766: Marshall Goldsmith on Simple Shifts for a More Fulfilling Career and Life

Pete Mockaitis
Marshall, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Marshall Goldsmith
Thank you so much for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. And, boy, you have a unique vantage point having coached so many people. I’d love to get your take on what is perhaps the most consistent observation you have that differentiates those who feel fulfilled versus those who feel regret?

Marshall Goldsmith
I think if I look at the fulfilled versus regret continuum, you really need to look at life from three perspectives. One is the perspective of we need higher aspirations because if you don’t have higher aspirations, you don’t have an answer to the question “Why?” “Why did I put in all that time and effort?”

Then number two, you need to have ambitions that are aligned to your aspirations. Our ambitions are our achievement of goals. And then number three, you need to enjoy the process of life. You need to enjoy what you’re doing. So, the two biggest regrets are, one, at the aspirational level, “Why didn’t I go for something big?” and, two, at the day-to-day level, “Why didn’t I enjoy the process of life itself?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, I feel if we could spend hours talking about that alone. And so, I’m intrigued then, when you distinguished an aspiration from an ambition, how precisely?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, to me, and again, I always use operational definitions. The reason is I never argue about semantics because people can define different words in different ways so I make no claim that these are better or worse definitions. They’re just definitions I use.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Marshall Goldsmith
As I use the term aspiration, I’m talking to a higher purpose that does not have a finish line, and aspiration is, again, an answer to the question of “Why?” Our aspiration as a person we’re trying to become but it’s not like you ever get there. An ambition is differentiated from that, and my definition is ambition is our achievement of goals that do actually have a finish line.

And then the third element is our actions. Our actions are day to day. So, our aspirations have no timeline, our ambitions are time-bound, and our actions are immediate.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. Thank you. Well, so you unpack some of these ideas in your latest book The Earned Life. What would you say is the core message or thesis in this work?

Marshall Goldsmith
One of the core messages of the book is that every time you take a breath, every time we take a breath, it’s a new me. So, as we go through life, we have to constantly look at the process of re-earning. Many great Western myths, one book always ended with the same ending, “And they lived happily ever after.” Well, that type of book is referred to as a fairytale. That’s not the real world.

In the real world, you never get there. In the real world, you’re always re-earning your life constantly, and people who try to live in the past, or think they’ve got there, almost invariably fall apart. Examples. National Football League, 80% divorces, 70% bankrupt in five years, depression. Football league, worse. Basketball league, the X star, the X pretty much anything, if you’re not careful, you fall apart.

So, in society we tend to, in our Western society, place our value as human beings on the results we achieve, and the book is kind of counterintuitive. The book says, “Never become ego-attached to the results of what you achieve. Never make the results of what you achieve your identity. And never think achieving the results is going to make you happy,” because if you do, it’s a fool’s game for a couple of reasons.

One is the results are not in your total control. You can’t control what’s going to happen in everything. COVID, I don’t think I caused COVID or you caused COVID. You can’t always control the results. And then, two, even more important, what happens after you’ve achieved the results? All right. Well, maybe you’re happy for a week or a day, but then what happens? You’d have to have another result.

So, the Buddhist term for this is a hungry ghost, always eating but never full. So, the point I make in the book is don’t confuse achievement with other things, like, for example, happiness. Now, one of the guys that was in this group that I worked with over COVID, his name is Safi Bahcall. Safi has got an IQ probably equal to mine and yours combined, and he has a PhD in Physics from Stanford, he’s a brilliant guy, he started businesses, made tens of millions of dollars, wrote a book called Loonshots, and consulted by presidents and on and on and on.

Safi said he finally learned something after all of our conversations. What it was is, he said, and he speaks like a scientist, “I used to think that happiness was a dependent variable based upon achievement. What I finally realized is that happiness and achievement are independent variables. You can be incredibly happy and achieve a lot. You can be happy and achieve nothing. You can be miserable and achieve a lot. You can be miserable and achieve nothing.”

He said he finally learned the importance of being happy is to be happy. The importance of achievement is the achievement. And in the West, we’ve been bombarded with the one message over and over, “You will be happy when…” when you buy the product, when you graduate, when you do something, there’s this place you’re going to be, and it kind of is going to last forever. The reality is that doesn’t work.

And then, finally, of course, we have the great Western artform, which you may have seen before, by the way. The great Western artform involves a drama, and there is a person, the person is sad, “Oh, they spend money, they buy a product and they become happy.” This is called a commercial. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those before, but it’s reasonably pervasive in our culture.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, when you say commercial and the story, it’s so funny. You talk about unhappiness. I remember, I had a friend who had a toddler, and they were accustomed to watching very little TV, or if some, like Netflix for kids, so not commercials, were not a part of this youngster’s life. And then she went to someone else’s house and the TV was on, and the commercial came on, and she said, in terror, to her mother, “Mommy, what is this? I don’t want to see this.” It was very jarring, “It’s just a commercial.” Like, I’ve been exposed to maybe millions of them over a lifetime.

And so, yeah, it’s jarring, perhaps, at an innate level. And so then, I’m curious, so then if one does not get happiness by achievements…

Marshall Goldsmith
Results.

Pete Mockaitis
Results.

Marshall Goldsmith
Don’t fixate on results, right.

Pete Mockaitis
Then what does bring about happiness?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, the great Western myth is happiness comes from the outside. Happiness doesn’t come from the outside. There’s not enough stuff out there to make you happy. I’m a philosophical, not religious, but a philosophical Buddhist. I’ve read probably 400 books on Buddhism. Buddha was brought up very rich. He’s brought up very rich, and he was protected, and he was always given the message, “You will be happy when you get more.”

So, he kept getting more and more and more, and he lived in a bubble. He was able to sneak outside his bubble three times. The first time he learned people get old. Second time, you get sick. Third time, you die. He goes, “Old, sick, and die. This is not so good. All that more, more, more stuff isn’t working.” Then he tried to be happy with less. He starved himself, lived in the woods, lived like a hermit. Guess what? That didn’t work either.

He finally learned something, which is the essence of Buddhism, “You can never be happy with more. You can never be happy with less. There’s only one thing you can ever be happy with – what you have. There’s only one time you can ever be happy – now. There’s only one place you can ever be happy – here.” Where’s Nirvana, for you listeners? Nirvana is listening to this podcast. Here it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Can we quote you on that one, Marshall, put it on the website?

Marshall Goldsmith
Nirvana is listening to this podcast right now. Here it is. If you’re listening to this podcast, welcome to heaven, welcome to hell, welcome to everything. It’s all right here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man. Oh, there’s so much to dig into. All right. So, then, let’s say, if we would like to upgrade our current level of happiness, chasing more results isn’t an optimal pathway, according to this school of thought.

Marshall Goldsmith
It’s neither positive nor negative. Results don’t make you less happy nor do they make you more happy. Results are good for achieving results. The problem is don’t expect the results to make you happy, though.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And so, what do you recommend as a path toward increased happiness?

Marshall Goldsmith
Make peace with what is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Marshall Goldsmith
I’m going to give all the listeners a little technique you can use to increase happiness. Very simple. On a one-to-ten scale, every day, evaluate yourself on one question, “Did I do my best to be happy today?” A simple question. “Did I do my best today to be happy?” Now, it doesn’t say you even were happy. Did you just try to make the best of it and be happy today?

Now, in my book Triggers, I interviewed three of the smartest people I ever met. One of them is Dr. Jim Kim. Dr. Jim Kim has a simultaneous MD and PhD with honors in anthropology from Harvard in five years. Put this in context, a normal human being gets a PhD in anthropology from Harvard in eight years. Well, he got one in five years and got an MD at the same time. Then he went on to be the head of partners in health, and then he worked as president of the World Bank eventually.

Dr. Rajiv Shah was the head of the United States Agency for International Development at age 37, reported to Hillary Clinton. Now, he’s head of the Rockefeller Foundation. And Dr. John Noseworthy was head of the Mayo Clinic, one of the best hospitals in the world. So, I’m the coach of all these guys. So, I interviewed them individually and separately, and asked a question, “On the average day, how would you score and answer to this question, ‘Did I do my best to be happy today?’” All three had the same answer, “It never dawned on me to try to be happy. I was too busy achieving things and I never thought about it.”

Now, they’re all medical doctors, so I said, “I have a question. Did it dawn on you, you’re going to die? Did they cover that in medical school about death? Did they bring that one up?” They said, “Yes, they cover that in medical school. Death, they’re aware of that one.” I said, “Do you think this is a silly question?” They said, “No. It’s an important question I never asked. I was just too busy.” Well, one way you can be happy is, every day – guess what – try to be happy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And I guess when one tries to be happy that, individualistically, of course, different things make different people happy, and then I guess there are some universal phenomena in terms of like human beings and their needs. I guess there’s sort of a hedonistic…

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, let me stop. Some people would say, “That means I need to go on more vacations or do something else,” right? Again, that keeps implying that somehow something out there is going to make me happy – the vacation, the break, whatever. Try to be happy doing what you’re doing now. Try to be happy at every second at work. Try to be happy on vacation. Wherever you are, just say, “Look, I’m going to make the best of this and be happy and make peace with what is.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, maybe let’s zoom way in on trying to be happy and what that can look, sound, feel like in practice. Let’s say you are back from vacation, you got a huge email inbox with a thousand messages, you’re like, “Ugh, what a pain.”

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, now we’ve started to hit the problem, “Ugh” is the problem. You know what you say, “I’ve got a thousand inboxes. I’m going to make the best of it.” I didn’t say, the question is not “Were you happy?” The question is, “Did you try to be happy? Did you make the best of the thousand?” Now, you may not be ecstatic with a thousand but you have an option. You could be a victim, a martyr, “Poor me. Isn’t life awful? I have to do emails,” wah, wah, wah. Or, you could say, “Okay, got these emails anyway. Let’s make the best of it.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And then could you share some examples for what making the best of it might look, sound, feel like in that moment?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah. Making the best of it is the first thing you tell yourself, “I’m not going to be miserable.” The second thing you tell yourself is, “What can I do to make the experience more pleasant?” which might involve music or whatever you can do. And then what you try to do is just optimize the experience in the best way you can.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. Well, thank you. So, all right, we’ve covered a lot of good stuff here. There are a few specific areas I want to zero in on with you. And so, when it comes to folks who do have a high level of achievement, you have a unique vantage point having coached many folks who are there. What are some of the challenges that you’ve seen come up again and again for them?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, I wrote a book called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, which kind of addresses the classic challenges of mega-successful people. And one of the classic challenges is this…I’m going to give you two or three. One of the overall challenges is this, “I behave this way. I am successful. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way.”

Any human or any animal will replicate behavior that’s followed by positive reinforcement. The more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get, and the more we fall into what’s called the superstition trap. We confuse in spite of and because of. Everyone I coach is successful because they do many things right, or they wouldn’t be there.

They’re also successful in spite of doing some things that are stupid. And I’ve never met anyone so wonderful, they had nothing on the in-spite-of list. We all got a little something on the in-spite-of list here. Well, don’t confuse yourself.

The other thing is classic problems, my book, I talk about classic problems of successful people. I was interviewed in a Harvard Business Review, and asked a question, “What is the number one problem of all of the successful people you’ve coached over the years? What is their number one problem?” My answer was, “Winning too much.”

What does that mean? It’s important, we want to win; meaningful, we want to win; critical, we want to win; trivial, we want to win; and not worth it, we want to win anyway. Winners love winning. It’s about for winners not to constantly win.

Now, I’m going to give you a case study that almost all my clients fail, and, I will make a prediction, almost anyone listening to me will fail this case study. Are you ready?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Let’s do it.

Marshall Goldsmith
You want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your wife, husband, friend, or partner wants to go to dinner at restaurant Y. You have a heated argument. You go to restaurant Y. It was not your choice. The food tastes awful and the service is terrible. Option A, you could critique the food, point out our partner was wrong, “You know this mistake could’ve been avoided if only you listened to me, me, me, me, me, me, me.”

Option B, shut up. Eat the stupid food. Try to enjoy it and have a nice night. What would I do? What should I do? Almost all of my clients, “What would I do?” critiqued the food. “What should I do?” Shut up. Even worse, you have a hard day at work. You come home. Your husband, wife, friend, or partner is there and the other person says, “I had such a hard day today. I had such a tough day.” And we reply, “You had a hard day? You had a hard day? Do you have any idea what I had to put up with today? Do you think you had a hard day?” We’re so competitive, we had to prove we are more miserable than the people we live with.

I gave this example to my class at the Dartmouth Tuck School, a young man raised his hand, he said, “I did that last week.” I asked him, “What happened?” He said, “My wife looked at me and she said, ‘Honey, you just think you had a hard day. It is not over.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, if we are kind of in that winning addiction sort of a mode, any pro tips on breaking out of it?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah, start breathing before you try to win these battles, and ask one question, “Is it worth it?” Just stop, breathe, “Is it worth it?” A second issue which is related to this is called adding too much value, “I’m young, smart, enthusiastic. You’re my boss. I come to you with an idea, you think it’s a great idea.” Rather than saying it’s a great idea, we have to say, “Oh, that’s a nice idea. Why don’t you add this to it?”

“Well, the problem is the quality may go up 5%, my commitment just went down 50%. It’s no longer my idea, boss. Now it’s your idea.” Incredibly difficult for smart people not to add value. One of my coaching clients was a man named JP Garnier, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline. I asked JP, “What did you learn about leadership as a CEO of GlaxoSmithKline?” He said, “I learned a hard lesson. My suggestions become orders.” Now, he said, “If they’re smart, they’re orders, and if they’re stupid, they’re orders. And if I want them to be orders, they’re orders. And if I don’t want them to be orders, they’re orders anyway. My suggestions become orders.”

For nine years, I trained admirals in the Navy. What’s the first thing I teach to new admirals? “You get that first star, your suggestions become orders.” Admiral gives a suggestion, what’s a response? “Aye, aye,” that suggestion is an order. I asked JP, “What did you learn from me when I was your coach?” He said, “You taught me one lesson to help me be a better CEO and have a happier life.” I said, “What was it?” He said, “Before I speak, breathe. Breathe. Breathe, and ask myself one question, ‘Is it worth it? Is it worth it?’”

And he said, “As a CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, 50% of the time, if I had the discipline to stop and to breathe, and to say, ‘Is it worth it?’ what did I decide? Am I right? Maybe. Is it worth it? No.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, again, there’s just more shutting up, I suppose, like, “Hmm, that’s an idea. Okay. Run with it. Run with that idea you had and I will just hold back my 5% improvement and let you own it all the more.”

Marshall Goldsmith
Do it. Go out and delegate. Delegate. You know why? Effectiveness of execution is a function of, A, what’s the quality of the idea times, B, what’s my commitment to make it work. And sometimes we get wrapped up in improving the quality 5%, we damage the commitment 50%. It’s not worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that I’ve heard this in the realm of fitness, and I think it makes something like an imperfect plan executed with perfect intensity will get far better results than a perfect plan executed with imperfect intensity. And so, if you’ve got a thing that you’re doing that’s working for you, and then someone says, “Oh, no, actually, you’re doing it all wrong. You should really be doing, I don’t know, intervals or more weight or whatever.” It’s like, “Oh,” that just sort of “Ew,” like that’s the energy flow is out, like, “Ew,” and then you have less commitment to do the thing and less great results flowing from it.

Marshall Goldsmith
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, you also have some great perspectives on empathy in your book. Can you share some of these with us?

Marshall Goldsmith
Now, I really didn’t start learning this section until I was probably…I’m 73 now, until I was probably 71 years old. I always thought empathy sounded like a nice thing, it sounds warm and fuzzy and kind and good, so I thought kind of always empathy is good. But then I began to study empathy and I realized, no, empathy is sometimes useful, is often dysfunctional.

So, I’ve studied it and there are four types of empathy I talk about in the book, and I’m going to talk briefly about each. One is called the empathy of understanding. Now, empathy just means being able to put yourself in the other person’s position. Well, the first one is empathy of understanding. That’s understanding where they are coming from. Now, that can be very positive. This is the one I’m best at as a coach.

It’s very helpful as a coach. I can use it to help people. It can also be used, though, to manipulate people. Advertisers have a great ability to understand where you’re coming from, often better than you do. Let’s take Budweiser. They do this ad for the donkey and the horse. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s with the Clydesdales, and then like the owner, and they reunite at the…?

Marshall Goldsmith
Oh, yeah. You remember it. You can remember that ad. Now, they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars on variations of the little donkey and the horse. Why? Because it sells beer. If you think anybody that goes in to buy beer, any man, some macho man going in to buy beer is saying, “You know, I want to buy this beer because I love the little donkey and the horse.”

No, that is exactly why they buy the beer. That’s why Budweiser spends hundreds of millions of dollars on the donkey and the horse. They’re not idiots, right? That’s called the empathy of understanding. They understand the consumer better than the consumer understands themselves. So, empathy of understanding, propaganda people have great empathy of understanding, can be positive, can be used to help you, can be used to manipulate you.

The second one is called the empathy of feeling, “I feel your pain. I feel your joy.” It could be good. If you go to a football game, the feelings experienced in the brain by the fan is almost exactly the same feeling of the person getting the touchdown, “I feel your joy,” but also it could be, “I feel your pain.” One of my coaching clients is the CEO of St. Jude Children’s Hospital. He gets to watch people die every day. Well, you know what? He can’t experience that feeling day after day after day and stay alive. He has to learn to block that out.

The next one is called the empathy of caring. Sounds good, “I care about what’s happening to you.” Obviously, that can be very positive, make you a better helping person. On the other hand, it could cause problems. Now, I love the example in my book. It’s a hedge fund manager. The last thing you ever think of caring is a hedge fund manager, of all people. I’m watching one of the world’s top hedge fund managers get interviewed by another great hedge fund manager. So, the one guy says to the other, “Why don’t you have a fund anymore? You could make a fortune.” The older guy says, “I’m not as good as I was.” The younger guy says, “Why not?” The older guy says, “I started caring.”

Now, he’s worth, at the time, $3 billion. He said, “Obviously, I’ve made a lot of money, I’ve made tens of millions of dollars for others, billions for myself, but I’ve also lost tens of billions of dollars. I probably won 52 and lost 48. That’s pretty good but it never bothered me. When I grew older, I thought, ‘This is retirement money. This is people’s healthcare. This is important,’ and I started worrying.” And you know what he said? “I became much less effective. Now,” he said, “I only invest my own money because if I win, I win; I lose, I lose. It doesn’t matter anyway. I just invest my own money.”

Very interesting. That’s why you don’t let parents operate on their children. They care too much. Burnout in hospitals, too much caring. They can’t let it go. They bring it home. Cared too much. And the final empathy is the empathy of doing, “On the positive side, I’m not just caring about you. I’m doing something to help you.” But on the negative side, that can lead to treating people like children, creating dependency, “Mommy and daddy do it for you all the time.”

So, what I’ve said is the most important empathy is what I call singular empathy. What that means is I am being who I need to be for the person I’m with now. I am being who I need to be for the person I’m with now. I’m not being who I need to be because I just feel like being that way. And so, it really doesn’t deify a lot of things that are deified in society, like caring is good. Caring is not always good. During COVID, caring has caused all kinds of problems.

Feeling other people’s pain is certainly not always good. There’s only so much of that you can do. You need to be able to block that stuff off and think about the person you’re with. So, when my friend who runs, say, San Diego Children’s Hospital comes home, he can’t bring that with him. That’s not fair to his wife. It’s not fair to his kids. He’s got to block that out, compartmentalize, and say, “I’m going to be the father I need to be right now, not the person who’s in the hospital two hours ago.”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that sounds ideal. In practice, we are creatures with emotions. How do you recommend we dial up or down the empathy in a given moment when we find ourselves appearing in a different way?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, one of the people in my 100 Coaches group is named Telly Leung. So, if you’ve ever seen the play Aladdin before, he played the role of Aladdin on Broadway three years. Literally 1,000 times he played this role. So, I asked Telly about empathy, “How did you do it?” He said, “I have to get on this stage every night and demonstrate empathy.” He’s gay, and he said, “Ever night, I have to fall in love with the princess. And you’re right, it’s certainly not easy. That’s why he’s a Broadway star, most people are not, yet he does it.

And he said, “When I was a little boy, eight years old, I went to a play and had music and singing and dancing, and it was so wonderful. I had such a nice experience.” He said, “Every night I think of that little boy in the audience. And you know what? I’m not doing it for me. I’m doing it for that kid. This may be the thousands of times I’ve done this play. These kids have never seen the play before. It’s not for me. It’s for them.” Well, back to, “How do you do it?” You quit thinking about, “It’s for me.” You start thinking about, “It’s for them.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Oh, Marshall, there’s so much good stuff. Can we hear about the new breath paradigm?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah. Now, again, this is another good Buddha stuff. One thing I love about…I teach a lot of stuff that’s Buddha’s, and I called Buddha up, and I said, “Buddha, I’m using your stuff all the time. Do I need to send you any commission checks?” You know what he said? “Just knock yourself out. It’s okay.” He doesn’t charge me money to use his stuff.

Well, The Every Breath Paradigm is a Buddhist paradigm that says, “Every time I take a breath, it’s a new me.” It’s a new me. Whatever happened in the past was done by a whole different set of people called the previous versions of me. That’s not me. The me is the person who’s here right now. That’s me. And those were the previous me’s.

Now, this is very helpful for a variety of things. One is called forgiveness. One, forgiving ourselves. Basically, I ask people, “Take a deep breath and think of all the previous versions of you. Think of all the gifts those people have given you that’s here. Think about all the nice things they’ve done. Think about the people they’ve helped. If anybody did that many nice things, what would you say to those people? Thank you. Just say thank you. Did they make some mistakes? Let it go. Let it go. Don’t waste your life worrying about stuff that’s over. Let it go.”

Well, I do LinkedIn posts. I have like 1.3 something million followers on LinkedIn. The most popular one I ever did said, “Forgive other people for being who they are and forgive yourself for believing that they were someone else.” Well, part of that is just letting go of the past. And the other thing is I’m a really big believer in living your life. Don’t live vicariously.

Now, what is vicarious living? Well, the average kid that’s flunking out of school in the United States spends 55 hours a week on non-academic media – video games, TV, texting, just non-academic stuff – and they’re not living their own life. They’re living somebody else’s life. They’re living through others. In a way, this Every Breath Paradigm, you don’t live in the past. You live in the present. Living in the past is like living someone else’s life.

You won the Super Bowl several years ago. That’s nice. That’s not you. That’s not you. You’re living through that kid that won the Super Bowl. Well, the people that try to live in the past, generally, are not so happy with the present. Why? They’re still living in that other person’s life. They’re still imagining they won the Super Bowl. Well, somebody won the Super Bowl. You didn’t. Some kid did. The kid did a great job. Fine. Thank you, kid. You didn’t. And live your own life in the present.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, that really connects to this earning, The Earned Life then. And when we say the word earning, maybe just to clarify, what precisely do we mean by earning and why the word earn?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, I use the word earn in a way that says you’re living an earned life when, at any moment in time, and one of the keys is at any moment in time, that your risks, your actions, your commitments are aligned with a higher sense of purpose regardless of the results. So, what you are is you’re doing your best to live the life you want to live.

An earned life is something that is constantly re-done. Like I said, the fairytale is, “They lived happily ever after.” The great Western disease, “I will be happy when I get the money, status, BMW, condominium, achievement, degree, blah, blah, blah.” “I’ll be happy when…” If that stuff would make you happy, everyone I coach would be dancing off the ceiling every day. They’re all 99.99 on achievement.

Do you really believe going from 99.99 to 99.90 is going to make any difference? No. If you’re not happy at 99.99, that extra little bit is not going to matter. It’s not going to matter. Half the people I coach are billionaires. One guy I coach is worth $4 billion. And what am I supposed to do, help you get up to 4.1? Boy, what does it matter? Well, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So, an important thing is just being happy.

Now, I didn’t mention the marshmallow study yet, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, was this Walter Mischel?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah. Now, you know the marshmallow research. The marshmallow research is fascinating. You take a bunch of kids and you give them a marshmallow. Kid eats one, you say he gets one but if the kid waits, ooh, two. Now, allegedly, they had this longitudinal research that shows the kids that eat one become drug addicts, and the kids that eat two all get PhDs from Harvard. It’s a little exaggerated but the message is clear. Delayed gratification is good. If you delay gratification, you will achieve more. Delayed gratification is good. Almost every self-help book is about delayed gratification and how wonderful it is.

Here’s what they did not do in the research. What they didn’t do in the research is take a kid with two marshmallows and said, “Hey, kid, wait a little bit longer, three. Wait some more, four. Five, ten, a hundred, a thousand.” Where do you end up? An old man in a room waiting to die surrounded by thousands of uneaten marshmallows. If all you do is delay gratification, guess what you get in life? Delay. Guess what you don’t get? Gratification.

Jack Welch was the former CEO of GE, a very famous guy. Jack Welch almost died. He has a triple bypass. My friend knows Jack Welch, so he said, “What was your reflection on life upon almost dying?” You know what Jack Welch said? “Why am I drinking the cheap wine every night?” Jack Welch has this incredible wine collection of amazing wine. He’s not drinking it. You know why? He wants it to appreciate in value.

This is Jack Welch. He’s rich. What does it matter how much it appreciates in value? It doesn’t. He’s drinking cheap wine so the good stuff can appreciate in value. You know what he said? “I’ve been insane. I’ve been insane. What am I doing? No more cheap wine for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. There you have it. And so then, well, how do you recommend we navigate that? Sometimes these things are intentioned, let’s have the great wine versus let’s let it appreciate, let’s have a marshmallow now versus invest or wait for more later. It seems like you can go to either extreme to your detriment. How do you kind of make the call?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, let me give you how you hit the jackpot of life. It’s not that complicated. What matters? One, you need to be healthy. Well, I can’t control that. Two, you need at least a middle-class income. Well, I’m not an expert on finance or helping you make money. Most of your listeners probably do have at least have a middle-class income. And, by the way, if they don’t, they may not be as happy. If they do, being a multibillionaire won’t make any difference, statistically, or not much. And then, number three, you have to have great relationships with people you love.

Assuming you have great relationships with people you love, one; two, you’re healthy; and then, three, you’re making a middle-class income, what matters in life? One is I have a higher aspiration. I have a reason for doing this, and it doesn’t have to be religious. It could be any higher aspiration, great family, whatever it is. Two, I’m achieving things that are meaningful to me that are connected to this aspiration. And, three, I’m enjoying the process of life. That’s about it.

If the answer is, “I’m enjoying this. I’m having a good time. I’m doing something that’s meaningful for me, and it’s connected to a higher aspiration,” you just won. That’s about it. If there’s more, by the way, I’m unfamiliar with what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Okay. And I, finally, want to get some perspectives from you about credibility. How do we earn that, have that?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, credibility, there’s a lot of irony about the concept of proving ourselves. As we go through life, we constantly have to prove ourselves. You’ve taken thousands of tests, you’ve had to prove you’re smart, we’ve had to fit in. If you look at our ancestors, if you didn’t fit in, you died. Well, we’ve always had to prove ourselves. It’s very hard to stop. Yet, if you look up “need for approval” and do a Google search, almost every URL says it’s a psychological dysfunction.

Yeah, need for approval is a psychological dysfunction. That’s a little insane. We all need approval. We couldn’t survive if we didn’t get some form of approval. Children learn this before they learn how to speak. They learn how to gain approval. Well, here’s the issue, when is need for approval useful and when is it dysfunctional?

In my book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, most of the book is about people who spend too much time proving themselves. They win too much. They prove they’re right. They add too much value. They oversell. Classic problems of very high-level, aggressive, smart people. I wrote a book with Sally Helgesen, though she’s the lead author, called How Women Rise. And Sally said many women she works with have the opposite problem. They don’t promote themselves enough. They hide their light under the bushel.

And she had a good technique for working with women like that. She asks them a few questions. Question number one, “If you became more influential and powerful, will the world be worse off or better off?” Well, they usually say, “Well, I believe it would be better off.” Question two, “Does trying to become more influential and powerful make you uncomfortable?” “Yes, it does.” Question three, “What’s more important to you, being comfortable or making a positive difference in the world?”

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Marshall Goldsmith
You don’t get it both ways.

Pete Mockaitis
Nice little combo there.

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah, you don’t get it both ways. So, if you’re uncomfortable with trying to be influential, don’t whine because you’re not making any difference in the world. Peter Drucker taught me. I was on the advisory board of Peter Drucker Foundation for 10 years. He taught me many wonderful lessons. I’m very lucky. One lesson was this, he said, “Our mission in life is to make a positive difference, not to prove we’re smart, not to prove we’re right.”

Message two, “Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.” Not the smartest person, or the best person, or a fair person, a good person. Decisions are often made by insane people. Make peace with that. If I need to influence you, and you have the power to make the decision, there’s one word to describe you. It’s called customer. One word to describe me is called salesperson. Sell what you can sell. Change what you can change. And if you cannot sell it, and you cannot change it, just take a deep breath and let it go.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Marshall, thank you. Anything else you want to make sure to put out there before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Marshall Goldsmith
We can shift gears. Save a few minutes at the end for a final bit of advice.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shall do. Can you give us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marshall Goldsmith
I’ll give you a great quote from my favorite movie. Now, this is a Buddhist movie. A lot of people don’t understand that. My favorite movie is The Wizard of Oz. And the great quote is, “There’s no place like home.” Now, what Dorothy means by that is if you can’t find it here, you can’t find it. It’s not out there. It’s here. There’s no place like home.

So, yeah, the movie is a very profound movie. The book was written by a Buddhist. A lot of people don’t know this, and it’s really a great Buddhist parable of life. She has always had the ability to go home but doesn’t know it. The Tin Man already has emotions but doesn’t know it. The Scarecrow is always coming up with good ideas. The Lion does good things. They’re looking for what they already have.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, I like the marshmallow study for the reasons I said, not because the results are good. It’s because the results kind of illustrate the point I just made. I did a study. By the way, anybody who wants to get it, you can send me an email marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com called Leadership is a Contact Sport with 86,000 people. And in this research, it just impacts if you want to get better as a leader, you get input, you talk to people, you apologize for your mistakes, you follow up, and you get better. And if you don’t get work, you don’t do work, you just go to a class or listen to something, you might as well be watching sitcoms.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah, my favorite book is called Old Path, White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh. He just recently died. A great Buddhist monk. T-H-I-C-H N-H-A-T H-A-N-H. Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path, White Clouds. I love that book.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Marshall Goldsmith
Yes, are you ready?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Marshall Goldsmith
I’m going to share this with everyone. This is called the daily question process. Now, this takes three minutes a day. it will help you get better at almost anything, and costs nothing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Marshall Goldsmith
Are you ready?

Pete Mockaitis
I am ready.

Marshall Goldsmith
Sounds too good to be true. Half the people start doing this quit within two weeks, and they do not quit because it does not work. They quit because it does work. What I’m going to teach your listeners next is very easy to understand. It is incredibly difficult to do. Anyone who says it’s easy to do has never done it before. It’s hard to do.

Now, how does it work? You get out a spreadsheet, on one column, write down a series of questions that represent what’s most important in your life: health, work, behavior, friends, family, whatever it is for you. Every question has to be answered with a yes or a no or a number. Seven boxes across, one for every day of the week. Every day you fill it out. At the end of the week, you get a report card.

I will warn your listeners, the report card at the end of the week might not be quite as beautiful as the corporate values plaque you see stacked up on a wall. I’ve been doing these for 25 years. You know what I learned? Life is incredibly easy to talk and life is incredibly difficult to live.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then with those areas, with a yes, no, or number, I imagine if I say, “Health,” I don’t know if I can give that a yes, no, or a number. Do I get a little bit more specific?

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, a health, that’s an easy one. How much do you weigh? How many steps did you take?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, got you. So, I’m turning that into an actionable something.

Marshall Goldsmith
Yeah, it’s just a scorecard. Let me give you the six questions I recommend for everyone. Here are the six, and they all begin with a phrase, “Did I do my best to…?” Now, what I love about that is it doesn’t even say you’ve succeeded. It says, “Did you try?” You see, for example, if I say, “Did you achieve happiness?” You might say, “No, because they had too many inbox things.” That’s not the question. “Did you do your best to be happy?”

So, let me give you the six. Number one, “Did you do your best every day to set clear goals?” Number two, “Did you do your best to make progress toward achieving the goals you set?” Number three, “Did you do your best every day to find meaning in life, not wait for life to be meaningful, but to create meaning where you are?”

Number four, “Did you do your best to be happy every day?” Number five, “Did you do your best to build positive relationships?” And number six, “Did you do your best to be fully engaged, present, engaged? Did you do your best to even try to be engaged or present?” Very humbling exercise I’ve been doing for years.

I had someone call me on the phone every day to make sure I do this for about 25 years, almost every day. Someone asked me, “Well, why do you have someone call you on the phone? Don’t you know the theory about how to change behavior?” I wrote the theory about how to change behavior that’s why I have someone call me on the phone.

My name is Marshall Goldsmith. I got ranked number one coach and leadership thinker in the whole world. I have someone call me on the phone every day just to make sure I do all the simple stuff I teach. Why? I am too cowardly to do any of this stuff by myself, I’m too undisciplined to do any of this stuff by myself, and I need help, and it’s okay. We all need help. Who are we kidding here? Everybody needs help.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Marshall, I’m curious who that person is, if you’re…and if it goes both ways.

Marshall Goldsmith
Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Over the years, it’s been different people. Now, my friend Mark Thompson calls me every day, so it goes both ways. Sometimes I’ve actually paid someone to call me. That works fine, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. And is there a key nugget, a Marshall Goldsmith original gem, that gets retweeted, Kindle book highlighted, shared often?

Marshall Goldsmith
I gave that one about forgiveness. I’d say that would probably be the biggest one. Forgive other people for being who they are, and forgive yourself for believing they were someone else. We spend so much time in life carrying around that stuff – anger, resentment – for what? And they’re not losing sleep over you. Who’s being punished? You’re just punishing yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Marshall Goldsmith
Go to marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com, that’s my email address. And my website is www.MarshallGoldsmith.com. You can go to YouTube and just put my name in, and you’ll find hundreds of videos. You can go to LinkedIn, I’ve got hundreds of things, and I give everything away. So, all my material, you may copy, share, download, duplicate, use in church, charity, nonprofit. Modify it. Modify it. I don’t care. Put your name on it. It’s just okay. I give everything away anyway. We’re all going to be equally dead here so what am I saving it up for?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a challenge or a final word for listeners?

Marshall Goldsmith
Final word is this. Are you ready? Take a deep breath. Imagine you’re 95 years old. You’re just getting ready to die. Here comes your last breath. Right before you take that breath, you’re given a beautiful gift – the ability to go back in time and talk to the person listening to me right now. The ability to help that person be a better professional. Much more important, the ability to help that person have a better life. What advice would the wise 95-year-old you, who knows what mattered in life, and what didn’t, and what was important, what wasn’t, what advice would that wise old person have for the you that is listening to me right now?

Don’t just say anything or do anything. Just answer that question in your mind. What advice would that old person looking at death have for you? Whatever you’re thinking now, do that. In terms of a performance appraisal, that’s the only one that’s going to matter. If that old person says, “You did the right thing,” you did. If that old person says, “You made a mistake,” you did. You don’t have to impress anybody else.

Some friends of mine interviewed old folks who were dying and got to ask this question. On the personal side, three themes. Theme number one I talk a lot about in the book. Be happy now. Not next week. Not next month. Not next year. Not the “I’ll be happy when…” Don’t spend your life chasing what you don’t have and ignore what you do have. Common comment from old people, “I got so busy chasing what I didn’t have, I never saw what I did have, and I had everything.”

Learning point number two – friends and family. Never become so interested in climbing the ladder of success, you forget the people who love you. When you’re 95 years old, and you look around your deathbed, none of your coworkers are waving goodbye. You realize these people aren’t important. And then number three, if you have a dream, go for it. If you don’t go for it when you’re 35, you may not when you’re 45 or 85. And it doesn’t have to be a big dream. Go to New Zealand, speak Spanish, play a guitar. Other people think your dream is goofy. Who cares? Who cares? It’s not their dream, it’s your dream. It’s not their life, it’s your life.

Business-wise ain’t much different. Number one, life is short. Have fun. Number two, do whatever you can do to help people. The main reason to help people has nothing to do with money or status or getting ahead. The main reason to help people is much deeper. The 95-year-old you would be proud of you because you did, and disappointed if you don’t. And if you do not believe this is true, interview any CEO who’s retiring and ask them a question, “What are you proud of?” I’ve interviewed very many, none told me how big their office was. All they talk about is people they helped.

And then the final advice is go for it. Worlds are changing, the industries are changing. Do what you think is right. You may not win. At least you tried. Old people, we almost never regret the risks we take and fail. We always regret the risks we failed to take. And, finally, thank you for asking me to work with you today. Thank you. And my goal in this podcast is simple. As I’ve grown older, my level of aspiration is actually going down and down and down, my level of impact up and up and up. Well, I’ve quit worrying about what I’m not going to change.

Let me give you my goal. If a few people listening to this have a little better life, this is a good use of my time, and, hopefully, a good use of your time.

Pete Mockaitis
Amen. Marshall, this has been a blessing, a treat. Thank you for all you do. And, please, keep it up.

Marshall Goldsmith
Thank you so much.