s CFOs are men. And that, that’s it, right? And it’s, it’s not that it’s been intentional, okay? I wanna make sure that that’s kind of Dr. It’s not this intentional kind of, well, this is the white guy club and you’re not allowed to be in it, even though it’s kind of presented that way.

If we take a look back over how these things just happened to evolve, right? Women weren’t in the workplace because they, we didn’t really have the technology to, you know, there was the kid thing and all of that. And women are taking control and changing their priorities on that. And, and either waiting later to have children or now there are more, you know, workplaces caught up starting to catch up in terms of allowing women to have children and do that balance thing.

And, you know, society is changing that type of way. Um, the black people coming into the workplace, that’s a whole different challenge. Um, which we still have more progress to do on that. Um, right? It’s just, I mean, that’s, they’ve always been left out, whether subconsciously or not, um, from golf clubs to work clubs, they’re just, you know, they haven’t been there. And so we’re making important inroads on that, and that’s good.

Um, so any diverse group, I guess it’s just kind of the way that it evolved. For right or wrong, some people did bad things, some people just were negligent and didn’t pay attention or just didn’t care, right? And, and that’s just the way it is. But let’s talk about today, um, because we’re making progress and that’s great. Um, and the situation we have today, we’re making inroads and that’s great. Here’s my challenge.

Well, it’s not my challenge because I have my own business, but the challenge I have with some of my clients, um, and they’ll remain nameless. Companies will remain nameless, but there is, um, I mean, if you take a look at my, the population of my clients, I’ve got the businesses and we’re doing good kind of future of people work and all of that stuff. We don’t really talk about diversity and inclusion.

I’m a white guy. Nobody wants to listen to a white guy talk about diversity and inclusion. Um, so I don’t even kind of go there, but we talk about how do you structure your people and all of that kind of, you know, beyond any of who those people are. Just let’s talk about in terms of, you know, logic and, and everything else. We could worry about that other stuff later. Then my individual coaching clients, you know, they’re working with me, they wanna get to the C-suite they’re doing, and they’re probably half men, half women.

Um, it’s really split down the middle. But then out of the guys, uh, actually out of all of them, it’s mostly white people because there’s mostly white people at work. And, you know, I do have different races that I work with and everything else, but when I think about the guys that I work with, it’s mostly white guys, and they’re looking to get up into the C-suite and do all of these things.

I mean, there there is this segment of middle management or upper middle management, whatever you wanna do it. Um, it’s white guys. They, they, um, they, they look at corporate leadership, they look at the change and they see what’s happening and they’re losing the motivation to go forward because they don’t see a future. And here’s my thesis statement. I’m gonna make the thesis statement now, then I’m gonna talk a little bit more.

Oh, I just lost my pen. Um, when you make inroads to diversity inclusion, which is good, these opportunities were never afforded people before, right? The women coming up through the workforce in the eighties and the nineties, um, dealt with some crazy bs, didn’t have the real opportunities afforded to them. You had to be like a vicious person in order to get there. And, um, and then that created new problems in terms of, you know, type of person you are and everything else.

Um, so the opportunities weren’t really there. They’re there now and that’s great, and they’re excited and that’s wonderful and they should be, and that’s fantastic. People of other races, right? Black people, everyone else, same thing. Opportunity wasn’t really there. We’re finally, you know, people are starting to pay attention. Probably say, Hey, you know what? Diversity is a good thing. This is all kind of stupid. The way that we’ve set it up.

Let’s move it forward. Opportunity is there that wasn’t there before. This is great. They’re excited, they’re doing it. There’s investment and there’s groups and there’s all kinds of stuff for women and, and for, uh, everybody. And that’s excellent. White men came up, and I don’t know if this is generational, uh, because it may be done by the time, like the millennials get through it. So it could only be like a short term challenge, uh, came up with the expectation assumption that they were going to keep working and working hard, and they would have promotions and they could work towards promotions and do all of that.

That’s been taken away in some instances. And I’ll give more kind of details on that in a little bit. And so it’s not, that opportunity hasn’t been there, it’s opportunity feels like on an emotional level, it’s being taken away. And this is on an individual basis, okay? So at a macro level, yes, we need more diversity, right? But simple math will tell you there’s only a set number of leadership positions. And so we gotta change the dynamic.

And so the conversation that’s happening is, um, I should have gotten that role. I can’t because they’re not gonna put a white guy in that role. Um, whether they should or shouldn’t perceive it that way, you know, we could talk about that and, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. I’ve been in meetings, here’s, you know, perfect example. I had a client who was up for a promotion, should have gotten it, was told by his boss, like, go in for this job.

We’re gonna be redoing things. Like, this is you, you’re the perfect guy for it. He was incredibly well suited for it. Um, and then they said, well, we have to open it up. So they opened it up and the HR person told him that he asked for an update on what the job thing was, um, that this is a quote, we didn’t get any women of color to apply for it, so we’re putting the job on hold.

And now this is a major role. They can’t really put this role on hold, but they’re putting it on hold. There are no in this industry and, and job type, I don’t know. I asked him, you know, are there women of color in this? Right? And he’s like, no, I don’t know anybody. Like this is not, it’s just not there, right? So it’s a misguided kind of attempt at just saying, we have to put a person in here and there’s a misinterpretation of the way that diversity’s supposed to work.

And so now he’s not getting the job, the job is being shelved. And, and, and that’s it. And so now he looked at me and he’s like, Jim, am I done? He goes, I think I’m finished. I’ve invested. I mean, he’s in his early fifties. I I’ve invested my time, I’ve done done all of this stuff. He said, if I can’t, like this was my natural next, this is where I was supposed to go.

And I guess I’m, I guess I’m finished. Um, now outside of the HR person, probably shouldn’t have said that, obviously. Uh, but I’ve been on calls where the execs said, there’s no way we’re putting a white guy in that, in that position. And the HR person goes, you can’t say it that way. You know, you gotta say it this way. Uh, <laugh>, you say it like this. I remember sitting in, in finance, uh, person up there said, you know, our priority this year is to only promote women.

And every guy just basically pulled out their phone and said, who else is hiring? Right? Like, I guess I’m, I’m not getting a promotion this year. And so there’s this semantics of, right. They didn’t say it the way they should have said it, but like, we all know what it means. And the guys are like, well, what about me? Right? So macro, and here’s the funny thing, most white guys are for it.

Most guys are for the diversity and inclusion and everything, and they wanna mentor. And, um, and here’s the funny kicker about the one client he sponsored and started the diversity and inclusion thing at the workplace. Um, he was a white guy, but he said, this is really important and he championed it and everything else. And, and, uh, now he feels like it’s burning him. Um, now it’s emotional versus logic. And, and we’ve got all of these types of things and, and we have these assumptions.

And, um, and so, so we have to think about how this evolves and how do you at least engage these men in conversation to say, look, you still have value. There still is a future, right? The macro thing is very important, but on an individual micro level, people will say, well, what about me? Right? I agree with that. You know, it’s like, I, I want speed bumps in the neighborhood, but don’t put it in front of my house, right?

<laugh>, and, you know, I don’t wanna listen to that. Um, I feel like, and I, I feel like this is short term, the more I think about this, right? It’s, it’s a generation X, not really baby boomers, they’re kind of done, they’re out of the office and they’re, they’re, um, just hoarding their money and doing whatever. But, uh, most boomers are kind of gone. We’re in the Gen X world now. It’s a Gen X challenge, it’s a millennial challenge after that, GenZ and all that other stuff, they’ve, they’re growing up in a different type of, um, a different type of world.

And so, um, I hate to present a problem and not have solutions, but this is a topic that I’m, I’m talking to a lot of people about, uh, just write an amazing book called Men Without Work. Apparently something like almost 20% of able-bodied men are out of the workforce, not even looking for job. They’re not even included in unemployment numbers. They’re out of the workforce and, um, not looking for a job, which is insane to me, right?

And so where are these people going? And I was looking through the data and reading the book, and they said, well, you know what, more women came into the workplace, which is good. So we don’t see that there’s less people and you know, this whole shift. But now we’ve got a societal issue where you have no motivation, no type of work. A lot of the research in terms of happiness surveys and everything, there was a, a, a male one that had happened years ago where what gives you energy?

All the women had answered it, you know, my family gives me energy. And, you know, all this above and beyond what gives you purpose and everything for men was my work. And if you take a look at suicide rates, the biggest suicide group are men over the age of 60. And a lot of people are tying them back to the fact that they don’t have work and they don’t have purpose. They’ve retired, they don’t know what to do with themselves.

They don’t, you know, there is this societal shift that’s happening and men have to figure it out. And when we take a look at, I have no future at this organization, you’re pushing the, the age limit. You know, what are the guys in their forties and fifties gonna do? Where, you know, when I’ve hit my ceiling, now I’ve got another 20 years in this role. I don’t wanna do that, right? Do I have to do a fundamental shift?

Do I have to do a fundamental change? I have to go to a new industry, like there’s, and look, life’s life sucks right there. There is this aspect to it. Welcome to life, it’s gonna hit you hard, wear a cup and move on. So there is kind of a little tough love that needs to happen. It’s not like we have to handhold all of these people. Um, but there is this psychological kind of thing.

And, and we know that men don’t like to talk about the stuff we don’t like, for a lot of reasons. Not because we can’t, but because we just don’t wanna burden other people with our problems. And, and we like to say, well, you should talk about it. Some guys just don’t want to. Um, but there are, by the way, if you are in this situation, you’re a guy listening to it, there are plenty of people who will talk to you about it and wanna talk to you about it, and we’ll help you articulate it.

And that’s, you know, there are challenges and opportunity and, but generally what we have to do is we kind of have to, we have to work through it, we have to articulate it, and we have to talk about it. Uh, so what can we do about this? This is, I’ll remind, um, and we could talk to leadership, we could talk to individuals, we could talk to anybody. But remember, this is an individual challenge.

It’s a weird one because it’s, the macro challenge is we don’t have enough diversity in the workplace, okay? And that’s a macro general look at the numbers. It’s true, it’s there. And so we have to fix that challenge. But on an individual level, uh, what’s my path and what does this mean for me? And the devil is in the details. And when we talk about macro change, we gotta talk about a micro individual.

Um, and some people in your ranks are getting very frustrated because they don’t feel like they have a path and they don’t know where they’re going to go. Um, when we take a look, last week I talked about ambition. Where’d the ambition go? Is we don’t know where we’re going, right? And this is kind of doubly true for, for the men. And so, um, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, I’m saying it’s a challenge we have to deal with.

So first, I mean, the first thing I would say in terms of solutions, these probably aren’t the greatest solutions, but I’ll start the conversation, is number one, we have to recognize that this is a challenge, right? And you can’t just ignore it. When we’re putting together diversity and inclusion programs, we have to include white men in that, okay? Because it’s, there is this shift of what’s happening and, and they have value to bring it, and they’re very supportive of it.

But we have to recognize that this is an emotional challenge for men. Um, and we can’t coddle them and, and, you know, do it. There’s, there’s an appropriate way to do that, but we, we don’t, we gotta figure that out. So anyway, that’s one, I’ll just start my pen again. So that’s two pens. Um, number two, we have to foster dialogue if it’s possible, right? And, and this is a very difficult challenge to do.

I had a, um, <laugh>, a friend of mine does workshops, and they went in and, and these women went to the manager and they said, Hey, we want for the women’s group, we want a leadership development. This person come in and do it. And then says, look, you can do it, but then you also gotta do one for the guys, right? Like, if you want to do that, we’re gonna be equitable and try and do the right thing.

They said, fine. So the women’s leadership one was mobbed, nobody showed up to the men’s one. And the women are like, look, we gave a men’s one, nobody showed up. Um, but it was called Why your toxic masculinity is ruining the Office, or something like that. And so they created it for the men, but it was very <laugh>, right? So we have to be careful about the way that we’re accusing individuals, right?

We take this personally and we do this type of work. Um, so there is a right and wrong way to go about it. We have to be smart with the way that we, we talk about all of these things and, and we talk about it with, try to remove the emotion from it and just talk about the logical look. You’ve got a fruit salad that’s full of just, you know, cantaloupe. You gotta add strawberries and, and blueberries.

You might have to take some cantaloupe out of it, and that’s it. Then you have a good fruit salad. So that’s it. We want the flavor, we want the changes, we want diversity. And that’s, you know, it’s an important thing. And there’s still value that you can bring. And, and maybe we have to change the mentality of our people in terms of is it status, is it role title, is it, you know, do we change?

And, and this is the good work that we’re doing with, with the corporate clients, is we’re restructuring the way we think about people and the way we think about, um, accountability and agency and, and what people can do. And, um, so that will work itself out in the wash, but we still have to address it. Help them also as an idea to become agents of this change, to be involved with it.

Don’t just have this change thrust upon them, have them be active components of it. A lot of white guys are really into this and really wanna be helpful. And this is another way that we can, we can do, um, bring more value to diversity and inclusion programs, is that they do have a voice. And as we rethink the workplace, that can provide value as well. So, more to come on this and, and I have a lot more thoughts, and I’m gonna still articulate them.

I’m interested in yours. Um, but for leadership, recognize it’s a challenge. How we communicate it, how we share it, how we talk about it is incredibly important. It’s a delicate issue. Um, but most guys really can’t feel like they could talk about it. And so I’ll say for you, why not? Who cares? And let’s see what, let’s see what could come out of it. So, um, this is beyond talking points. It’s a big thing.

Good luck with it. I’m happy to talk more about it. I’m happy to talk about how we can accommodate them and bigger, um, and bigger types of discussions of people. And, and, uh, and as these diversity and inclusion programs do really, really good things, we can, we can figure out a solution for everybody. So good luck. Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you next week. Thanks.

It’s a hot topic, on multiple fronts: Where is the ambition? 

Organizations are working hard to “re-engage” their employees, based on the assumption that they should be excited to go “above and beyond.” Employees, and individuals in general, are fairly checked out – not sure where they should be focused or going on a personal level.

There are many obvious reasons for this: 

1. Burnout – on a major scale, beyond work. AI, society changes, and massive uncertainty have us constantly looking in the mirror trying to anticipate what’s coming. 
2. Priorities have shifted – the pandemic showed us what it was like to have time for dinner with our families. And we liked it. 
3. Our assumptions have been turned upside down – Before, going above and beyond wasn’t just in the pursuit of advancement – it was an obligation and expectation that above and beyond was the norm … and people are saying, “Hold Up!”
4. Finally, we don’t know where we are going – many of us are unsure of where to head, as the future of work and success is quite murky. 

Yes, the onus is on us to dictate our next steps, but we must do so in the context of a bigger picture. With so much change and uncertainty, we should focus less on making hard decisions, and focus more on creating the environment where we can throw out hopes and desires and see what’s possible. 

This can be done at home, at work, in communities. More on the podcast – enjoy!

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Welcome to Bellwether episode 114. Where has all the ambition gone? Lots to talk about today. It’s a hot topic. It’s a hot topic everywhere. Organizations are talking about it. The news is talking about it. We’ve been talking about it for a long time. People are starting to talk about it. They’re catching up and kind of realizing that their ambition is gone and what does that mean for them and where are they going to go.

There are a lot of different angles I’m gonna take today, and I want to kind of peel back the onion a little bit in terms of how to solve it, if it’s solvable, <laugh>, um, but then also what strategies people can employ to, to kind of get that little spark back and everything else. Um, I feel like it’s a Joan bias song where have all the ambitions gone. The, um, a couple of things I want to cover today just to kind of cue it up.

And then you could probably fast forward if you wanna fast forward or you could just listen to my musings throughout. I’m gonna chat about why. One, I think sentiment and priorities have changed. Two, um, people are realizing the work isn’t really what they thought it was going to be. Three, um, burnout of course we’re gonna cover today. And then four is this lack of direction. A lot of people have lost their assumptions and their, their lack of direction, their, they’re not quite sure where to go.

So I wanna talk about those in, in differing types of order. So, um, when we think about ambition, and this has been going on, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn or any of the others, I’ve been sharing some of the articles. There was an article maybe a year ago, the Times had done it. Um, the Time Magazine wrote, uh, an article on it back in 2022. LinkedIn was just posting again about new studies about how self-reported ambition is just, you know, falling off a cliff.

Um, and it’s a difficult thing to measure, you know, how do we actually measure ambition? And, and a lot of it is just kind of this feeling. We’ve got this feeling that people aren’t really doing as much as they wanted to do, or, or pushing themselves in the same kind of way. It’s not the same as productive productivity, but it’s linked to productivity and some of the other statistics in terms of actual pro productive output.

What organizations and individuals and organizations are about to do. And I’ve covered this on a podcast, it’s going away. Productivity is gone and what’s actually happening, it’s not because people are working from home, although that might have something to do with it, but there are a lot of things going on in the different types of angles, uh, that, that we have to, that we have to cover. Burnout is one of them, of course.

Um, the pandemic has shown us what life is like without work being everything. And some of the questions, is this an American problem? Is this a global problem? I’m sure it covers both, but I’m gonna talk about it from the American perspective because hey, that’s where I am and that’s where most of my clients are. And that’s where a lot of, uh, a lot of other countries that I work with tend to look towards America towards this kind of work ethic, uh, philosophy because Americans are just known as, um,you know, the crazy people who work on weekends.

Um, the ambition question is coming up a lot from clients, and I’m gonna talk about this in two different ways. One is from an organizational perspective. One is from an individual perspective, from an organizational perspective, yes, productivity is down. Um, the idea of the pursuit of advancement and working hard in all of this, you know, how do we get employees engaged? We want to engage in employees so they can go above and beyond, and we could do all of these things.

Um, so a lot of organizations are feeling that pinch. They don’t know how to approach it. They’re trying to respond with, you know, do this webinar and do this training, and do this and do that. And they’re trying to just jam more things down the throne. It’s not the right approach, in my opinion. Um, and so how do you get them to do more than expected? Well, how do you create the desire to do more than expected from an individual perspective?

Why care <laugh>, right? What are we working towards? What are we getting jazzed about? I mean, this goes back to fundamental purpose conversations that every, you know, Tom, Dick and Harry coach is talking about, find your purpose. It’s not that simple. And many individuals are just kind of saying, well, what am I working towards? You know, I’m 45 years old, I gotta do this for another 25 years. I don’t wanna do this for another 25 years.

What am I working towards? The, the assumptions have changed, the future has changed, and I don’t quite know or see where I actually fit in. So why am I working so hard in this pursuit of advancement and ambition when I don’t know what the, the end game is going to be? So that’s where, that’s where we go first and foremost. Um, and this is fundamental to, to everything is all of our assumptions.

This is beyond the ambition question. All of our assumptions are upside down. And the assumptions on what we can accomplish for work, the assumptions on what our goals should be for work. You know, when I talk to business owners, you know, what should our priorities be this year? Where, what’s our one year, three year, five year plan, 10 year plan? It’s all very murky, okay? And so any assumptions we have on the way people are supposed to operate, the way people are supposed to be, the way business is supposed to run is really out the window right now.

And much of my advice to people is, one, we have to raise our expectations of ourselves and the people around us. Yes, from an interpersonal kind of way, but we have to eliminate assumptions, throw them out the window because anything that worked in the past is really irrelevant at this point. We can use this to inform whatever it is that we want to do, but any assumptions we have on why people would wanna pursue advancement, why people would wanna be ambitious, what drives people, what motivates people, all of this work is really out the window right now.

And we have to rethink it, reengage and re-discuss with our employees, with our leadership teams, with everybody in terms of what really matters right now. The context has changed. The work environment, the home environment, the community environment, the news environment, everything has changed. So priorities have shifted, everything has shifted. So now we need to kind of rethink what assumptions are we making, right? Training doesn’t fix everything, right? The old way of training, I should say, the old way of training doesn’t fix anything.

How do we get people more, uh, experiential in their learning? How do we get them to take ownership of their learning? How do we teach people to think in a different type of way? These are the types of questions that we should be asking. So, um, starting with this pursuit of advancement, we grew up, at least I did, and a lot of my peers, you know, you look at anybody in their mid forties where you were told work hard and everyone’s gonna notice and you’re gonna get rewarded and it’s gonna be great.

And everybody has kind of realized that that’s just kind of bunk. And, um, going above and beyond wasn’t just in the pursuit of advancement. It’s what was expected was an obligation. You just had to work Saturdays, right? Think back to office space. I’m gonna need you to come in on Saturday and you didn’t really have a choice. And people are starting to have a choice. People are starting to say, well, hold up, like, I got family time on the weekends now and I get to dictate this.

And you know, the technology has allowed us to communicate with other people in this different type of way to say, if these people can get their work life balance and all this kind of philosophical, uh, bs that, that we’ve talked about, um, why can’t I have it? And a lot of people are saying, what about me right now? So people are putting their hands up. We’re aware of the fact that, you know, I just posted this on LinkedIn the other day, and, uh, an old colleague of mine, Mike, basically made the point, you know, we know that work is in a family, work likes to talk about, you know,oh,you know what, we’re all a family here.

But that family kind of throws you under the bus when it’s time to lay off half your people. Um, and it’s just an objective thing, right? That we expect the employees to give everything, but when things get difficult, the business really has the upper hand. And that ultimately is what pays the bills for right or wrong, right? It’s not a good thing or a bad thing, right? At the end of the day, businesses exist to make money and we need people to work hard and we need to pay them appropriately and we need to do all of that stuff.

But, um, when we think about keeping a business alive right now, the business environment, the market environments have changed so much that leadership of organizations have two kind of pulling philosophies. They’re going for. One is, how do we make this business sustainable? So it still exists. A businesses exist to make money, we have to make money, and that’s it. But we also have human beings working for us. And what’s that balance and how do we get the best human beings to bring them into the organization?

And how do we create that environment? I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. I would say probably 90% of organizations could be successful with half of their employees. And everybody needs to hear that. And if you’re not in that top 50%, you need to start figuring out what it’s going to take to get you into that 50%, to creating value in all of that. Um, so there’s an, this obligation of work has an obligation to articulate what their vision is, to develop their people, to create an environment for people to be successful.

But we as employees have an obligation to create value within that context, to challenge the norms to do that type of work. So pursuit of advancement, and I’m gonna circle back to this at the end because we don’t know what we’re advancing towards, um, is is not really the norm that it used to be. We used to have this assumption on pursuit of advancement. It’s not the same assumption that we can continue into 2023 and beyond.

So that’s number one. Uh, and that’s a big one. That’s a big number one, right? Pursuit of advancement isn’t what it used to be. Number two, priorities have shifted. And this kind of goes into the pursuit of advancement and kind of creating boundaries for what’s acceptable and what’s not, not being taken advantage of, uh, taken advantage of in the workplace over the last four years. We got a little taste of what it was like to spend time with our families, to have our weekends back, to sleep in, to kind of go read a book, to go do whatever.

And people really like it. People really, really like it. And for those people, they’re, you know, there’s different types of people there. The people who create work and the entrepreneurs, they’re still working the way that they used to work, but they have ownership of what it is they’re working towards. So they love it. And that’s what really drives entrepreneurship and that’s why they do it. You’ve got the other people working in, uh, organization who see a path for themselves and they’re working hard and they’re trying to push things over.

It’s very difficult for them because they have to rally other people to do it. And then there’s people who wait for work to happen to them. And those are the people who really like to kinda unwind and check out and everything else. And, and they need it and they should have it, right? Everybody needs their time to check out. Everybody’s checking out is a little bit different. Um, but when we think about priorities of what’s important, you know, I think, and this is American perspective, you take a look at Europe, Europe gets their months of August off in a lot of countries.

Europe gets this time with families. They’re done at, you know, different types and not everyone of course, right? There’s different types of industries and companies and everything else, but the American culture doesn’t really allow for taking time for yourself and it doesn’t allow for this family time. And, and part of it is a financial discussion of course, but there are other ones too in terms of what’s expected of you, the obligations you have when you sign off for a job.

And, and the way that work culture has been set up, this hustle, hustle culture that’s been going on since the eighties, the nineties, it’s continued straight through and people are starting to dictate what it is that they want. And the ones who have real value are able to kind of find that balance, but also continue to do work and work smartly. But priorities have shifted. So that’s kind of changing the ambition question of, you know what, maybe I don’t need to be in the C-suite.

Maybe just being a VP is good enough and I get my family time and how do I kind of make this work? I remember, uh, I remember applying for a job. I got the job, but there was a woman who interviewed me, she was gonna be on my team. And she said, how do you feel? She asked me, how do you feel about someone who doesn’t want a promotion? And I said, what do you mean?

And she said, I’m done. I don’t want to pursue more. I don’t wanna advance more. I’m happy. I’ve got my family. I don’t, don’t wanna keep working towards something new. I’m being pushed to work towards a promotion when I don’t really want a promotion because I’ve got this balance and everything and this is good for me. And of course I told her, you know, that’s awesome, right? Of course, my philosophy was always get your work done and you know, we’ll talk about what you need and what you want and everything else and keep work interesting and everything else.

And I feel like she was ahead of her time almost. This was, I mean, this was at least a decade ago, maybe 15 years ago. I feel like she was ahead of her time in terms of that. And I think a lot more people are starting to think that way of, you know what, maybe this is good enough from a work perspective. Let me fill in these other areas of my life so that everything could kind of even out and put work in its place and find other things to kind of take my time.

So that’s a big priority shift there. Number three on why ambition is going away or why it’s fallen off is burnout. And I hate just saying burnout, um, but we’re burned out. Everybody is burned out and everybody is burned out. Everyone is exhausted. And it’s not from work. It’s not just from work. It’s, uh, we’re burned out and we’re afraid because massive levels of change are being thrust upon us on a massive scale.

And this goes beyond work. I mean, the big one right now is ai. All you hear about in terms of artificial intelligence is how it’s gonna disrupt everything. Your job is going away and the robots are gonna take over and let’s massive fear. And it’s very exciting. It’s a very exciting time and I love reading about it. But when we think about what about me, it, it, it’s stress. It’s a, an incredibly stressful time.

And, and how do we kind of do the work when I know my work is going to change? I see that your, my company’s laying off 10,000 people. Am I gonna be one of them? All my competitors have laid off 10,000 people. Are we next? Um, what’s going on in society? What are the kids doing? What are we doing? You know, every it, it compounds from so many different places that we are completely burned out.

You cannot turn it off where we actually need to completely check out for a week, unplug and, and kind of reset to, to where we are now. You always hear me say, um,you know, we don’t know what’s coming and we have to go inside, right? My big thing is macro change. And this is important when you’re talking about change management at work, is we’re talking about ambition and you want people to kind of change their philosophies.

Macro change requires a focus on the micro individual. That’s why training doesn’t work. Cuz you’re telling them what they’re supposed to think and it doesn’t work. We have to teach them to think about things in a different way, in their own particular way. Because any type of change, any type of structurally different anything requires an individual to internalize it and then re manifest it in their own particular way so that they can respond appropriately.

So the one constant through all change is the individual responding to change. That’s it. And that’s leading to burnout because we’re being told what change is coming and we have no say. And we’re so focused on the external change that it’s driving burnout. And so how do we slow it down? Um, go, I saw this awesome article the other day about a woman who was a teacher and God help our teachers cuz I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Um, mostly because of the parents, completely burned out because of parents, because of the way we were teaching throughout the pandemic and everything else. Like it was a, if you were a teacher, it was a horrible type of job. Quit her job, went to go work at Costco. Life is better, wouldn’t change anything. She’s making the same amount of money. She gets her weekends back, she gets all this kind of stuff back.

And you know, when we go back to thinking about assumptions and responding to burnout and what do we need as individuals, maybe the assumption goes away that you need to work this particular job for a long, particular time. I know people made some rash decisions in the pandemic, but maybe we do take a different kind of stake in terms of, well, you know what, maybe I just go work this way. What’s good enough?

Right? Is it okay to be good enough rather than this overachiever and have these types of things happen to you and it’s a heavy discussion needs to be had with your family. Lots of, you know, <laugh>, there’s lots of fallout from these massive decisions, but ultimately you lie in the bed you make and we have to make these types of decisions and can you make it work? And a lot of people will be dismissive of it.

Oh, I can’t make it work because they haven’t looked at all of the details. I used to work with this guy at a bank. All he did was spreadsheets all day. Hated his job, hated his life. Like it was awful. Had a great family, loved his family. He was wonderful. Loved to tinker with the tools and I don’t know what he was making, but I was like, you could probably make the same at Home Depot and you could be around the tools, you could help people and it’ll be awesome.

He’s like, I can’t do that. I can’t work at Home Depot. And he said, why not? And it was all this kind of like, what would the neighbors say and everything else, but at the end of the day, he would’ve been so much happier if he had done it. Um, and it’s hard. These types of conversations are hard when we talk about responding to burnout, responding to change, responding to this lowering ambition.

It’s hard. But the thing is, nobody can do it for you because it’s ultimately your bed. Nobody can make your bed for you. I mean, maybe like,you know, billionaires, kids can make it for them, but that’s why all like family wealth goes away by the third generation because too many people are making their beds. So it’s hard. That’s okay. We’re faced with challenges and we have to overcome them. But when we overcome challenges, that’s your purpose.

That’s the feeling we’re trying to get to. And that’s what we’re really struggling with during burnout time right now is, you know, I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. Let’s take a step back and what are these assumptions that are driving this burnout that we have to have? And what’s a feasible step, right? And it’s not just gonna be this, oh, I’m just gonna quit my job and go, you know, start a side hustle.

It’s not, it’s not that there are paths, but I think we’re blind to them because we aren’t really quite looking at them. So, um, so that’s number three. Burnout. So we talked about, um, we talked about one right at the top. We talked about going above and beyond pursuit of advancement. Assumptions need to go out the window and I’m gonna come back to that. Number two, we talked about how priorities have shifted.

And then number three, we talked about burnout. Let’s go back to this pursuit of advancement because this is the fourth one. Nobody knows what they’re working towards anymore. If you were to take burnout, there’s massive levels of change and priorities have shifted. And we take a look at this pursuit of advancement. So much change. We don’t know what the future’s going to look like in five years. We feel it, we know it.

Everybody’s talking about it. It’s no big secret, but we don’t know what we’re working towards. And I’m gonna talk about this. This is different based on gender, it’s different based on race, it’s different based on every individual. And, uh, and I’m gonna cover this next week on next week’s podcast. The podcast is gonna be what do you do with the men in your office? Um, because a lot of them had this assumption, I don’t want to tease it too much, but a lot of men had this assumption that they would just keep working and they would go up and become a VP and then a president do whatever.

Um, but the dynamics of the workplace have changed so much that something like 16 to 20% of able-bodied men are completely out of the workforce. Um, but nobody talks about it because, and this is necessary. Women have entered the workforce at large, right? And we’ve done a lot of work and a lot of good work has happened in terms of equality, making sure people are paid the same and right. This is an ongoing conversation, but there’s this group of, you know, 20% of able-bodied men are out of the workforce, not even unemployed out of the workforce.

It doesn’t account, uh, for unemployment numbers. So a lot of these things, what am I working towards? Um, and I’ll cover that in detail, um, for that. But what are we working towards? Our assumptions have changed in terms of, well, you know what, I thought I was going to go to a leadership position and organization, but there aren’t any for me and I don’t see myself getting a seat at that table.

And so if that’s cut out for me, then where do I go? I don’t know what I’m working towards. I don’t have intentionality in terms of dictating my next role. And it’s not a man problem. Well, it is a man problem, but it’s also a woman problem. It’s an everyone problem. But, you know, the future of work is quite murky and we think about it from a strategic stalemate, kind of what decisions do we make?

The organizations are thinking about this, but from an individual perspective of what am I working towards? Most people can’t answer that question. They don’t know where they want to go and they don’t know where they can go. So, you know, when we look for new jobs and we start thinking about new jobs, we think about, you know, what can I do? Right? And, and uh, I I think about this as a big moment in my career where I stopped looking at what I can do and I started thinking about what I wanted to do and that kind of changed what I was looking for in terms of new jobs because it would go through the cycle.

I’d start a new job and it was great. And then I got checked out and it was, you know, whatever. And, um, cycle continues every five years you find a new job and go through the same thing and it’s the same type of company and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as you’re looking for that new job every five years, you’re like, well what can I do? Oh, I could do that.

Oh, I could do that, but you don’t really wanna do it, but you can do it. And you know, it’s always, grass is always greener on the other side and all of that kind of stuff. But now it’s, you know, the question of once you get up to a certain level, right? High middle management, it’s not necessarily what can you do because there’s a very limited aspect of where you can go.

And so people are very concerned about this and and they don’t know how to articulate it. They don’t know how to ask the questions. They don’t know how to have these conversations and they don’t know where is next. So a bunch of people made a jump during the pandemic that was great. They did it for money, they did it for other reasons, fantastic. Some of them regret it, some of them don’t.

But when we think about what’s next and where you’re gonna go, and I, I talk to, I mean my sweet spot for clients is 35 to 55. I’m dealing with a lot of these people and a lot of these conversations is, I don’t know what’s next. I don’t really have a future. I don’t really have, you know, we talk about development, we talk about how to bring these people up and give them a career path.

The onus is on the individual to articulate it. Yes. But organizations don’t even know how to articulate it to people to say, well this is what’s going to be available. Because the whole framework of how we structure an organization is changing. So there’s a lot of mystery around where do people go and what are you going to do? And everyone will be fine. We’re gonna find a job, we’re gonna do it, and that’s great, but is it what you wanna do?

And that’s a very deep difficult conversation for people to have with themselves and with other people. And so the onus is on us to define our roles and to solve all of this. When we talk about ambition and why, why am I doing this? And you know, I’m 35 to 55, I’m not gonna do this for another 20 years. Like if you were to look at this 20 years of doing what you’re doing today, right?

A lot of people just say, that’s miserable, right? I don’t want to do it. Ultimately you’re gonna have to make the decisions to say, you know, what, what’s possible, what can I do and how can I change it? And how do I prioritize what’s important to me and what do I really need? Um, because many of us don’t really know where to start, and it starts with a question of ourselves is what, you know, what do you want?

And, and how do you articulate it verbally? We can’t just think about it cuz we make these assumptions and we jump and we, we do all this other type of work, but a fun conversation. I do this with Gabby, my wife all the time, is what’s possible, what could we do? Um, we just had friends down a couple weeks ago. We were talking like, why don’t we just move to an island in Greece and just kind of raise the kids there and I dunno, teach ’em how to fish or some shit.

Who knows? Like <laugh>, right? I always wanted to move to Panama and just sell hot dogs on the beach. And uh, it sounds great, it sounds great. My wife’s not on board. Um, but we need to be intentional and we need to advocate for ourselves. And when we think about ambition, we have to learn and we have to, you know, we talk about vulnerability and learning and all of this type of stuff.

You got 20 years or more or less, whatever, but you’ve got 20 years to kind of make your mark in terms of what it is you wanna do. It doesn’t have to be this exhausting, you know, do it today. So tomorrow can be brilliant and blah blah blah, blah, blah. We don’t have to put this kind of pressure on ourselves. You know, everything’s okay and everything’s gonna be okay. If we can be intentional with what it is that’s, that’s relevant for us today in the moment.

And as we figure ourselves out today, everything else in the future will kind of work itself out. The more conversations you have brings opportunities of what’s possible, we have to think about what’s possible. We often think about why we can’t do something because well, AI is gonna take that job so you can’t take it and, uh, self-driving cars. So you can’t, you know, become a truck driver because self-driving cars and, you know, 10 years is gonna be whatever.

We can always find a reason why we can’t do something. But we have to, you know, have these conversations with peers and managers with our teams, right? If you manage a team to engage your team, we have to create an environment where they could share their hopes, their dreams, their fears, where they can get honest feedback, trustworthy feedback. How do you as a manager, that’s our obligation as a leader, as a manager, how do we create the environment for people to create their ambition?

We can’t tell someone what they should be doing. I hate the word should, right? Should be removed from the English language other than the fact that I should do this. Um, we can dictate that for other people, but we can engage the discussion and we can start the discussion. What do you want to do? And most people aren’t really gonna share that right away, right? We’ve got these different lives, we’ve got the public, we’ve got the private, we’ve got the secret.

And how do we tap into some of those and how do we say it’s okay to want something that you don’t currently have and not from a consumer perspective, right? We don’t need stuff, right? The more stuff you get, the more you know, kind of, you get lost in your stuff. But when we think about ambition and what we want, be proud of what you want, right? And take those little safe kind of risks and try something.

And it doesn’t have to upend everything, but when we think about ambition, when we think about our teams organizationally, create the environment for people to articulate these hopes, desires and dreams about what’s possible within the confines of the work environment or not. And then also for an individual, engage the people you trust to say, oh, I was thinking about trying this, or I was thinking about trying that and find someone who believes in you.

Everybody can find someone who believes in them. And if you don’t have someone call me up. I believe I believe in you. I believe in you <laugh>. Um, I do because it’s possible, right? There’s, we got 20 years of possibility, 30 years of possibility, 40, 50 years of possibility ahead of you. And the advice we give to young people is go enjoy life and do whatever. You’ve got plenty of time to build a career.

It’s the same for you in your thirties and forties and fifties. Yes, there’s more risk. You’ve got kids, you’ve got a home, maybe, you know, whatever. Um, but there are different ways that we could do it and we could change different dynamics based on the assumptions that we have. And so lots to think about in terms of ambition. I hope that’s helpful. I love talking about ambition, I love talking about this type of stuff.

I don’t wanna get a little too cheesy in terms of what, you know, you can do it. Um, but articulating ambition and articulating where you wish to go, not from a role perspective, but you as an individual is a great place to start. So think about that this week. I hope that’s helpful. Would love to talk to you about it more. Feel free to reach out. I love these types of conversations and as always, have a wonderful week and I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks.

Happy 2023.

We are tripping into this year with a bit of anxiety: 2022 wasn’t great for most of us, we are still in year 4 of the pandemic, uncertainty on the horizon and ChatGPT ruining our memories of writing high school papers.

There are very few things that make me think that 2023 is going to be a “good year.” And that’s because most of the time I’m looking externally for things to be good. One of the biggest changes I foresee is that many of our expectations and assumptions, especially in the US, are going to be massively disrupted. 

Yet fear not! There are ways to cope and attack. The world changing isn’t a problem – it’s a circumstance to respond to. Therefore, I’ve come up with the “Four I’s” of 2023 to help you manage along. 

First, Identity. When we must make change – whether it’s a resolution or forced change, we must identify with it for us to manage it well. Our end game and result has to become core to who we are. If your resolution is to lose weight, we have to make “skinny people decisions.” If we want to get a promotion, the identity of that role has to be core to our personality. 

The reason is must become core to our being is for when things get crazy and stressful, we default to our basic level. This is why resolutions fail. Our default choice must become the one that changes. And this default is going to be especially necessary as we anchor ourselves for the technological change being thrust upon us. 

Second, Intentionality. Presence is a big word. And so is intentionality. Without it, we are aimless. With things like OpenAI arriving and finally, fundamentally, changing the way things get done, we need to be intentional about how we use this technology to better ourselves. We can’t shortcut things anymore – for AI to work, we have to think in new ways and get better results because of it. Ironically, this is different than how we operate today. 

Finally, three and four: “Inquisitive Intellectuality.” We need a new way to learn through questions. Yes, we are capable of great things, but it’s going to require us to think in very new ways, with specificity and providing parameters to elevate our way of being. AI will help us in 2023 get there. 

Looking ahead, there is a lot more on the horizon. The people who will do well will be those accountable to themselves; those who take ownership and responsibility for their actions and are willing to have the uncomfortable conversations with themselves. Lots of excitement is around the bend – so let’s embrace it and enjoy the ride!

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Does anyone remember the time where we didn’t know something and you had to be OK with it? 

Seems like ages ago, or maybe I’m feeling my age. But thanks to the advent and growth of technology, it’s easier than ever to obtain facts. The issue I have with this, is that we may be sacrificing wisdom for convenience. 

The more we know, ironically, drives anxiety. It lessens curiosity. It quashes our desire to learn. Quite frankly, it makes life boring. If we have all the facts available to us, what’s the point in asking questions? 

It’s one thing to know a fact. But you can get facts anywhere. What’s more important, I would argue, is how to think. Reasoning, logic, deduction, interpretation – these are the skill sets that will help us move past just repetition and boredom. 

It’s a focus that will translate well to the workplace. What I come across often in the coaching world is that most people have insecurity and anxiety, and many of them try to cover it by giving advice or spouting facts. But the fact of the matter is, those who embrace their insecurity, ask really good questions and learn to focus on their ability to continue to learn are the best leaders in an organization. 

Solutions will vary – but I’d say a good start is to begin by asking yourself questions, and going deeper beyond just the basic answer. Figuring out a belief system, why you believe things and understanding why others can believe the opposite, is a fun and productive philosophical exercise that will translate over into other areas of your life. 

It’s too strong to say facts are worthless, but without context and understanding, they don’t have multiple legs to stand on. It’s our understanding and interpretation that give facts meaning, and we only understand and interpret through questions. 

Happy week!

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I’m, I’m at the tail end of Gen X, but I identify with Gen X. I like my Gen X people. Gen X will remember this. Do you remember a time back where you just didn’t know the answer to something and you had to be okay with it? It was almost this freeing kind of <laugh>. It was, it was so nice to just not know. And we’re, we’re living now in a place where we’re inundated with information. 0:51

We’re inundated with facts. Everybody’s got a fact. Everybody wants to tell you what they know, and they can find the study or statistic that shows it. But without context, the facts are irrelevant. And I’d argue that we’re, we’re sacrificing wisdom and intelligence for the, the idea of just knowing facts that anybody can find when they Google something. And I would argue that the need for reasoning, logic, understanding context, being able to think is far more important as we move forward in the society than it is to just no facts. 1:31

Cause anybody can get facts anywhere. And that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. I’m gonna talk about how knowing everything like we do today, having information on our fingertips is actually driving more anxiety. Anxiety, um, it lessens our curiosity, it impacts our ability to be leaders. I’ll talk about workplace impact and then maybe at the end of this, if I remember, and if I have time, um, and I’m so inclined, I’ll give you some, some tidbits maybe that can help us get thinking about, um, how to think, thinking about how to think rather than, uh, just knowing facts. 2:02

So, um, like I said, I think my gen gen Xers will appreciate this and older, there was that time where, you know, you’d think of something and, and you would just never know it. And the only, you had to take a trip to the library, go through the Dewey decimal system to find some kind of book or an atlas or an encyclopedia to find it out. You actually had to do research. 2:22

And most of the time you’re like, I just don’t care enough to do that. And so it just went away. And that was nice. It was nice. You could focus on more things, more pertinent things, more impressive things, more relationship things. And you just, you didn’t know when your friends were gonna show up. You didn’t know when, uh, you know, your parents were gonna pick you up from the movie theater or anything else. 2:43

You could talk about it in general, uh, in in general context. But we, you know, there was a mystery to it. And there, there was a lot of fun to that. Um, now granted, having information on our fingertips has its benefits. I will say that. But, um, I, I would say we, we have this fake knowledge now of knowing facts. And you could find any fact online. Any fact that you wanna find, you could find it. 3:07

And there’s true facts, and there’s fake facts, and there’s half true facts. And there are, there are facts that are only facts when included with the proper context and <laugh>. So, so facts. The idea of a fact is, is almost subjective at this point. And so knowing facts, and, and you see this a lot in the coaching industry, um, people who try to present themselves as experts, everybody wants to be an expert. 3:35

Okay? We get this. Everybody wants to be an expert. Everybody wants to be wanted, everybody wants to be intelligent and seen as such. And that’s great. So they spit out knowledge to almost present themselves in this way that they are intelligent. But without context and understanding the context or making it real for people to know how to implement these facts, it’s almost irrelevant. The facts are pointless because it doesn’t change behavior or doesn’t drive home the message you’re trying to drive home. 4:03

It just, you know, it’s this false supporting of some BS statement so that we can present ourselves as experts in some particular type of way. And especially on, you know, you see this on TikTok all the time. I love the psychologists who come out and the psychiatrists and the neuroscientists who say, that’s not what that means, right? To, to correct all these people. Or just say, the hippocampus does this and you, that means you’re gonna do this. 4:27

And, um, it’s such a misinterpretation of, of knowledge, um, to the point where it’s damaging and it, it makes people change behavior in a very negative way. And, and you look ridiculous. I want you to know, you look ridiculous. <laugh>. Um, there is, ironically, I think the more knowledge we have, the more anxiety we have. Um, ignorance is bliss. I do believe that to a certain extent, there is, uh, a certain bliss of ignorance. 4:57

It’s why when people turn off social media, it’s a cathartic experience. It’s why when people turn off the news, it’s cathartic. Not knowing what’s going on and not being a hermit. I’m not talking about being a hermit, but there’s, there’s a scale of knowledge and information. We’re being inundated with constant ads and information and facts on, on why you need this medication that you didn’t even know you needed. And, uh, let me come in with this article and why you’re doing things wrong. 5:25

You’re shoveling your driveway wrong, and you’re like, what the hell are you talking about? This is ridiculous. So, so the more facts were given, uh, I would say it is impacting us in a very negative way. Um, even right on down to the weather. Do we need to know that the storm’s coming in a week when you’re know, start, say, ruins your week, right? Well, it’s gonna, you know, nice day. Yeah, but it’s gonna rain this weekend, right? 5:48

We can’t enjoy the moment we’re in because we have so much knowledge as to what’s coming down the pike, that, that we actually can’t be present and we can’t enjoy the people that are around us. And it drives this, this type of anxiety. And at the same time, it lessens our curiosity. And we need a sense, you know, I’ve said this before, multiple times. The reason kids are happy is because they’re learning. 6:11

They have this sense of wonder. There are things that are new to them. When we have all these facts, we lose that sense of wonder. We have to have the facts, we have to have the answers. We have to do all this stuff. It drives more anxiety, and we care less. We’re less curious. The last time you got really lost in something, it’s probably because you were curious about it and learning, and you wanted to know a new answer. 6:32

And that’s why we read things, and that’s why we get into things. And that’s why we, you know, I, I speak to so many Gen Z people and say, well, what are you reading right now? They’re like, oh, I, I don’t read books. I don’t read books. Because they have all the facts that they need at their fingertips and what they’re sacrificing. And this isn’t a Gen Z, this isn’t everybody challenge, okay? 6:52

I’m not, I’m not bashing Gen Z. Um, they don’t have to read, right? Because they have all their information. There is a benefit to learning and reading and being curious, and that’s your developing the capacity to think. And that’s what’s so important. We have to develop a capacity for reason. We have to develop a capacity for logic. We can’t just repeat facts. You see this very much in politics, right? Let me tell you why this is so important and why you’re wrong. 7:19

Facts are all about giving somebody, uh, i I bucket facts into this category of just giving advice and for coaches to be good. Again, I’m going back to my coaching. We never give advice. Good coaches never give advice, because advice is just an exercise of feeling superior to somebody else. Telling facts is just this false sense of superiority that we wish to have. And it’s trying to mask our own insecurities and our ability to ask questions. 7:46

We don’t want to be known as someone who doesn’t know, but yet, ironically, the most secure people we know and the most effective leaders we know are those very people who could say, I don’t know the answer to that. Tell me more. Ask me. You know, can I ask more questions? This is really good. Let’s get curious. Let’s dig more. Let’s learn about the logic, the reasoning, the interpretation of this. What can we deduce from all of these facts that we find? 8:10

And how do we make that relevant today? The ability to do, you know, do that cognitive exercise, to do that thinking. That’s what we need to really embrace and drive and, and really look for. And we can only do that when we don’t know. We only have that, that desire to do that. When we don’t know the facts, we don’t know the answers. We don’t stop at just knowing this ridiculous fact here. 8:36

And we say, all right, well, we did our job. We just told everyone how smart we were, and then we can move on. We need to deduce and make things real. Things evolve over time. Facts change over time. Facts change with context, right? You can make the same statement in two separate places. One time it’s true, another time it’s not. And depending on interpretation, that’s one of those big muscles that we really have to learn and drive. 9:01

And, and if we wanna bring this to the workplace, uh, that’s gonna separate the, the adults from the children, your ability to deduce. That’s how you bring value, right? I, I’ve gone through this exercise at a few places, um, depending on the size of your company, right? But I was working at a company or working with a company, had about a thousand employees. I said, if you wanted to get rid of everyone, 200 employees, what would they be doing? 9:30

And they know that they could survive with, you know, one fifth of their employees. They’d be thinking very differently. They’d be doing very different type of work, much more cognitive. And they know those 200 people, they would keep those people who could think, right? That’s gonna be, we’re, we’re not moving to a knowledge economy, right? Or maybe that’s what we’ve got. We’ve got a knowledge economy. A knowledge economy is irrelevant, right? 9:52

We need a thinking economy that’s very, very different, right? You have all the information you could want at your finger fingertips, but what makes you uniquely human is the ability to deduce and think and interpret, right? AI is gonna blow you outta the water of just pulling facts. It’s got mountains amount of facts and can make decisions and do all of these things very quickly based on fact and trends and everything else. 10:17

But to be uniquely humanist, to think and to be cognitive. And that comes from not knowing. That’s where we need to focus. That’s learning mindset, that’s asking really good questions. When we think about our best leaders and the most productive individuals, the people who are creating new things, the people who are bringing value to work, the people who are, uh, creating new processes. And those are the thinkers. They’re not just repeating the way we’ve always done things. 10:45

They’re not repeating, well, this is how it works. This is fact. They can interpret deduce question, ask really good questions, and be really, really curious. If you’ve worked with me. You know, I always talk about the, the question, does anybody know what a real question is? And most people don’t know what a real question is. A question is a request for information where you legitimately do not know the answer, and you want the answer. 11:11

Very, very important to make that distinction of, I’m really curious. Otherwise, it’s just a judgemental statement. And when we’re trying to mask anxiety, when we’re trying to spit facts, when we’re trying to just tell people why they’re wrong, why we’re trying to tell people, uh, advice and say, this is what you should do, and I think you should do that, and this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s our own insecurity. 11:32

It’s, it’s trying to feel superior over other people. Everybody sat in a meeting where somebody asks someone for feedback, they’re very quick to say, well, we can’t do it because of X and we can’t do it because of y. Right? That’s their own insecurity. They never go first to Well, it’s possible, but right? They, they’re never open to that. That’s a stressor. They’re insecure. It’s the first thing that you notice about ineffective leadership is they always tell you why something can’t be done. 12:00

And so not knowing, um, is a blessing. It’s a blessing. I don’t fully appreciate, I I didn’t really fully appreciate the blessing until recently. And the more I’ve been talking about it with people, you know, I don’t watch television. Well, I do a little bit, but not, you know, in, in the other way. Um, it’s nice to not know what’s going on in general. You know, as a matter, I’m still engaged in my community. 12:24

I’ve got my people, I’ve got my clients, I’ve got my family. I, you know, I’m not a hermit, but I don’t need to know everything. Although I do love spitting facts. I do love the random facts. Everybody does. But the reason we love the random facts is because we’ve learned something, right? We say, oh, that’s shocking that I wouldn’t have thought of that. And oh, that’s very interesting. It’s a curiosity thing. 12:46

And we, we tap into our learning and that’s why, why we like to do it. So, um, a few episodes go, I would encourage you to do the believability episode. Listen to the believability episode. If you haven’t done it, that one resonated with a lot of people, because that’s a differentiator in the workplace as well. And that comes from not knowing believability. There’s an authenticity to believability. In order to be believable, you have to build this capacity to be believable. 13:12

It’s not just enough to be authentic, it’s not just enough to know things and how things work. We have to be believable. And we become believable by, by connecting with other people and asking really, really good questions. And then that gives us some credibility. It brings authenticity to say, oh, I don’t know everything, but I can deduce and bring more value to the fact that you actually know that’s real value. And that’s something that we should focus on. 13:37

So what are the solutions? How do we do this? How do we become a person who knows, but doesn’t know a person who is valuable, not knowing everything, but can ask really, really good questions. And that’s, you know, it’s odd. We, we wanna be curious. We wanna know facts are fun, right? I love spitting facts. I love it. Um, I should have prepared some random facts, right? But I’m not, uh, <laugh>, I didn’t do that for this episode, so I’m sorry. 14:02

But the first one, the way to start is, you know, we have to learn to become philosophical. That’s the first. And we have to, to work on our questions. And so I had asked, you know, what’s the most interesting question you could come up with? And I’m not talking about, you know, does a straw have one or two holes? Um, although those are fun little conversations to have with your people. But what are really, really good questions you could ask yourself about anything that’s going on in your world where you legitimately don’t know the answer and you want to know the answer. 14:33

And if there’s nothing that you want to know the answer to, we have a lot of thinking to do, right? Asking why, why do we do the things we do? That’s part of self discovery, it’s part of personal development, it’s part of everything. And that’s ultimately the meaning of life. The aim of life is self development. Uh, who said that the aim of life is self development. Dorian Gray, Oscar Wild said that Oscar Wild said, I think he did. 14:59

The aim of life is self development. Um, but, but how do we exercise reasoning and logic, our belief system, pure curiosity, just for the purpose of being curious. That is how we become a, a, a proponent of not knowing, not to just get to the end answer. Cuz there are no end answers, right? But how do we continue to exercise this muscle of being curious and asking questions? That’s, we don’t want to be the one who just knows all the answers. 15:28

That’s boring. It’s so boring. Life gets so incredibly boring when you have all the answers. So let’s go find something to be curious about. That’s my advice for the weekend. <laugh> my advice, I always give advice, um, which is the opposite of what you actually want to do. But that’s my thing when I go for a run, it’s always asking questions. My reasoning, my deducing, why do I think this? Well, if I think this, well what does that mean for this? 15:55

And if I think that, well, what does that mean for this? And what do I believe in all of these questions? It’s, it’s a very heavy exercise. It’s a very difficult one. Uh, but it’s a, it’s an awesome one. It makes life so, so interesting to not know. So let’s get a little exciting. Let’s get a little crazy. Let’s not know something this week and get a little curious. That’s just tons of fun. 16:15

So have a good week. I hope it was helpful. It’s my wistful kind of going back to the, um, I mean, I guess it was late eighties when I was just kind of running around with people and, um, just not knowing anything. Like mid, mid eighties, late eighties, just run around, doesn’t matter. Don’t know anything. Um, but you had a lot of fun and part of it was a maturity cause you’re a kid, right? 16:39

Um, but also it’s, there’s, there’s some credibility to it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for paying attention. Thank you for your time. And uh, with that, I’ll see you next week. Thanks.

Sometimes you meet a person and know they have a story that should be shared. And that’s what happened with me and Dan MacQueen.

I hesitated to put resiliency in the title because the word has been almost ruined due to the hyperbolic nature of our click-bait world. Organizations preach “resiliency,” but it’s more of a “barrel forward” rather than a “be strong and bounce back” type of resiliency. Dan has real resilience.

We THINK we work hard. We THINK we have problems. We THINK our challenges are insurmountable and frustrating. But sometimes, when we hear a story like Dan’s, we recognize that we have things pretty good.

Dan’s got gems. From his commentary on accountability to “post-traumatic growth;” from constructive optimism to screaming, “Can’t you see I’m learning here!?” – there is much to think about and translate to your world after hearing his story.

This is more than just a change in mindset. I’d say it’s a change in being. Hopefully, the lessons you can pull from this episode can make change without having to go through trauma like Dan’s.

More from Dan MacQueen

Web www.macqueendan.com

Instagram @macqueendan

Twitter  @macqueedan

LinkedIn Daniel MacQueen

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Um, they bother me because I don’t feel like they have the proper context and, um, they don’t really hit the mark in the way that they should. And so this week’s guest is going to teach us in a very real way what resiliency is. And I think it’s gonna be a fantastic level of perspective and a lot to learn. I’ve had a, a couple quick conversations with him. I’ve learned a lot already. 1:24

I’m very happy to have here today, Dan McQueen. Dan, welcome to the Bellwether Hub Podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So I want, Dan’s got a story, which is unlike stories you’ve heard before. So Dan, I want you to cue everything up. We’re gonna start with the story, share your story so that we can then pepper you with questions afterward. But we need that context because it’s, uh, it’s pretty wild ride. 1:49

So I’m gonna turn it over to you. Please tell your story. Thanks Jim. So, hello everyone. My name’s Dan McQueen. Uh, until recently I was living in London, Jolly old. I moved back in September, but the story kind of takes place in 2014. I was having these headaches that got worse over a few weeks. I went to Annie twice. For those of you don’t know, Annie is accident emergency in the uk. 2:13

You know, thinking these headaches were kind of serious. I should get them checked out. And I was told, Oh, no, no, they seem like they’re vertigo. We’ve gotten some tests, they don’t seem that serious. We’ll send you home. They gave me some pills and they sent me home for that. But they told me on the way out if my headaches continued to get them checked at an optometrist, she’s like, Okay, sure, whatever. 2:34

So the headaches persisted. They were getting real bad and I decided, You know what, I’m gonna get my eyes checked at an optometrist. Midway through the exam, he stopped it, which is not a casual move. He gave me a sealed envelope, also not a casual move, and told me to go directly to Morfield Hospital, which I did. Sort of, I stopped at home first to grab a book, Jack Richard book, actually by Lee Child. 3:00

Uh, my phone charger, some food I want somebody to eat and some supplies. But I was determinated to the bottom of what was happening with us. So Morefield Hospital turned into tear. Cross turned into, I was having brain surgery the next day because I had a non-cancerous cyst in my brain that needed to be operated on. So zero to 60 in, in a matter of hours, I’m deciding that I’m having brain tomorrow. 3:28

You know, I, I call my manager, message your friends, like, Hey, I’m having this tomorrow. Guess I won’t be in Monday. Messaged my mom and she just retired. So she was able to come to London. So on June 21st, 2014, I was on the operating table. My mom was in the air flying to London, Something went wrong and had a massive bleeding. The brain of brain hemorrhage. I think the cyst burst when they operated. 3:53

So my mom lands and finds them in critical condition. I was in a coma for four weeks. What was in and outta consciousness for months after that, when all was said and done, I was learning how to walk, talk, and smile again. So, needless to say, this kind of rocked my world and rocked my family’s world. Um, I remember waking up in the hospital with my brother, mom and dad around me, and, and I go, I can’t talk. 4:20

Cause I had a breathing tube removed and I couldn’t talk. And I go, Gimme a pen and paper. I write down, I point at my brother, I go, You point down. And I write down the pen and paper. I go, Get me out of here to my brother because I didn’t think I had any insurance for this stuff. And I was thinking, you know, he’ll bust me outta here. Let’s get outta here. 4:43

So needless to say he didn’t, and thank goodness he didn’t. Cause I was in the hospital for months after that. But that’s how things all kicked off for me, Jim, which is, so I could take this in many different directions. Um, one is the perspective on, obviously you didn’t plan for this and obviously this kind of jacked up whatever plans you had eight years ago, and that’s one, right? We never know when something like this could potentially happen. 5:16

But two is the recovery, right? I mean, uh, a bleeding in the brain, learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to smile again, and being able to then build a business, get back with your family, build a life, do all of these things after. I wanna talk about both of those. Um, where do you want <laugh>, where do you wanna start? Talk to me first about the recovery, because if you’re sitting in the hospital for months, um, obviously this is a, so you’re in a coma for a month in and outta consciousness for months. 5:50

Recovery has to be intense. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I was, my leg frozen at an angle in the icu, the intensive carry unit. So my left leg was essentially jacked up and I couldn’t use it. I couldn’t go ahead and walk. I was in a wheelchair, right? So getting in from the bed to the wheelchair took 30 minutes, then 25, then 20 and 15, then then 10, then seven and six and eight, then 10, then five. 6:20

Everything was difficult. Everything was hard. Earned wins. And it took forever to end that bloody wheelchair. But you keep chipping away at this. And then I was transferable to the Wilson Rehab Center. I remember telling my dad when this happened, you know, I made a few thoughts in my head, like strategies to how I’m gonna recover. And the first one was speed. And that was one that I identified earlier is like, this is crucial. 6:41

I need to go fast if I’m gonna go far. I told my dad, you know, you have to apply for these rehab centers. I go, Hey dad, make this happen. Thinking like, I don’t know, he’s gonna like grease the wheels. I make something happen. Like, get me in this rehab center asap. Cause I want to get after this rehab as clearly as I can. Now, I don’t think you did, but I got into Wilson Rehab Center, which is great. 7:05

Uh, but when I first got to Wilson Rehab Center, I couldn’t walk right? I know to walk in. So they were doing this experimental, I dunno if it’s experimental, but they were doing this, this rehab where they inject your, your muscle with Botox, like the stuff you put in your lips and face for women, it kinda relaxes the muscle and allow to stretch it back to normal. So they use this needle. 7:26

It was probably about, well it’s probably about this big to be honest, but it felt like it was a sword going in the back of your leg. And then they would give you this, um, I word this splint every night. Splint was like a cast, and now it was horrifically painful and I never whinged about anything in the hospital, but the splint, I would be like, Oh, this, this fucking splint. Um, I hated the splint because it was so bloody painful. 7:48

And I always say it’s painful. And everyone goes, Okay, sure dad. I’m like, No, no, no. You have no idea how painful this was. I’ll share a story with you now. Jim kind of talks about how painful the splint was. So the first time I wore the splint all the way through night, no issue, no stress, this will be easy. I thought this will be easy. I’m looking forward to, this will be great. 8:07

I’m stretching in the day and the nighttime, and then rehab during the day. The second night after 20 minutes, it was painful. After 30, it was dreadful. After 40 was unbearable, we took the splint off. But we decided to do one hour a night with the splint, because I wanted to walk, I wanted to get back to walking. And how I get back to walking was stretching the leg. So the third night they wrapped splint up, They gimme the clicker. 8:32

We set the time on the phone for one hour. Now the, the ward of the Wilson’s in L shape, so small on this side, long on this side, okay? And after 10 minutes, it’s painful. After 20, it’s dreadful. After 30, it’s unbearable. And I’m thinking, we’re doing this for an hour. This is insanity. What was I thinking? An hour. This is ridiculous. I start passing the clicker back and forth to distract myself from the pain. 8:58

Now I have double vision, which means I can’t see anything. I’m feeling this and I miss one of my tosses and it crashes on the floor. Shit. I look over the edge of the bed, I see the clicker on the floor, the solution to my problems on the floor. The only problem is I’m splinted up. I can’t move. And the floor is about three and a half feet on the ground. Help help by yell. 9:22

Wilson Rehab Centers, this and L Shape, they’re on the far side of the ward. They can’t hear me. No one’s coming. We’re 30 minutes on the board, which means they’re gonna come back and maybe, well, maybe 30, but maybe 40, maybe 50. They might have gone to heating for all I know, Jim, they might have gone forever. I don’t know where they’re gone. The solution to my problem’s right there. The only problem is it’s three and a half feet on the ground on the Oleum. 9:42

If I drop down under the bed, I, I, I did some quick mass in my mind, not my strong suit. I’ll be honest with you, Jim and I decided that it’s about a 50 50 chance, me breaking my arm, a 50 50 shot. So, but if I break my arm at least can click the clicker, get the splint off, and then they can fix my arm. If I don’t go for the clicker, I’m stuck here waiting for them to come back and hoping kinda like a metaphor for this whole thing. 10:08

You can’t wait for someone to come save you. So I decide to risk it and grab the clicker. I crash down in the heap, I flip the coin and the arm holds. I hammer the clicker click, expect them to come burst into the room to come to my rescue. Nay, they kind of strolled in five minutes later. What are you doing on the floor, Dan? Well, let’s not worry about that right now. 10:29

Let’s get the leg off, bleed the split off my leg and get me sorted out there. But I learned some lessons from this. Uh, the first being don’t pass the clicker back and forth with double vision. That’s a bad idea. That’s a good lesson, That’s a great lesson. Uh, I really recommend that. The second being do the splint up at the hip, not at the ankle so I could undo it. Should this happen again? 10:50

Luckily it never did. But like things like that, that you’re always kind of learning and iterating on this, just as in life, like you, you realize like, I failed at this process. Let’s do it better next time, better than yesterday is one thing that I always try to exhume or like to try and portray and like demonstrate. And this was a prime example of let’s, you know, let’s not make the same mistake twice or at least not three times, maybe twice sometimes. 11:18

But that’s to show you how painful display was. I was willing to risk breaking my arm, flipping a coin for the arm 50 50, shot a break of my arm to get the splint off my leg because it was so painful. But it was, it was very much a grueling rehab process. Like I moved from the splint to walking on the Zimmer frame, which is a four post thing that you kind of lurch forward on. 11:40

And every step you take, Jim, it reminds you you’re alive. I’ll tell you that much. I had a grim on my face. There’s a great photo I’ve got. I can pass it to your team afterwards. I’ve got this, like this, this scowl on my face where I’m just walking and trotting on. I moved up to the Ferrari, which is, um, a four wheeled walker that you kind of walk fast on, you can kind of waddle quickly on this. 12:04

And I moved up to Naked Walks. Now Naked Walk was walking without support, raids, just notice like gamification here. Like I’m kind of having fun while I’m doing this. And I kind of progressed the walking space, right? Like it was quite a, quite a progression there. But that should give us something to chat about there. Jim, is there anything that catches your eye? Well, yeah, it’s, so one, people forget about how long an hour is right. 12:30

An hour takes forever when you’re in an excruciating pain. And you know, I get annoyed when I have to sit and watch the kid for 10 minutes and they’re yelling. But this is, you know, this is kind of a different element. But what’s what I take away from that is, um, what you said, you can’t wait for someone else to help you, right? When you calculate, you have to know what you have to do there. 12:51

There’s a little bit about knowing what it’s gonna take to get what you need, but there is an efficacy and accountability aspect in terms of, you know, I’m ultimately responsible for my comfort or helping myself in this moment. I’m ultimately responsible for this and this is my current situation. And, and now it’s up to me to do this. Um, talk to me about how you’re almost going for, you know, it goes beyond that. 13:16

It goes beyond falling outta the bed. It goes into now up to the Ferrari kinda walker, and it goes into the naked walks. Ultimately, this is you and you had to gamify and come with it in your mind. Talk to me about your mind process a little bit. Yeah. So it’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. It’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. So it’s like, well, the drop from the record was probably my fault to be honest, but either way it’s my responsibility to fix the solution. 13:44

Like, I gotta kind of resolve this. And the mindset was so key because your mindset’s everything, right? Like, I’ll share another story with you, Jim, that I think you’re kind of, you’re, you’re teaming me up for. Here is something I call constructive optimism. And this is learning to walk and tune Broadway. This kinda goes to showcase the mindset that I’ve adopted this process soon to walk in tune Broadway, from the naked walks to the Zimmer frame, to the, to the naked walks, to walk in tune Broadway. 14:11

Now tuning Broadway, for those of you that don’t know is in South London who they call up and coming, which means it’s on the verge of like sketchiness. What kind of like sexing up that like developers can call it up and coming, which means like, like 10 years time will be popping, but it’s been up and coming for 10 years. So you never know. But needless to say, it’s a bit of a difficult place to learn to walk again. 14:34

I’m walking with a cane, I’m walking with an eye patch. I’m a unit out there while I’m Bambi Ice, to be honest, I turn the corner on Broadway the first time and get bumped and by someone pretty hard, stagger back and okay, cut off by someone else or someone bleeding on the sidewalk beside me. I’m like, this is wild place to how to walk. People kept bumping into me, crashing past me. 14:55

This is the worst place to learn to walk in the world. Can’t you see? I’m trying to learn here. Can you see, I’m trying to walk here like, gimme a freaking slack, man. I was so frustrated and dejected by this because I’m trying real hard here and you guys aren’t giving me any slack. But I was like, and I was like, this was days that I was dejecting, like,Oh, I gotta walk Broadway. 15:15

This place sucks. This is the worst place I’m gonna walk in the world. And then one day my perspective shifted. This isn’t the worst place to learn how to walk in the world. This is the best place. Because if I can walk here, I can walk anywhere, bumping me, crash past me, bring it on, I look forward to my walks, I look forward to that contact because that’s teaching me in the best place to how to walk in the world. 15:37

Now, tune Broadway didn’t change, right? It’s still tune Broadway, but it went from the worst to the best in my head. And my mood reflected that I began looking forward to my walks bumping into me, crash fasting, bringing on this is all I want. That’s like an example of like how my mindset adapted to this process. Like if I’m, if I think about it differently, the outcome will be different. And I knew that, like, I think how I came up with this mindset shift was how am I gonna think through this problem? 16:09

I’m frustrated by walking into Broadway. How can I make it less crap in my mind, this is the worst place started to walk in the world. I’m like, well, why is the worst? Cause it’s the most difficult. People bump into you, crash past you. Like, well, couldn’t that also be the best? Because that way you’re stress testing isn’t the best place to walk in the world. I was like, well, maybe it is. 16:28

And then I started bringing out that mindset. And when I did that, my whole world changed. Like I, I began looking forward to those walks and, and when you look forward to what you’re doing, it makes all the bloody difference. And I think that’s through this whole process, I began shifting my perspective on like, well is this the worst or is this the best? And like, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in delusions of this is like a good experience, but it’s the experience you’re in right now. 16:54

And like I said, it’s not your fault, but it’s your responsibility. So like I have the responsibility of learning to walk in and I can choose it for it to be the worst, or I can choose for it be the best, but I choose that and I want to choose it the best because then I can adapt this and take it on board. Hope that answers your question, Jim. Well it does. 17:13

Yeah. And it’s, you know, it goes back to the responsibility, right? It’s not your fault that you’re learning to walk there, but it’s your responsibility to do it. And you, I would say your mindset is part of that responsibility. We often talk about responsibility and accountability in terms of getting things done, but the way that we approach getting things done is also our responsibility as well. And you said something nice in there and you know, nobody would cut you slack. 17:38

And I also love where you say, Hey, I’m learning here, right? So if you were to take this out of the context and put it in anybody else’s context in terms of learning a new role or learning something new, it’s a vulnerable moment. It’s a difficult moment and say, Hey, I’m learning here. Nobody’s gonna cut you slack regardless. But it’s still your responsibility to learn. It’s still your responsibility to change that kind of mindset. 17:59

Do you have any, I mean, that sounds good. We hear people about positive mindset all the time and you just have to change the way you think. Um, any tips on what, you know, what made it easier for you to do that? Right? I like to give people the tangibles. Is it, you know, knowing that it’s gonna get easier or knowing that this is the hardest and you’re gonna find cooler places to go? 18:21

Or how do you find the way to enjoy something that you absolutely didn’t look forward to? Well, thank you Jim. That’s a great question. I think like I’m, I wouldn’t say I’m an like an academic at all, but like I do think about things quite a lot and quite in my own mind. And I thought about this like as I mentioned, like this is the worst. Well, why is it the worst? 18:44

Break it down for me. Why is this the worst place? And I mention those reasons, like, well, people bump into you, they crash past you, it’s crowded, it’s dirty, it’s busy, it’s hectic. I’m like, well, if you’re learning to walk again, wouldn’t you wanna learn to walk in the, in that kind of environment? Because that’s stress testing you in this difficult situation. You wanna be fed, spoon fed this stuff, You wanna be stress testing this in the worst environment in the world. 19:06

So in fact, it’s not the worst, it’s the best. I really made a conscious effort of thinking through this process and I knew that like, look, there’s been a number of peaks and valleys in this process, Jim. And, and I knew that like my mindset was gonna be so key for all this, the way I thought about it is so huge. Like, there’s a great quote from epics that I use quite a lot a through line in my talk. 19:26

As a matter of fact, it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it in the matters. It’s not what happens to you, but how you react with the matters. And with the brain hemorrhage, that’s like a, a big blow. It’s like, okay, but it’s not a death blow. And how can you react? How can you learn from this? How can you like stress test yourself to like pick the stuff on board? 19:48

Um, I guess to answer your question, like how would you reframe this? Like when you’re lying in the hospital bed for hour than end and you got lots of time to think and I just thought about how can I beat this? How can I gamify this and make it more fun to, to accomplish these goals and walk? And like you mentioned, the Ferrari, the naked walks, like, I’m having fun here. Um, which is a big part of this process. 20:09

Like how can I make this fun to do? And I kind of reveling, like, I think like my friend introduced me to this, this concept of posttraumatic growth. I don’t mean to jump ahead here, but I’ll mention this briefly. And that’s like, you know, this posttraumatic stress, which is like when you are, let’s say you’re in Afghanistan or something, like a night like a bomb goes off and you’re, you carry that with you for years and, and it haunts you for years. 20:38

Posttraumatic growth kind when something bad happens, but you kind of raise up to the challenge and beyond that, so like now every time something bad happens, I raise up to it. So for instance, this past summer I got let go from my job at Hootsuite, which I was at for nine years. I got nothing but love for sweet, don’t get me wrong, but losing your job is never a good vibe. Right now the stages of grieving are like five stages. 21:04

I’ve managed to kind of condense this down to like feeling shitty acceptance. Went for a booie lunch that afternoon. I went to the Apple store, I got a new computer cuz the next day I was hammering the speaking gig. What a great opportunity is for me to get my speaking career, going to speak organizations and companies about my perspective and mindset, how you can use this to be better than yesterday. I gave myself a lunch to feel bad and down. 21:31

And then I was like, you know what? We’re getting afters tomorrow. We’re getting s today. Like I went to the Apple store that day and the stages agreed have been kind of been condensed to like feeling bad and acceptance is at the bottom. And I kind just fast forward to acceptance because you can wish something didn’t happen, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t move you forward. You can wish all you want, but wishings not gonna do anything. 21:53

Wishing the brain hemorrhage didn’t happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the setback didn’t happen is not gonna do anything. Wishing the job loss isn’t gonna happen, isn’t gonna do anything. I could be wishing this for like a year and then at end of that year I’ll still be well at square one when I could have been taking steps to progress myself if you accept it and move forward, like everything’s, everything’s on me. 22:12

Everything’s my fault, or at least my responsibilities. I mentioned like, it’s not, my father lost my job, but it’s my responsibility to do something about it now and now I get to pursue my speaking career that afternoon. So it’s like the mindset’s so key for this because if you believe it in yourself and you believe it in your soul, like your body will follow. And I’m not saying this as like lip service of like, you should do this and you should have this positive mindset of great vibes. 22:42

Like no, it’s not, it’s not woo-hoo on you. It’s like this is how I live my life. This is how I progressed and navigated these situations. And they weren’t easy, but it was simple to kind of navigate it because once you made that mind up, it’s like, oh no, I’m not going right here. I’m going right around the corner. It’s right around the bend. You kinda understand the road, you can kind of see the map and showcase where you want to go. 23:08

That’s a rant and a half there, Jim. But I hope that gives you some context what I’m thinking about. No, it does and I love posttraumatic growth. It’s, um, and it almost goes hand in hand where it’s for anything, right? Whether it’s a new venture, whether it’s a job you hate, whether it’s going to a networking event, it’s how do I make this fun? How can I actually enjoy myself today? Because we’ve got to judge a mindset going into these things of misery and difficulty. 23:31

And, but logically it’s, you know, you are an individual that was before, now you are an individual that had a brain hemorrhage, so it doesn’t change anything. Um, but I almost feel like, you know, post-traumatic growth is almost like tolerance. The more you meet it, the more you’re able to handle and the more you do it, the more you’re able to, It’s part of growing and learning after it. Would you agree with something like that? 23:57

A hundred percent. And also it’s important to know the hardest thing you’ve ever been through is the hardest thing you’ve ever been through. So when I do my talk and it’s like, well, I’m not gonna have a brain hemorrhage, so like I don’t need to know your talk because that’s not it. It’s like, well sure, like a job loss and a brain hemorrhage is not the same thing, but the mindset you use to adapt to a brain hemorrhage can be used on someone who loses a job or loses a loved one or gets a diagnosis. 24:21

The adversity and resilience you need to fostering yourself to navigate this is the same, same steps. Like to understand what it is and to get that acceptance piece. Because the faster you can get to acceptance, the faster you can progress. Acceptance doesn’t mean it’s fair, doesn’t mean it’s even, doesn’t mean it is justified, but it means it is what it is. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Control the controllables. It’s something that I always say. 24:45

And if you worry about stuff you can’t control, you’re not gonna get anywhere. You can just spin your tires forever and ever and ever. I just punt that if I can’t control it, I punt it. I give zero zero f’s about it. Like, I’m not worried about stuff I can’t control. Can I influence it? Yes. No. If no, zero zero f’s with that, if yes, then I worry about this and I and I take on more would I can do, um, I’ve lost track of your question now, Jim would hopefully that offers some perspective. 25:11

No, it does. Yeah. And it’s, you know, as, as we think about the responsibility you have, we’ve talked before this about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself, right? And I feel like that’s a step in between of situation happens. And then you’ve got the acceptance in between. There’s the feeling. Sorry. Do you eliminate that or how do you overcome that? I mean, it’s, it’s one thing to say, Oh, we’ll just have fun so I won’t feel sorry for myself, but people deal with, you know, traumatic events, which shouldn’t be skipped over. 25:41

I mean, what happened to you was a traumatic event and yet you’re not feeling sorry for yourself, right? You’re, you’re flipping this into an opportunity, so how do you, and that, that’s difficult. I guess everybody does it differently, but talk about feeling sorry for yourself I think would be something very relevant and you’d almost get the agency to do that where people would say, Yeah, I get it. Talk to me about, you know, feeling sorry for yourself. 26:03

Do you ever, and and how do you change that mindset? Well, I’ll give you like the example of the lowest I’ve ever been in my life, Jim, which is, so the setback happened, I got back to walk and got back to work, um, for two months and then I had a second setback that happened. I was found unconscious in my flap by my mom. The sh that’s in my brain had blocked leading to hydrocephalus or water on the brain. 26:30

It resulted in an ambulance ride, another bad haircut and a new medical alert bracelet. So I had traumatic brain surgery because the shunt blocked. And I woke up in the hospital for the second time here in the beeping of the, the, the heart rate monitors. Not the respirator this time, but the heart rate monitors is what, what happened? What happened? Like, well, Dan, you had a second setback, you need emergency brain surgeon. 26:53

Like what do you mean? He’s like, Well, you’re back in the hospital. This happened two days ago. You’re working on getting back to normal. Like, so this happened again. Yeah, it’s very rare. It happens less than 10% of case. And like, okay, and na was I low like all my progress, I just got back to work. And you’re telling me that’s ripped away from you. Like,like overnight I was, oh, talk about a pity party, man. 27:22

I was woes me for a couple days, couple of days of straw. Like, well this isn’t fair, this isn’t fair at all. Like, it’s not fair. You’re right. And where’s that thinking gonna get you? Like I could be woes me poopy pants the whole time or I could just, you know what, I know how to build back better. I know how to do this. I’ve done this once before, this time I can walk so I’m not in the same position I would before I can get back to work and progressively build back towards whatever I’m doing. 27:51

I already been through rehab, so I wasn’t entitled to go through rehab again, which is a big knock. I use all my own at home through like phone conferences or like in person meets at my home flat. Like that was tremendously low. And I gave myself a few days to feel bad and low, but I knew that at the end of the day, like I said, it’s not my fault, but it’s my responsibility. 28:13

No one, no one’s coming to save you. Like if you want to get outta this hole, you’re gonna have to chop wood carry water is what I say, which means like, get to work, like progressively get to work, chop wood, carry water, put the work in and get your perspective right to like build back up. Like it’s not, And that was like, that was pretty low, Jim, I’m not gonna lie to you. 28:36

That was like, everyone’s against me. Why is this, why is this happened to me? This isn’t fair. And that’s wrong, it’s not fair, but at the end of the day, it’s not gonna get you anywhere. I can say it’s not fair to the home. Right. Bless you. Doesn’t change anything. How about this, talk to me about, I didn’t know you before this, obviously. Yeah. Um, how has this entire experience, cha, I mean, we know it changed you, okay, Yes, obviously, but how does it change your belief system? 29:12

Has it solidified one in, in your mind? Do you feel like you have a new perspective on responsibility? I’m sure you do, but you know, would you say that you’re capable almost of more now than you were before based on mindset? Talk to me a little bit about your belief system and, and what’s changed over the last eight years now? Thanks Jim. That’s a good question. I think before this happened, I was really happy to go lucky guy. 29:38

I still am, but everything came easy to me, or at least I made it seem like it did. I kind of figured out a way to work things like with, with life, with work with girls. Like everything just kind of came easy to me. And then this brain hammer happenss and everything’s stripped away and nothing’s easy. You know, getting into a wheelchair takes 30 minutes and 25, then 20, then 15. Like, it’s like every ounce of me is going into this. 30:06

And like, I really made effort not to show that I was trying before this happened. And after it happened, I want show that I’m trying because I am trying, I’m trying my damage to make this happen. My perspective’s changed dramatically, Jim, it’s like everything on me now. I, I’ve read this book, um, Extreme Ownership by Jaco Will, I’m not sure if you’ve read that one. Essentially it goes everything on me. Everything’s my responsibility. 30:30

Everything’s my fault. Everything’s in my power to control and improve. And I’m kind of a self-help junkie. I, I love improving myself and, and finding little hacks to make things better and easier. So I’ve got a great morning routine. So I’ll, I’ll wake up early, go for exercise workout, go for a meditation, go for cold shower, like have these habits that I put in place to kind of make myself be better than yesterday. 31:00

So my perspective’s changed tremendously, Jim, and it’s been because of this experience, because I’ve had to navigate this, I’ve had to navigate this. If I didn’t, I would wouldn’t be here. I believe that I’m, I am where I am today because of the habits I put in place and I am where I am today because of the mindset I put in place to allow me those habits. Talk to me about your hacks. 31:21

Um, you talked a little bit about constructive optimism I think is probably a hack. You’ve got your morning routine and the habits, which is setting yourself up for success. Do you have any favorite hacks that you could share with people that you’d wanna, you know, is one of those your best or, or what would you wanna, what would you wanna share on that? I got one that I’ll share with you, Jim, and one that I mentioned earlier, I think, uh, is called ice icebreakers, icebreakers. 31:48

So when you’re walking with double vision and you’re like, fatigue is a big thing with me and I’m seeing two, like I see two of you right now, right? So my brain’s processing two and the mind the wheels are spinning. It’s a lot of bandwidth and energy to like do this. Any chance I can say bandwidth, I do that because it allows me to be better for longer. I say that like I’m walking around at 75% battery and I wake up every minute. 32:14

I wake up is like 74, 73, 72. When I get below 50, I’m a less pleasant. Below 30, I’m a bit of a prick. I need to meditate to recharge and refresh that. But icebreaker is one thing that I use to like walking in a busy city. So you’re from New York. I used to live in London. So the circuses in London are just out of bloody circus. Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Chaos. It’s madness. 32:41

I founded this hack called an icebreaker. So what you wanna do is find the fellow pedestrian walk in your direction and walk behind them in their slip stream. And they’re wake in their, in their ice break wake. If you would let them face the oncoming traffic and you walk behind them and that saves bandwidth because you’re not dealing with the frontal abrasive walking through, you’re getting the wake of their walking like an icebreaker would. 33:03

So like you just followed behind the icebreaker and this seems like a stupid hack and it is stupid, but like, it, it saves little bits of bandwidth and allows me to be better for longer. Because if I don’t do this, if I’m the guy breaking the ice, it just drains your battery more. And that battery’s so important to me now that I wanna protect it at all costs. And it’s a fun way of me to identify these when I’m walking through the surfaces in London, like a, um, a stroller or a pram, a great icebreaker because it takes a lot of space, like a couple walking root iceberg. 33:36

Think about space, you walk behind them and let them take the frontal impact. I’ve also got another one, Jim, that I’ll share with you is, um, timer on the phone. So, or alarm on the phone. Let’s say if you remember something you wanted to do, you set the alarm on your phone, let’s say, I don’t know, it’s 10 30 my time in Vancouver. So I set it for like three o’clock and writing on my phone saying, emailed Jim speaking assets. 34:01

That’s alarm three 30. And then I, when the alarm goes off at three 30, I check my phone to know that, oh, I gotta email Jim the speaking assets and I would’ve forgotten that otherwise, or timer on my phone if I’m, you know, scrolling Instagram or, or uh, YouTube at nighttime before bed. I’ll send my time for 10 minutes for 15 minutes when the timer goes off time to bed. Like I use the phone to help me be better and to remind me to keep on track. 34:31

So it’s a way that I’ve kind of hacked my life because I need those hacks now because things aren’t as easy as they used to be for me. A lot of work to keep this on the, on the tracks, right? And if I don’t do those things, things slip and I don’t wanna be slip. I’m trying to, trying to keep myself looking a certain way, presented a certain way, being a certain way. 34:52

Yeah, and it sounds, I mean if you were to take that metaphorically, it’s almost your icebreaker could be your social network, your, um, use of technology in a way to keep you focused rather than distract your focus. Um, and it’s just being intentional with all of the actions because right, we, everyone’s got a drain battery. Um, and it’s important to keep that focus and, and, and keep it at its max. What’s, um, so you said before speaking assets. 35:19

Talk to me a little bit about what’s next for you, How anything anyone could do to support you. I know you’re, you’re big on the speaking circuit now. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, thanks Jim. Uh, I’m going into speaking full bo like I’m, I’m trying to make a difference and share my perspective and change your team’s perspective. Like I’ve got like a whole treasure tro full of assets and hacks and mindsets and perspective that I can impart on your team to help ’em shift their perspective and, and shift how they view things. 35:52

I’ve identified a few problems that I can really help address regards to retention, helping your team understand, you know, what they’ve got, their perspective where they’re at and help save you retention. Also culture. Uh, I really think I can impart someone into culture and understand what they’ve got and just how do they view things differently. That perspective of like the worst to the best help you impart that. In the last one, I think it really pairs the sales training. 36:18

Uh, we’ve spent a lot of money on sales training these days. See these big booms after the sales training, but after, after a few months, it reverts back to medium and it dips down. What’s missing is the perspective and the mindset. You wire the house properly. Let me show you how to turn on the switch. If I can give your team the tools, the assets, the perspective needed to be better than yesterday, maybe that stays higher, longer, above the median. 36:42

But my passion speaking, Jim and I really wanna share the lessons learned because it would be a shame to leave these lessons learned on the sidelines of life. I paid for these in blood, sweat, and tears and I’ve fallen down seven times to get up eight and I’m busting my ass to make this happen. And I’ve, I’ve paid for these price, I’ve paid steep price for these and I paid them by touching the stove Nova Hot. 37:05

And sometimes I forget that it’s hot and I touched it. Again. Let me tell your team that, uh, I want to, you know, I’m really driven to do this because I wanna make a difference and I wanna make, impart the lessons I’ve learned with your team. I think that’s something I’d love for your audience, you know, feel, please feel free to reach out to me as a speaker. I’ve done a lot of online and in person speaking opportunities. 37:32

Uh, as I mentioned, the job loss this summer was a knock but not a death blow and a good opportunity for me to get the speaking going on, on as a full-time gig now. So that’s the best way I can imagine Reju and that’s, you know, best done over LinkedIn or websites can be uphold the next week. And that’s queen dan.com. Perfect. Very good. So McQueen dan.com, find ’em on LinkedIn. We, we usually wrap these up, Dan, with book recommendations. 38:02

Uh, I got two for you man, and I got two questions for you afterwards, if you don’t mind. Of course, you can ask away. I know you told me that before we started recording and I’m very nervous about what your questions are going to be. So I had two books for you. One fiction, one non-fiction. The first is a nonfiction. You heard of this one No Spark. So it’s like a Myers Briggs test, but it’s like a more modified version. 38:25

Help you identify what lights you up in work. So for instance, my work sparko type is the sage or the advisors, the my type and the sage is my shadow. And the essentialist is my anti type, which means like I get drained by doing like admins, but I get, I get really fired up by offering advice or, or listening and offering some perspective on both elements of that. So that’s my nonfiction, which is good that you’re getting into speaking now, by the way. 38:55

Very good. Exactly. Yep, exactly. It’s a good fit, right? Yep. And my fiction is actually a book my dad wrote. Oh, nice. Called Hero Haters. This came out recently. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a thrill book based on, um, a gripping tale of uh, an author who gets, you know, part of the hero medals. They start disappearing. There’s a big mystery around, this is his first book. He was a journalist for his whole career and his first publish book. 39:27

He is getting a lot of good reviews on this. You can buy this on Amazon or Good Reads or Indigo in Canada, but it’s called Hero Haters. And I really recommend this. I haven’t finished it myself. I’m working my way through it, but it’s a great book. I will read it. That’s perfect. Uh, Jim, can I ask you a few questions? Do it. You ready for this? You’ve been ready. Um, so question one, if you could go back in time, you go back in time and ask your younger self or tell your younger self some hacks or truths about podcasting before you started this, what would they be? 40:07

From what you know now, um, truths about podcasting you’ve learned about podcasting With what I’ve learned about one, number one is just get started because nobody’s gonna listen to it at the beginning. So you can always make your practice ones that if you don’t like it, you can delete it. But as long as you take the effort to put it in and you get the practice down, eventually you’ll put it out. 40:33

That’s one too. When you do put it out and people do listen to it, nobody’s gonna give you the negative feedback you thought you were gonna get. Right. And people are incredibly supportive and that’s great. Um, and so I guess if I were to wrap that up is do it. Take that risk and don’t worry what other people are doing because it’s not a race. Build your own. That would be my advice. 40:57

That’s a good question. See a pretty easy question. Pretty easy question. Second one. Yeah. Um, you’ve spoken to a wide variety of guests around a wide variety of subject matters. What are some lessons you’ve learned yourself from these interviews that you like hold dear to your heart and you kind of take on board with your, in your everyday life? Um, everyone on the planet has something interesting to share and it’s, um,you know, if you look at my guests, the majority of my guests, uh, are normal people in extraordinary circumstances or with really good just things that we don’t really focus on, right? 41:45

All the way back to my first episode on, uh, a guy who does lean, he’s a good friend of mine in a bank, how he implemented lean processes into his house to keep the family organized. I thought it was super awesome. Um, friends who are public speaking coaches giving their advice, people like you who have had incredible things happen to them and how they’re resilient in a real resiliency way and have come back and could share their wisdom. 42:09

Um, everybody on the planet has something excellent to share would be my my one thing to say to that. Um, and that’s probably what I take away from all my guests. Jim, that’s fantastic. I hope I answered them okay. No, those was a very good question. Thank you. Very good answers. Thank you. I think they’re really good to know because you’ve had the experience of speaking with so many people. I was really curious to see what Latin with you and what was a big takeaway. 42:34

That’s good to know. Everyone’s got something interested to say. I like their laugh. They do. Yeah. It’s, you know, they just don’t know to say it. Um, or they don’t necessarily have the opportunity. But Dan, you had the opportunity today and I appreciate it. This is, um, this is, you know, it’s an incredible story and it’s an amazing lesson. And as things go so quickly, if anything it’ll make someone hear this reevaluate what’s important, reevaluate their own particular situation, get some good perspective on, you know, the difficulties that, that we could be facing and everything else. 43:10

If I made Jim, Yeah, life happens for you, not to you. Mm-hmm.. And I believe that with all my heart. Like, I get up every day and I’m like, I get to do this. And you know, stuff can happen to you that kind of sets you back and it’s like, you know what, You get to do this, you get to navigate through this difficult time. And now I feel not invincible cause that’s the wrong word, but like, what are you gonna come at me with, man? 43:38

Like, what, what is the world gonna throw me that’s gonna be so shocking and, and perplexing for me not to navigate? It’s like, well, I’m losing my job this summer. Like, well that was a, that was a blow for sure. That’s a heart blow. But like, compared to what I’ve been through, that’s like a very minor blip on my radar. And like when you start addressing this difficult stuff, you start dealing able to realize that you can navigate this in a better way. 44:02

One hack, one more hack I wanna share with your team here. Jim, is cold showering? Yes. Sounds off putting. Sounds gross. I know I was a bit of an apprehensive guy myself back in the day. Now I shower and I had cold every day for two to three minutes and I had hyperventilate and I forced myself to go into a stressful state. And I get outta that shower and you’re still warm from the shower, but you get little, little sleeve of cold on and you just feel invigorated and, and take on the day. 44:34

But you’re making yourself go into that hardship every day on purpose. That one you face in real life. You can navigate this in a much more pragmatic and thoughtful way. I’m telling you this, try the cold shower, Jim, have you tried this cold shower before? I I do a cold shower every morning. Absolutely. You start I started it during the pandemic, I start warm and then at the end I turn it to cold.

A month ago, I published an article on HR.com regarding how we measure the value of coaches and hold them accountable. 

It’s been an ongoing discussion in the tiny world of coaching – this challenge of showing value and ROI on what are typically “soft skills” and items difficult to measure. 

But what’s rarely discussed is how we hold coaches accountable for the promises of development that they make. 

We’ve seen the news recently of layoffs and changes happening across numerous industries. And what I’m seeing based on this is an increase in individuals looking to pay for coaches out of their own pockets – either they are looking to better position themselves amid layoffs within a company, or are looking for a career coach to help them land their next gig. 

If you happen to be in this camp, or, if you work with coaches or a coaching program in your organization, I would encourage you to move beyond just the ROI conversation (it’s still needed!) and move the discussion to accountability as well. For any coaching engagement to be truly successful, all three parties need to be accountable: coach, client and organization. 

Vulnerable people often look for a guru, and there is no shortage of those in the coaching world. However, when everyone claims to be an expert or offers a promise to the yellow brick road, they should be held accountable for what they can and can’t deliver. 

As always – happy to chat about how Bellwether approaches this philosophically and realistically – we guarantee success in our coaching engagements. 

Thanks and have a great week!

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And, um, and it’s an important topic because a lot of people need it. And it’s, it’s, you know, I’ll tell you why. Let me just tell you why the world is, is buckling and it’s a difficult place to be right now. And there are a lot of people, I’m having a lot of conversations from a developmental standpoint. Um, people are either looking to invest in themselves to paying outta pocket for coaches, uh, to make sure that they’re positioned well before layoffs happen. 0:53

It’s a little too late for that, but people are making that investment right now. How do I do it? Who do I talk to? I’m having a lot of, uh, conversations like that. They’re also people looking for career coaches who I don’t typically work with, but I, I’ll refer them if you’re looking for that. Um, who unfortunately were wrapped up in the layoffs, all kinds of layoffs. I get a lot of those phone calls as well. 1:13

Um, and so I, I recently wrote an article, um, I I, I called it Fire All the Coaches and they, they very prudently changed the name of it to questioning the ROI or, or something along those lines. Um, I’ll put a link to it under this on, on the Bellwether Hub site. Um, but basically it was the argument of, as we look at what everybody’s looking to do and needing a coach, and there are a lot of vulnerable people, and I’ve, I’ve harped on this a lot and I apologize, but it’s very important, and this aligns very much with the previous episode on advocating for yourself is, um, there are a lot of vulnerable people who are looking for gurus. 1:55

And we need to make sure that we’re holding these gurus accountable, right? For the promises of development that they’re making. There’s the old saying, if you can’t do something, you teach. And if you can’t teach, you coach. Um, and I remember when I first got started in coaching, people were like, Oh, really? You’re a coach? Okay.You know, my half idiot cousin, um, who didn’t graduate college became a coach. Uh, I’ve seen all kinds of coaches. 2:17

There’s, there’s career coaches, executive coaches, women’s empowerment coaches. I just saw a social security coach the other day, wellness coaches, retirement coaches. There is a coach for anything and everything that you could possibly need and that’s great <laugh>. But, but, but, and I see this a lot in organizations and I get a lot of blank faces and I can’t believe it hasn’t hit them yet. Um, and I will drive this home for you. 2:48

If you are looking to spend money on you to invest in a coach, you’re actually, it’s not an investment in a coach. It’s an investment in you. And that coach needs to deliver you an ROI that’s acceptable to you, you that warrants the amount of money that you’re paying them. If you want to pay someone a hundred bucks an hour to listen to your problems, to give you advice, that’s fine, but you’re getting a hundred dollars an hour kind of advice, right? 3:10

Good coaches are a lot more expensive than that. Um, but anyway, so that’s what what spawned this conversation is I was talking to the head of field development at a bank and they’re spending buku bucks on coaches. And I, I knew this guy from when I worked in corporate, he was very gracious with his time. I just wanted to hear his perspective. I wasn’t pitching on anything. It was purely a, a friendly conversation. 3:34

And um, and he told me he was firing all their coaches, all the coaches that, that this, this company had, had hired to get their people all set up. And I said, Good, tell me more. That’s great. Awesome. Fire. All the coaches, um, basically everyone that was going through coaching was doing worse than everyone who wasn’t doing coaching. And I said, That’s a good reason to fire the coaches, right? Um, not only are you losing the productivity because they’re going off to sit in these coaching sessions, but they’re also now doing worse. 4:04

So they’re actually doing damage, right? Whoever these coaches were, then he told me how much he was paying for the coaches, and I almost choked. I laughed at him a little bit, um, cuz I didn’t think he was serious. And then I realized he was serious. And then I tried to back it back a little bit and I think I kind of pissed him off. Um, I couldn’t believe the amount of money they were spending on coaches. 4:24

Um, and ultimately I told them in a very nice way, it’s your own fault, right? They were holding, there was no accountability on the coaches that they were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on for these coaches, for all these advisors and all these other people. Um, not one success metric was defined. Not one way that they knew that this was a good investment. And the only way they figured it out was that they decided to take a look and said, Oh, these people are actually doing worse. 4:50

Okay? There was no set goal for, for the engagement. And, and then it formed a lot for me as I was setting up my program, um, because I’ve had similar conversations over time. Is there are these promises of what we can do. And you say, Well, how do you measure and say, Oh, well you can’t really measure leadership. Well know when we see it. You know, they say all these things, but there is, you know, if we’re making an investment, especially individuals who are paying out of their own pocket right now, you are the one who’s responsible for dictating success and what you expect of the coach. 5:25

If you hire someone to fix your computer, you have an expectation that they’re going to fix your computer and you’re gonna know that it’s fixed and it’s very clearly defined. My computer now works. It’s a little more difficult when we’re dealing with these intangible types of things. And so you have to tie it to behavior and you have to tie it to all these different things. And there are ways to establish an ROI for these intangible things that you’re not able to really measure. 5:50

Um, so I put this out there for those in hr, those executives who are looking for coaches for their teams, those individuals looking for coaching for themselves. Um, I don’t take clients unless I know that you could be helped, that I can help you. Um, I have fired three clients because it didn’t work and I gave them the money back. Um, and, and again, this is, you know, we’re dealing with vulnerable people right now who need help. 6:20

And so I think it’s very important for you to go into any kind of coaching engagement. And this is an advocating conversation for you. And this is for beyond coaching, right? This is a metaphor. Everything I talk about could be a metaphor you can go into so many different things is you are spending money. How are you going to know that this was money well spent? And how are how are you going to measure this? 6:43

Coaching works? Coaching works, it works. Uh, and it’s very good and it’s necessary. Coaching is necessary right now because the world is changing so incredibly fast. Um, we need someone to push our boundaries. We need someone to challenge our thinking. We need someone to question our judgements. We need someone to teach us how to move up in an organization, how to communicate and behave at much senior level, uh, senior levels of the organization, how to think in more of an enterprise fashion versus the smaller teams that, that we’ve been working in. 7:15

Um, how to communicate at different levels. Uh, and so we need coaches, we need good coaches. And if you are thinking of getting a coach, if you are thinking of doing any other kind of investment in you, which I think more people are going to be doing, and I think people are gonna be smarter and a little more tighter with their purse strings. Um, we have to figure out a measurable way to know that your coach is good. 7:43

Uh, anybody could promise anything. And there are a lot of, of snake oil salesman out there. And so I would encourage you to ask for the guarantee, ask for them to guarantee success. Uh, we guarantee success. And if you don’t hit it, you get the money back. So what I told the guy at the bank who was so angry, I said, Here’s how you should have structured your, your coaching engagement. The organization’s paying the bill, so they’re being held accountable, The person being coached, you should hold accountable in some way because you’re investing in them to change some kind of behavior. 8:13

And the coach has to be held accountable. So what you do is you have the individual pay the coach half, and if the coaching individual can figure out and get to whatever they gotta do, then the organization comes in and pays them both back. That’s how you do it. Coach doesn’t get paid, uh, the full thing. If they don’t hit their goals, the individual gets their money back. So it actually is cost, it costs neutral to them, and then the bank gets the ROI because they’re changing the behaviors and getting the revenue and doing all that other stuff. 8:40

So, um, for those, I don’t wanna spend, I don’t wanna harp too much on that little philosophy, but if you are thinking about coaching and setting up a coaching program, I’m happy to go into a lot of details on that and the way that we structure our contracts and everything else. Um, but it’s the wild west out there and, and everyone’s capable of doing great things. We just need a little bit of push and hold people accountable for the promises of development that they’re making. 9:05

It’s the only thing I’m gonna say. And we, we need to hold everybody accountable for the things that they’re saying people aren’t really thinking. And, um,you know, if you’re gonna make a promise, you gotta deliver. And that’s what I’ll leave you with <laugh>. It’s a quick episode today. I hope this thing doesn’t die again. Um, it’s a little zoom recorder, but uh, have a great week. Um, think about your coaching, think about your development, and think about ways that you can invest in you and get a really big roi, whether it’s for you or for your company, for anybody else. 9:39

And I’m, as always, I’m happy to talk about it. So have a great week. Enjoy. Thank you for listening to my little rant. And next week I’ve got an interview, uh, with a very incredible individual who’s overcome some incredible stuff. Uh, Dan McQueen will be on the episode, uh, The Bellwether Hub Podcast, so more on that and more blog posts and everything else on bellwetherhub.com. As always, I’ll talk to you soon.

Up this week: How to Advocate for Yourself. 

I recognize it’s not something we typically think about. We see change happening, we get frustrated, we look externally at what others have or have not done, we blame and move on. 

In addition, we are finding that more and more everything is done for us – technology makes everything easy. I speak to many groups who “defer to others,” i.e. wait for someone else to do things for us. 

The problem with this approach is multi-faceted – we can’t expect others to subscribe to our individual timelines and needs. Just because we find something important for us, others would see a different perspective more important to themselves. I think of people trying to buy houses today, frustrated that so many people have “bought the Airbnbs and jacked up the housing prices while lowering inventory.” 

It’s a problem vs. circumstance challenge: problems we can solve, circumstances we must respond to. And 99% of our “problems” are actually just circumstances. 

While there is a collective general sentiment and group need to accommodate a bigger picture, we still have an accountability to ourselves to ensure that we are doing what’s best for ourselves … and putting our best out there to get it. This requires us to be educated, be curious, do the work on what we believe, understand that beliefs don’t mean truths … and so much more. 

Advocating for yourself isn’t just screaming about what you want. It’s about asking good questions and making sure your questions are answered in a way that you can understand. We may not like the answers … but such is life. 

Lots to think about as we set ourselves up for success, but finding your voice is an important first step. 

Enjoy the week! 

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3,2, 1. Welcome to Bellwether, episode 109, The topic today, How to advocate for yourself. And it’s a big topic, very pressing today. I feel like, you know, big picture, I’ll just jump right into it. I’m just gonna jump right into it today. Big picture, everything is done for us, and I think that’s dangerous and we don’t have to work for anything anymore. And one of the big tenants that I realize a little too late, or you hear it and you don’t internalize it too much, is that we are accountable.

We are accountable, period. But we’re accountable to ourselves above all others. And we have a responsibility for ourselves above all others. And, you know, we talk about ethical philosophy, do what’s best for others, and, and you become good yourself, and yada yada yada, and all that stuff. And that’s true. But I like to flip that. And it’s kind of what I wrote the book on. It’s what I, what I had talked about other times, uh, a lot of other times is, you know, I would argue that ethical philosophy has a backwards, where you have an obligation to focus on yourself so that you can be in service to other people.

So they’re getting your best. And part of that, uh, is, is advocating for yourself and making sure you are getting what you need and getting what’s what’s appropriate. And too often we defer to others and expect others to be doing what’s in our best interests. Now, this can quickly go down into a rabbit hole of <laugh>. What’s the appropriate limit of, uh, what’s best for me versus the, the bigger world? I’m looking at you anti-vaxxers.

Um, but, but we have to, we have to find that balance. We got a little spider here. Hello. Um, and so, you know, there are a few different angles to think about here. So when I think about everything’s being done for us and we expect things to be done for us, and I think that’s dangerous, and that gives us an expectation that things will be done for us in other types of, of scenarios, uh, to often we defer, Oh, that person’s an expert, so that’s okay.

Um, but we expect other people to subscribe to what we need, and we don’t necessarily question it. Um, oftentimes we’re told we’re supposed to be humble and just take what we’re given that’s wrong. Uh, which you’ve heard me talk about the humility. And, and I say it’s, it’s not wrong to be humble. I think a lot of people misinterpret humility and that causes them to have ineffective actions. Um, so it’s, I I would say it’s wrong to be a lot of these things.

So it requires us to, to just think differently, but it gives us an additional responsibility. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Um, because there is a, a much larger picture than ourselves. And so we can ask good questions. There’s an appropriate way to advocate for ourselves, but at the same time, we have a responsibility to the larger world around us. And how do we find that balance in a really appropriate way?

You know, the big news this week was this professor at Princeton who got fired, not at Princeton. He used to be at Princeton. Now he is at nyu. He retired from Princeton. Now he is a, a chemistry professor at nyu. And he got fired because there was a petition of about 80 kids in his organic chemistry class or something who said that the class was too hard. And he got fired. And there are two people on both sides of the camp.

And the people, you know, they advocated. They said, Look, people are getting zeros on these tests. It’s impossible to pass, and you’re ruining our medical careers valid, I suppose. But then there were the people who worked with the teachers saying, Look, we gave them all these resources. It’s more of a recent problem. It’s the same class that we’ve had before. These people never opened the resources that we gave them. And so, you know, they tried to make these adaptations that people didn’t adopt.

Other people were fine, who went through the extra stuff and did the extra work and, and kind of worked hard to do it. And so what’s that balance to advocate for this group? Uh, and making sure that people are getting what they needed to be successful. Um, so you have an obligation to do work. You have an obligation to adapt. You have an obligation to, to mold yourself into what a larger picture is doing.

But at the same time, you have to ask for help and do what you need in, in, in advocating for yourself. So first, what does that mean? Let’s, let’s talk about what advocating for ourselves really means. Because, um, advocating is a big word. It’s not just having, you know, complaining and having people do what you want. Um, it’s making sure that people are answering what you need and asking, answering your questions, asking really good questions to make sure that you’re getting what you, what you need.

This could be in the workplace, this could be medically, this could be, uh, educationally, it could be whatever, whatever you need. And when we, we talk about advocation, it’s not about dictating your will on other people. That’s not advocating for yourself, but it’s openly and publicly supporting ourselves, which is different, very, very different than just imposing your will on everyone else. Um, we need to speak up when something doesn’t jive and we can ask really good questions.

And, and we recognize there may be a general, general sentiment of what’s needed. May need a slight tweak for us. We need to make the tweak. That’s okay. Um, there is a betterment for the the bigger collective group, but we can’t assume that other people are thinking about us in the way that we think about us. So we have to advocate for ourselves within our structures. There are confines of the world that we live in.

Uh, we have a society and a responsibility to society within which we live a responsibility to the educational system within we, within which we live. That would be the NYU story. We have an allocation to, you know, have you just lowered the quality of education because this guy made it too hard, uh, and you fired him. Um, what are our own expectations of ourselves? And what are the expectations that we wanna hold for the people around us?

And these are questions we have to answer as individuals. Uh, when I think about it in the workplace, cause I always like to bring this to the workplace, to bring it to the workplace. Uh, when we think about we can’t assume what other people are thinking about us. We hear a lot of these things all the time. And I hear it, especially in coaching. You know, someone will notice if I work hard enough, work hard, put your head down and you’ll be rewarded.

Um, this person’s the team leader, so they must know what’s going on. Uh, we make a lot of these assumptions that are just wrong because we’ve heard these assumptions or we felt these assumptions over time. Maybe when we first got into the organization and we were young, we just assumed the manager knew what was going on, and we just did whatever it was. Uh, I was told since I was a little kid, work hard.

And people will notice. Um, yeah, they’ll notice, but you’re not gonna be rewarded for it. Uh, you’re gonna be taking advantage of. And so, or you could be taking advantage of, it’s not always true. You know, um, you know, you, you can work hard, but you also have to know how to navigate. It’s your responsibility to navigate. People aren’t necessarily taking advantage of you. You just haven’t navigated in the right kind of way.

And that was my problem. Um, do I, I certainly wouldn’t blame other people for that. Um, but it’s, it’s beyond the workplace as well. And when I think about, you know, how to take action, right? And this is ultimately what it comes down, we have an accountability to ourselves to take action in the best way for ourselves, right? So you can work really hard. Don’t wait for someone to tell you and recognize cuz people are busy thinking about themselves.

How do you speak up and ask questions? You know, am I on the right path? How do I get to that next job? This is the next thing that I want. And articulate that, articulate what’s best for you beyond work. I think a lot, and what really drove me to start thinking about this now that I’m like 10 minutes into the podcast is this constant discussion on housing. Um, nobody can buy a house right now for a lot of different reasons.

Uh, and so this is a big millennial problem, and I hate using the term millennial, but it’s true. They’re in their, you know, thirties and, and I guess they’re in their thirties. That’s the millennial age, the thirties. And this is when you buy houses, and this is when you start families and you do all that stuff. Pandemic hit everyone bought houses, prices weren’t skyrocketing. Now interest rates are crazy. Nobody can afford a house.

You’ve got hedge funds, uh, investing in houses as a safe kind of way to, to funnel money for a down economy. So they’re buying up all the, the houses. So the starter home is effectively gone. But the other thing, and you see people complaining about it, is a lot of millennials bought like seven houses and they’re using them for Airbnb and everything else. And, um, and people are saying, Look, this is why I can’t buy a house because you bought seven of ’em and you’re running out on Airbnb.

This is bullshit. But guess what? Life lesson, um, <laugh> you waited too long. Or, um, or I mean, to be fair, there’s also people aren’t making what they used to make. So that’s, that’s kind of a different story as well. But, you know, there is a, an accountability aspect of I can’t buy a house because you should not be doing something and or you should be doing something or, you know, we’re pointing our fingers.

And I hate it when somebody says, you should or I can’t because you, um, and there are two, two things to think about. There are problems and there are circumstances and problems you could solve. 99% of our problems are not problems. They’re circumstances. Okay? So problems you could solve, you can’t solve the fact that other people are buying Airbnbs and trying to rent them out, okay? That’s a circumstance in which you have to respond to problems, you could solve circumstances you respond to.

And so we can’t dictate what other people need to do so we can do something we need to adapt. And, and when we say advocating for ourselves, it’s not just speaking up, it’s taking action for ourselves. And so this is the big, this is the big rub in terms of accountability and advocating in all of these things. All these a words is, uh, we need to think hard about what actions we could take.

We’re gonna have to take some risks in terms of getting to where it is, getting to the next level at the workplace. Buying that house is buying house even, you know, this is, this gets into the fun philosophical stuff. Do you even really need to buy a house? Um, and how do you do it in really funky ways? Um, and this goes back to, you know, when I talk about belief systems and what do you really believe?

And can we question everything? What assumptions do we make? And can we do, you know, is a 5 29 really the best way to save for your kids when you’ve got such a narrow way to invest? If I were to put all this money away from my in a 5 29 for my kid, what’s college gonna be like in 20 years? Right? Is it even gonna be a college? Why don’t I just put it into a brokerage account And when they grow up, say, Hey, here’s$500,000.

Start a business, right? Would that be a better way to, to set my kids up for success? Is college really setting your kids up for success? What assumptions are built into all of these frameworks that are around us? You need to think about what’s best for you and your family. And it may not be all of these things that were set up for a general, you know, let’s do this for the collective.

Good, that’s fine. But you may need some tweaks and you may need to thumb your nose at some of those things that, you know, we have these assumptions on, on what it should be. So we have to take action and responsibility for getting ourselves up to success. Now, I will agree with you, the housing market’s a bunch of, uh, bs right now. Thank God we bought a house so long ago. Um, and so I feel that pain, right?

It’s, I’m not saying it’s, you know, it’s not your fault that you can’t buy a house completely, um, or in some cases at all, right? I mean, I know these people who, who made decisions and they’re paying off all these crazy student loans and they’re, they’re raising kids and they’re doing all of these things. And, and there are some people would say, Well, you shouldn’t have had kids and you shouldn’t have gotten to college.

And, um, I think that’s bogus. Don’t say you should or shouldn’t have people made decisions and, and you know, it’s where they are today, okay? So don’t tell someone what they should or shouldn’t do. Um, but what I would say is, you know, it’s now a response mechanism is how are you responding to the circumstance within which you find yourself? That’s where accountability really lies. And that’s where advocating for yourself really lies is past this past, okay, we’ve learned, right?

It’s a life lesson. We find ourselves in this current situation. What decisions can we make today to advocate for ourselves for success tomorrow? And that’s when, when we think about that is it comes down to a lot of questions. We have to ensure understanding of where we are. And we can’t make all of the assumptions that other people are doing, uh, stuff for us. Uh, nobody can do it for us. You have to take control and you have to take action in order to make it.

So a little bit of a ramble today, but I think it’s an important reminder, um, that life is, life gets easy with all this technology and things are done for us. You know, we get all our news just hand fed to us in the morning. We get all of our, you know, our refrigerator tweets us, um, or texts us when, um, we’re low on carrots. Uh, you know, everything is done for us and we forget that we have a responsibility to take action and think for ourselves.

And so advocating for ourselves, thinking for ourselves, and making choices for ourselves are, uh, an incredibly important part of life. And that is true at home, in the workplace, um, and our financial decisions and everything else. So with that, I’m happy to help you think through it. I love thinking about the assumptions we make and, and just blowing them up and getting philosophical on those, you know, why, why do you need to own a car?

Why do you need, you know, to all do all of these types of things? Some of them you just have to, right? We get it. And you could think through it, you know, you could question it and still come to the same realization that the way it’s set up is fine. That’s okay. Uh, but it’s a’s a good exercise to think through it. So advocate, think, think, think, think, challenge the way you’re thinking, uh, as winning the pool would say, think, think, think.

And um, yeah. Good luck. Have a great week. Enjoy your week. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.