240: Mastering the Art of Connection with Michael J. Gelb

Pete Mockaitis
Michael, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Michael J. Gelb
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, before you were writing influential books, I understand you had a career as a professional juggler who performed with some pretty big names. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Michael J. Gelb
I worked my way through graduate school as a professional juggler. I used to juggle in Harvard Square. I once made about $80 in quarters in three hours.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
I used to do children’s parties, and I lived in England for a while. And my buddy, who was the science editor for Reuters news service in Europe, he and I used to get together and practice our juggling in Hyde Park. And one day a fellow came up to us and said, “Hey, how would you like to juggle on stage tonight with Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, we’ll pay you 50 pounds.” We said, “Sure.” And we were on stage that night and it worked out well so they invited us to the whole tour. And then we got to perform at the Knebworth Rock Festival in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands of people on a stage shaped like Mick Jagger’s mouth.

Pete Mockaitis
Like his mouth. I don’t know, is his mouth different than any other mouths? I guess I’ve got a picture in my head. This is fascinating.

Michael J. Gelb
Yes, it’s just like you picture it. It’s just like you picture it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so how you’ve come so far. I don’t know, maybe you’ve slid. Which is higher? I don’t know, they’re just different, you know.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s not higher.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Michael J. Gelb
The funny thing is I wasn’t a wild Stones fan or anything but I knew it would be a good story, and I got a friend of mine into the concert as a guest and he is still grateful to me to this day. And then we got invited to juggle at a series of Bob Dylan concerts, and I got my friend into that, so he’s still, he just will be eternally grateful to me for getting him into those events.

And I did take my early experience as a professional juggler and I leveraged it into corporate seminars where I would use juggling as a metaphor for teaching people how to learn. I’d put them in teams and get them to pick the balls up for one another and coach each other, and use it as a way to teach people principles of coaching that they could use to be more effective leaders. I once taught a thousand IBM engineers how to juggle altogether in a big hotel ballroom, so I’ve had a lot of fun with the juggling, and I still work it into my programs for groups all over the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, awesome. Well, today I also want to chat about some of your perspectives in your latest book The Art of Connection. What is The Art of Connection all about? And why is it particularly important right now?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, what it’s all about is building relationships. And why did I write this book? Because for most of the years I’ve been consulting and training, leading seminars for organizations around the world, my focus has been on creativity, on innovation and accelerated learning. But if you really want to get anything done you’ve got to do it with other people.

So, I’ve been paying attention to what really works to build those relationships that will help you resolve conflict, come up with solutions in a more effective way, and implement those solutions, and The Art of Connection is packed with pretty much everything I’ve learned in 38 years of working with people around the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. And I’ve read some disturbing research in terms of just how we have fewer friends now than before, we’re more disconnected. Can you maybe give us a little bit of the lay of the land to perhaps the problem or diagnosis?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, we have a blessing and a curse. The blessing is we can get information from people around the world instantaneously, and that’s amazingly seductive. I mean, you can tune into anybody anywhere almost anytime if their phone is on, so that’s, on one hand, how marvelous is that. On the other hand, it’s a relatively superficial level of communication.

So, we have more so-called friends or people in our network but less real connection, less real heart-to-heart, face-to-face, soul-to-soul human interaction. And that does nurture us in all sorts of ways. There’s a lot of research showing that person-to-person connection is a key source of our sense of wellbeing, our longevity, our health, our happiness, and it also translates into success.

What’s fascinating is I work with lots of people who run global organizations and, of course, they do lots of connecting, lots of meeting, lots of information sharing on their devices, but these people will tell you that face-to-face in the room, eye-to-eye relationships and connections are more important now than ever before, and they all go out of their way to make sure they have those connections with the people who are important to them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a pretty compelling proof point because these are among the most busy in-demand, maybe most tempted to execute communications as brutally efficiently as possible.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, the thing is it’s important to be able to be efficient, to get things done, and we can use the technology to help us. That’s the blessing part of it. But if you use it as something to hide behind, if you use it as a way of objectifying people and viewing people only in a transactional manner, well, people ultimately don’t really like that.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m with you there.

Michael J. Gelb
Everybody wants to be seen, wants to be respected, wants you to connect with them, wants you to empathize with them, and it’s just so much more effective to do that in person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I’m with you there. And so, I love it that you’ve gone beyond some of this philosophy and really broken it down into a few key actionable principles or practices. We love actionable here. So, could you walk us through some of the top practices that facilitate great connections?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure can. The first one is to embrace humility.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael J. Gelb
And, obviously, this one comes first because if you don’t embrace humility you’re probably not going to read the rest of the book because you think you know it all already.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
But it’s really the attitude that makes us curious. If I think I know you, if I think I’ve got you figured out, if I think I know what type you are, if I think I’m a good listener, well, chances are I’m not, and chances are you probably wouldn’t agree with me.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s only when I have that attitude that says, “Gee, if I’m paying attention over the years I’d probably notice that people miscommunicate all the time.” When I get people in a classroom on this topic, one of the exercises we do, we take a simple word, we take any word like the word art, and we get people to write down the first 10 words they think of.

And then we put them in groups of four and we get them to share the words they wrote down and make a little chart of how many they had in common. And what we discover is that people have almost nothing in common.

Pete Mockaitis
So, one person might write movies and cinema and actors, and someone else might write sculpture and clay. Is that what you mean?

Michael J. Gelb
Exactly. Exactly. And then even when people get one or two in common, if you get them to do 10 words of association on the one they had in common, you find out they meant something different by it anyway.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, interesting.

Michael J. Gelb
And this translates into everyday communication challenges. I mean, people are all too familiar with the notion of having a conversation, the other person nods in agreement, and then what happens is different than what you thought you agreed, “Oh, but I thought you said,” “Oh, but I thought you meant,” “But weren’t you listening?” How often are those sorts of phrases repeated in everyday life?

So, one of my mottos is, “If you’re not humble it means you’re not paying attention.” So, once you embrace that attitude, that opens up your curiosity. The other thing it does, if you have this humility, people perceive you as more responsive, as more open, as more accessible and they’re more likely to engage with you. And engagement is, obviously, the key to building relationships, so embrace humility is where the journey begins.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Right now, as you described this sort of misunderstandings, I can’t help, I’m thinking about randomly the movie Bridesmaids in which they’re talking about different ideas for the event, the festivities. And one person says, “Oh, how about a night in Paris or something?” and everyone says yes. “And building off that idea, Fight Club?” and someone is like, “What?” It’s not even remotely connected or related.

And so, I think that’s a funny little exchange that sticks with me because it’s like, “That’s so ridiculous.” But what you’re saying, “No, in practice, folks are rampantly misunderstanding each other all the time.”

Michael J. Gelb
And emoticons and emojis are not substitutes for body language, voice tonality, eye contact and being together with people.

Pete Mockaitis
Even if it’s an animoji, Michael?

Michael J. Gelb
Hey, look, I have as much with them as anybody and they’re delightful tools to play with but, again, if you use it all as a substitute for connecting with people in real time face to face, you’re going to find that your life just becomes a little more shallow and that there’s a lot more misunderstanding.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. So, the core of the humility then is just acknowledging, you know, you probably don’t understand what that person said. So, get off your high horse or don’t presume that you have it figured out, but go ahead and humble yourself and ask the key follow-up questions to make sure that you’ve properly received what they’re trying to convey.

Michael J. Gelb
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so now, you’ve got a few other great practices. What do you mean by being a glowworm?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, this comes from a quote from Winston Churchill. He said, “We are all worms but I do believe that I am a glowworm.”

Pete Mockaitis
I love the accent. Please keep those coming.

Michael J. Gelb
And Churchill, this is in the days when the only way that the leader of the nation could communicate with the people was on the radio, London was being bombed every night for 56 nights straight. People were sleeping in the subway in the underground, and they didn’t know then that they were going to win the war and defeat pure evil.

But one man, with this amazing vision and courage, through his words and through his voice tone, inspired a whole nation to persevere under incredible odds and to emerge victorious, so Churchill really was a glowworm. And, in contemporary terms, we now know, as Churchill understood intuitively, that emotions are contagious for better or for worse. So, a glowworm is somebody who consciously spreads uplifting positive emotion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, now I’m curious, in practice how does one do that in a way that’s authentic and real and gets folks taking you seriously? I guess I’m wondering, it’s probably possible to be over the top in a way that’s like, “Oh, this guy, you know, he’s not even for real.”

Michael J. Gelb
All of this is ideally sourced through authenticity and find a natural way to express yourself. If you’re a pessimist this is harder, which is why in a previous book I reviewed the work of Dr. Martin Seligman who wrote Learned Optimism, so it’s a skill you can learn. It’s a skill of emotional intelligence.

And since optimists get sick less frequently, recover faster when they do get sick, make a lot more money in the course of their careers, outperform their aptitude tests, and live seven years longer, you might consider cultivating this particular aspect of emotional intelligence and do it in an authentic way because your attitude not only affects your immune system moment to moment, that’s why optimists live longer, and that’s why they’re more resistant to disease, why they recover faster because they have stronger immune systems.

So, you want to recognize that your way of responding to challenges in life – and, look, anybody can be an optimist when everything is going your way. It really counts when you’re facing adversity. But the power here is that it’s not just affecting your immune system, it’s affecting the immune system of the people around you.

So, if you get together with people as many people’s idea of bonding is to commiserate, which means to be miserable together. So, we all get together and complain about how bad everything is, “Oh, that’s nothing. It’s even worse for me.” And I got to tell you, what we’re talking about here is a powerful secret of building healthy positive relationships. It’s also a secret of longevity.

My parents are 90 and 87, and my dad recently did 28 pushups. He’s just amazing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great.

Michael J. Gelb
And they’re super sharp. I go visit them and bring them a nice wine, cook them a nice meal, and we have stimulating, vibrant, wonderful conversation. They’re super engaged in life, they’re reading three or four books at a time, and they get together with the people in the community where they live. They’re in one of these active retirement communities.

And my dad runs the wine-tasting group, my mom, who used to be a psychotherapist, runs a couple of discussion groups, and they just meet to have breakfast and conversation with their friends. Pretty much every day they go down to dinner. My dad brings a bottle of wine. And they have a rule, and the rule is, “No organ recitals.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Michael J. Gelb
In other words, you’re not allowed to complain about what’s going wrong with various parts of your body.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, man, it sounds like fun. I want to be part of an active retirement community. That sounds awesome.

Michael J. Gelb
But what’s great about it, part of why and when these communities are well-run, and theirs is, it extends people’s lives and the quality of their lives because it turns out that connection or the lack thereof is a huge factor in our wellness. And as we get older, the margin for error gets less.

I wrote this book called Brain Power: Improve Your Mind as You Age, I wrote it to celebrate my 60th birthday five years ago. And one of the studies I reported on in that book, they took cohorts of people who were 80 years old, and those who reported themselves as lonely were mostly gone before 85 and had much higher incidences of various forms of dementia.

Those who reported having three or more positive social interactions on a daily basis were much more likely to be alive at 85 and had much, much lower rates of dementia. So, social connectedness keeps your brain healthy, strengthens your immune system, and it’s also just correlated with what researchers call perceived sense of wellbeing which is a fancy term for happiness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Excellent. So, then, in practice, if you’re being a glowworm, so you’re taking an optimistic view, you’re trying to make meaningful connections with folks and taking interests in their lives. And so, are there any other maybe key senses or opportunities in which you can really habitually be a glowworm whether it comes to appreciating people or thanking people? Or what are some of the easy ways to do that every day?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, here’s one that’s research-based and really powerful. Maybe you’ve heard about the Pygmalion effect, it’s also known as the Rosenthal effect for the researcher who first documented it about 50 years ago and one of the most striking experiments. They took Army drill sergeants and they told the drill sergeants that the recruits they were getting for the next six weeks were below average. And at the end of the six weeks those recruits performed about 25% below the average standard.

Then they told the same drill sergeants that the next group they were getting were above average. And you guessed it, at the end of six weeks that group performed 25% above average. Now this is measured in real performance, things like the number of pushups they could do.

Pete Mockaitis
Or like shooting accuracy, like quantitative measures of performance.

Michael J. Gelb
Quantitative measures. Of course, the groups were completely average, the only difference was the way the drill sergeants were primed to view their recruits. And when they told the drill sergeants this they refused to believe it. Same kind of studies have been done over and over again with teachers. If a teacher is told that children are gifted, guess what? They perform like gifted children. And if the teacher is told that the children are slow and difficult, guess what? They perform more slowly as though they were more difficult.

So, the notion of looking for the best in others, and this is really important in a marriage. I mean, if you look at Gottman’s research on what makes marriage work.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been doing that, yes.

Michael J. Gelb
Yup, one of the really important things is you look for the best in your partner. William James said, “Wisdom is knowing what to overlook,” so this gets really, really powerful, too, when you realize that the same thing applies to your self-image. So, are you looking for the best in yourself every day? So, this isn’t just rah-rah cheerleader optimism on some superficial level. This is powerful.

How do you see yourself in your own potentiality every day? How do you give other people the best opportunity to do well to bring out people’s best? And here’s the thing, this is, again, it’s not mediated by some cosmic, well, maybe it is mediated by cosmic energy but we can’t validate that. But when Rosenthal looks at what happens when the teacher who’s been told that a group is gifted, what does that teacher do?

In the interaction with those children, the teacher is nodding in a positive way, she’s smiling, she’s making eye contact, her whole body language is affirming and encouraging, and in that environment the child is more likely to come up with a good answer. And when the teacher has been told that these kids are difficult, all too often what happens is she’s shaking her head subtly in the negative, and she’s less patient with the answer, and she’s more likely to interrupt the child, and say, “You’re wrong.”

So, it’s mediated by these subtle, non-verbal cues, so if you can, you want to consciously choose to be sharing uplifting positive cues with other people and yourself throughout the course of your day. That translates into what we often call charisma.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I love that. So, in proactively seeking out the good in people, it’s sort of like you’re not faking it in the sense of you’re just actually responding naturally to what you believe.

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. And it doesn’t mean you’re not critical and discerning. Yes, please be critical and discerning. See the weaknesses, see the challenges, see the difficulties, and then figure out how you’re going to make the best of that particular situation, that particular relationship. And having said that, be wary of people who you experience as continuously draining your energy, people who are rude or obnoxious or abusive, and do your best to avoid being around those people whether they are in your life or on your television screen.

So, there’s a little section in the book where I say, “To be a glowworm, avoid tapeworms,” so that kind of sums up the message right there.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, fantastic. Thank you. Well, could you share with us a couple of the other most powerful principles and practices here?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. Well, the next one in the book is to achieve the three liberations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
And what are the three liberations? The first is to free ourselves from the reflexive tendency to view everything from our own evaluative lens. In other words, “Do I like it or do I not like it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Michael J. Gelb
And this isn’t helped by contemporary sites that have a thumbs up and a thumbs down for absolutely everything we see. And it’s fine to like or dislike things but if that’s the only way you look at the world you may not be seeing it as it is. You’re just seeing it in terms of how the lower centers of your brain view it in terms of, “Is it good for my survival or not?” which isn’t the way we view the world in the most enlightened manner. So, first liberation is to be free from evaluation and learn to observe things in a more objective manner.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
The second one is to learn not to take things personally, and this is kind of tricky. And I confess, my personality type, I’m the type I take everything personally. I’m ready to just have a big conflict very quickly, that’s my nature. That’s part of how I’ve learned all this because I’ve learned to not react in my automatic habitual way which might be to make things worse because I’m from New Jersey. People say, “You talking to me? You got a problem?” People can be very confrontational where I grew up, and usually that makes things worse.

So, I’ve learned to ask myself the question, “How would I respond to this if I didn’t take it personally?” And I love that question because, all of a sudden, it opens up a lot more circuitry in your brain to think of creative ways to respond instead of responding in a defensive ego-centered manner.

And then the third of the liberations is to liberate yourself from whining, blaming and complaining because that’s just going to get you basting in your stress hormones and exacerbating the stress hormones of your fellow commiserators, so free yourself from whining, blaming and complaining, and start focusing on solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Michael, you sound like some great liberations. Indeed, it would be liberating to either be free of these things. So, I guess, in practice though, if these are sort of deeply ingrained mental habits, how do we get the momentum in achieving these liberations?

Michael J. Gelb
That’s why in the book each chapter has a practice at the end I call the greatest point of leverage, because there’s all sorts of practical things you can do. But I’m really thinking in behalf of the reader, on behalf of the students in my classes, “What’s the one thing you can do that will just have the greatest point of leverage for really having the ability to apply this?”

And one of them is to learn to organize your nervous system. Now in the book I put in a practice that I teach martial arts, I teach Aikido, Tai Chi and Qigong.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool.

Michael J. Gelb
And one of the great things in martial practice, you’re basically learning to shift your whole physiology out of the fight-flight response and into a centered balance freedom so that you can respond and relax way. The more dangerous fighter is the more relaxed fighter. You look at all the clips of Muhammad Ali floating like a butterfly who’s able to sting like a bee because he just looked so easy and comfortable. And that’s what we say about people who are really good at anything, is they make it look easy.

So, if you want to be really good in building relationships, or the art of connection, you want to cultivate this ability to shift out of the amygdala hijack, stress response, fight-flight modality and into this poised, centered, balanced, alert, ready-for-anything modality. So, one of the things people can do, there’s a practice in the book, you can do it every day, it doesn’t even take that long but it’s a great way to center yourself, organize yourself.

And if you do it every day when you’re not in a crisis or a conflict or a difficulty, then you’ll have much more ability to really utilize it when you need it. If you just try to say, “Oh, what was the thing that guy wrote in that book,” and try to use it when all of a sudden you feel you’re under a personal verbal assault, you probably won’t be able to bring to bear, so it’s something to practice every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you maybe walk us through one of those live right now?

Michael J. Gelb
Sure. Okay. So, obviously, people want to make sure they’re in an environment where it’s okay to bring your full attention to what you’re doing in the moment besides, for example, driving. Or don’t do this while you’re doing something else basically. So, put down the scissors.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s the quote of episode, “Put down the scissors.”

Michael J. Gelb
Right. So, create an environment where you won’t be interrupted if possible. And once you know this, once you know how to practice this you can then pretty much do it anywhere, but for learning it in the beginning, and if you’re sitting, either sitting or standing, let’s just say you’re sitting. You want to have your feet flat on the floor evenly distributed between the two feet.

You want to sit, feel around in your rear end for your sitting bones, feel the two points of contact with the chair. You want to be aware of those two points, two feet on the floor. And then you want to sit at your full stature, so align around the vertical axis.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
If you say out loud the phrase, “Let go.” Just say it right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Let go.

Michael J. Gelb
Let go. Do you notice where your tongue goes when you say L in let go?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like up and into the front.

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah, just behind your upper teeth, your palate, so let your tongue rest on that point. It turns out that that point is an acupuncture point that connects the flow of energy down the front of your body and up the back of your body. So, your tongue rests lightly on that point. Now, can you picture the Mona Lisa in your mind’s eye?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Michael J. Gelb
You know her famous little smile?

Pete Mockaitis
Mm-hmm.

Michael J. Gelb
Do your best to imitate her little smile.

Pete Mockaitis
With the tongue still there?

Michael J. Gelb
Right, with your tongue still there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I’m with you.

Michael J. Gelb
Got your little smile. Eyes are open and soft, so you’re using your peripheral vision and you’re seeing as much of the space that you’re in as you can. So, you’re aligned around the vertical axis, eyes are soft, tongue on the point, got the little smile. Next ingredient is invite the breath in through your nose and fill your lower belly with your inhalation, so your lower belly is going to expand, your lower ribs and your lower back expand on the inhalation.

And then exhale and, of course, your lower back and lower belly and lower ribs compress. And then real simple, expand the time of the inhale, slow it down, so maybe start with the count of six              on the inhale, and then a count of six on the exhale. And then practice that for a minute or two at least once a day. If you can do two or three times a day so much the better.

But what you notice about that simple practice is we’re doing things that are the opposite of the stress response. What happens to your posture in the fight-flight response? You’re trapped.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. You’re like tensed up and raring to go.

Michael J. Gelb
Right. You’re ready to go, you’re ready to fight or run away. So, when you’re upright it sends a different message to your whole nervous system. What’s your facial expression like when you’re in the fight-flight response?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like a warrior like ready to aargh.

Michael J. Gelb
Yeah, it’s some kind of frown or gritted teeth or angry look. Instead we have a little smile like the Mona Lisa. What are your eyes like? They tend to get tight and focused on a point. So, here we’re softening the eyes and taking in the periphery. And your breathing when you’re in the fight-flight response tends to be just in your chest and very rapid. So, we’re breathing all the way into the belly and we’re slowing it down.

So, we’re training ourselves to do the opposite of the stress response and this puts us in a very resourceful, centered, balanced place. And it’s not that you can stay in this place all the time, but if you practice this for a few minutes a day you can get back to it faster when you need it, and that’s the real key. It’s not that you don’t lose it. We all lose it from time to time. How quickly can you get your center back so you don’t say something or do something that you’ll regret?

The founder of Aikido, the martial art that I studied and taught for many years, is one of the great martial arts masters ever. And one of his senior students is one of the masters that I studied with, and this master once said to the founder, “You’re perfect. You never make mistakes.” And the founder said, “Oh, no, I make mistakes all the time. I just correct them so quickly that you can’t see it.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That’s good. And I’d love to get your view then in terms of in great detail – and thank you for that, that’s really nice to make it complete and actionable – about what’s going on with the body. And so, is the mind, where are we focusing that? Are there particular thoughts? Or where is the attention should that be placed upon?

Michael J. Gelb
Lovely. So, for starters I just get people to place their attention on their breathing and on the little checklist I just gave you. Make sure you’re smiling, put your tongue on the point, check that you’re at your full upright stature aligned around the vertical axis, feet on the floor, balance on the sitting bones. So, at first, that’s more than enough for people to do with their minds.

Once you have consolidated this so that you can just say, “Okay. Center. Boom.” And then if I say that to myself I don’t have to repeat all those things. I instantaneously shift my posture, open my vision, tongue goes to the point, I have my little smile, and I invite the breath in to my belly. So, then, you can invoke a quality or an intention that you want to bring in the moment.

So, a useful one is courage, for example, if you’re facing a difficult situation, or grace, or poise, or creativity, or compassion.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Sorry, keep going. Keep going. I guess I’m thinking for a connection, I was like, curiosity, yeah.

Michael J. Gelb
Mm-hmm, or humility, or being a glowworm. So, you get the ideas. Now you’re conscious and you can choose the way you want to be. From this physiology you have way more freedom. If you’re in fight-flight you gave up your freedom. You’re preprogrammed. It’s all played out and you’re probably going to make the situation worse, so free yourself. And this is the physiology of internal freedom. And then, you’re right, it’s good to add a conscious intention and we just shared some of my personal favorites. People can make up their own.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig this. I dig this. And I’m chuckling a little bit because I see Dr. Marcia Reynolds is one of your book endorsers and it feels like a little bit of her is what I’m reminded of as we do this. We had her back in Episode 14, one of the most popular episodes, and it’s powerful stuff.

Michael J. Gelb
Well, she’s an old friend of mine and she teaches you how to outsmart your brain. What she’s talking about is outsmart this habitual preprogrammed part of yourself so that you can use your creative intelligence. She and I have always, we just had a meeting of the minds when we first met because we’re on the same wavelength of using different metaphors to teach people these universal truths about self-balance and self-understanding and inner freedom so that you can have a more beautiful life. That’s really what this is about.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, tell me, Michael, is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Michael J. Gelb
One of the fundamental points of this book, I emphasized it by translating into Latin is, “Conjungere ad solvendum,” which means, “Connect before solving.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Michael J. Gelb
It’s based on a lot of really practical wisdom. It’s based on the work of some of the greatest therapists. They find people in therapy resolve their biggest issues when they feel they’ve made a real empathic connection with the therapist. Well, guess what? Same thing happens with your husband or your wife or your children, and the same thing happens with your team at work, so connect before solving.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you.  So now, Michael, could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Michael J. Gelb
Okay. I got a lot of favorite quotes but I’m going to give you my favorite quote that I put in The Art of Connection, and it’s in the chapter on listening. It’s from Andre Gide who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and he said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Oh, it’s fun. I could chew on that for a while. Very nice. And how about a favorite book?

Michael J. Gelb
Favorite book. Well, the book that really got me started was Man’s Search for Meaning. There’s two actually, Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and Man’s Search for Himself by Rollo May. I read those two books when I was 14 or 15, and then I read Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow, and then I read Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. And I’d say those books set the course for the rest of my life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Michael J. Gelb
Oh, well, it is centering practice. It’s what I shared earlier and to me it’s so important. I do it for probably about an hour a day.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Michael J. Gelb
I do about 20 to 30 minutes of Qigong standing meditation and then I do various sets of Qigong that I’ve cultivated, I teach. I’ve studied this for many years and I try to teach the ones that are most helpful to others. And I’ve been teaching the ones that I actually do myself because I figure there’s a reason I chose to do them, so they’re the ones that I think I will share with others.

And my other key tool or practice is when I’m home I take a silent walk in the woods every day. Actually I took one earlier today in between interviews, and I just shut off the phone and go for a walk, and I don’t speak. I mean, if somebody says hello, I say hello, so I’m just going out for a walk. But basically it’s just silence and nature and, wow, I mean, what a blessing.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And is there a particular nugget that you share in your books or when you’re speaking, working with clients that seems to particularly resonate, get folks nodding their heads and taking notes with all the more vigor?

Michael J. Gelb
Well, it’s fun that you mentioned that one because this book, The Art of Connection, building relationships, the notion of being a glowworm, the idea of being around people who inspire you, so one of the ideas that I’ve had around that for many years is it’s great to find real people who you can be with, who inspire you, and you can also draw on historical sources.

So, I wrote a book called How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, and why did I do that? Because Leonardo is my childhood hero, and I immersed myself in studying his notebooks and translated it into this book. And the point of that is I love Leonardo so I learned as much as I could about him and it enriched my life immeasurably. So, the nugget for people is figure out the historical figure that inspires you the most and immerse yourself in that person. You can have a virtual mentor as well as a real-life one.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. And, Michael, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Michael J. Gelb
I invite them to my website MichaelGelb.com, it’s G-E-L-B. People can sign up for our free newsletter. We’ve got lots of free articles and we’re just getting our YouTube channel going, but we’re going to be posting all kinds of practices for people. If people are interested in the Qigong we have a couple of those that are up there. You have to hunt around for them a little bit but we’re going to make it clear and more accessible. It’s all at MichaelGelb.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Michael J. Gelb
Yes. Yes. My challenge is to bring passionate curiosity to understanding the dynamics of your relationships. Don’t take people for granted. Don’t put them in a box. Try to see everybody in a fresh, open, compassionate, empathic, loving way, and then notice the effect that has on yourself when you look in the mirror in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Michael, this has been a real treat. You can hear it in your voice that you walk the talk, and so thanks for sharing all this wisdom. Great stuff. And I wish you lots of luck in staying centered and book sales and teaching and changing lives and all you’re up to.

Michael J. Gelb
Thank you so much.