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Mar 26
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1140: Bringing More Laughter, Fun, and Connection to the Workplace with Chris Duffy

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Chris Duffy discusses how to find the humor in anything—and why that’s important in the workplace.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why to take humor seriously at work
  2. The simple habit that makes you more magnetic
  3. How to find humor in the most unlikely places

About Chris

Chris Duffy is an award-winning comedian, television writer, and radio/podcast host. Chris currently hosts the hit podcast How to Be a Better Human. You can watch his comedic TED talk, “How to find laughter anywhere” online. He has appeared on Good Morning America, ABC News, NPR, and National Geographic Explorer. 

Chris wrote for both seasons of Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas on HBO, executive produced by John Oliver. He’s the creator/host of the streaming game show Wrong Answers Only, where three comedians try to understand what a leading scientist does all day, in partnership with LabX at the National Academy of Sciences. 

Chris is both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student.

Resources Mentioned

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Chris Duffy Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Chris, welcome!

Chris Duffy
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about humor, and not just for the fun of it, but how it can actually enhance our experience of career and job and be an asset in that zone. But could you kick us off with a fun story about some of your most memorable moments in your career as a comedian?

Chris Duffy
Probably the most memorable moment I’ve ever had in my career as a comedian is I was a fifth-grade teacher before I did comedy. And so I never had use for LinkedIn because, listen, like you don’t get a job as a fifth-grade teacher through LinkedIn, like business networking, and you don’t get a job as a comedian through LinkedIn networking.

So I never had a LinkedIn profile, but I’d always heard about it, and I was curious about the world. So one day I went on and said, like, “Okay, I’m just going to make a profile.” And the first thing I realized is you could just say you work wherever. If you say you work for Nike, they don’t, like, email a Nike hiring manager, which struck me as completely bizarre.

And so I wanted to see how high up I could go. So I made my job on LinkedIn, the CEO of LinkedIn. And I thought, like, when I click save, it’ll say, “Error. You can’t do that.” But instead, not only did it let me do that, it sent an automated email to everyone in my contacts list that said, “Congratulate Chris on his new job. He is now CEO of LinkedIn,” which is, to me, that’s the funniest joke that I’ve ever been involved in. And I didn’t even make it. It was just LinkedIn’s like automatic emailing thing.

And then, I was the CEO of LinkedIn on LinkedIn for a full year. And at a year, it sent another email to everyone in my contacts list saying, “Congratulate Chris on his one year work anniversary as CEO of LinkedIn.” And that started going a little viral.

And so I got a message from someone on LinkedIn’s Trust and Security team. My account was frozen. And you can’t make this up. The person on the Trust and Security team, her name was Faith. And Faith said, “Your account has been locked due to concerns about its inaccuracy.”

I didn’t want to let the joke go because I love the joke so much so I sent her a photo of my license, front and back, and said, “There’s proof that my name is actually Chris Duffy.” And Faith said, “The problem is not that we don’t believe your name is Chris Duffy. The problem is you are claiming to be the CEO of LinkedIn.”

And I said, “Faith, you are taking a pretty disrespectful tone for someone who works for me.” And five seconds later, she permanently deleted my account. And so that was the end of my time on LinkedIn. But a very memorable moment in my comedy career.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. Okay. So one takeaway I’m gleaning right away is, “Go ahead and lie about how senior you are on LinkedIn, and the odds are pretty good, you can skate by for a good while with that.”

Chris Duffy
You know, if there’s one message I have for people, it’s, “Commit some light fraud.” No, that’s not my message. You know, I think the heart of what I like about that is that no one was going to hire me anyway from LinkedIn. So I think the thing that I encourage people to do is to think a little outside of the box, to not be afraid to play around and to have fun and to do something that is silly, even in a place where it’s serious.

And LinkedIn is a great example of a place where people tend to take themselves so seriously. So I think the more that you can be human and playful and fun, the more that things stand out. You definitely can’t and shouldn’t do what I did because, actually, one of my lasting contributions to society after me, they did make it so you can’t do that anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, congratulations. Your ripple…

Chris Duffy
Thank you so much. We all want to have an impact, you know? We want to affect the generations after us.

Pete Mockaitis
…it reverberates. That’s beautiful. All right. And so it’s funny, I’m thinking I actually do follow a couple satire accounts on LinkedIn, and it’s really funny in terms of the difference, like the contrast when there is sort of a vibe, a tone, a subculture, a script. You know what I’m saying?

Like, there’s a little bit of a feel for how a LinkedIn post is “supposed to go,” like one-sentence hook grabbing you like, “I had to fire someone today.” Like, “Huh? What? Why? I had to know the rest, you know.”

Chris Duffy
Yeah, “Here’s what my wedding taught me about peer-to-peer marketing,” you know, something like that. It’s like, “What? What? What are you talking about?” You know, I think it’s true, in a lot of our lives, professional, personal, social, there are these like scripts that we’re supposed to follow or we think we’re supposed to follow, I think is a better way to put it, right?

Where it’s like, someone says, “Hey, how are you?” “I’m doing pretty well. Yeah.” “Oh, crazy weather,” right? Like, you just kind of, like, that’s what small talk is supposed to go like. And I think the thing about when we get into autopilot like that is that things just blur into the background. They’re not memorable and we don’t make real connections and we’re not actually our full human selves.

And, to me, the beauty of humor is that it lets us laugh about and acknowledge these, like, ruts that we get into that we don’t even realize are just like our habits. And the thing that I love about laughing with other people is, like, when you connect with them, you are actually genuinely connected. But also then people like you more, they feel attracted to you. And I don’t mean romantically attracted, like they want to spend time with you.

And there’s a lot of great studies that we can talk about that show that from a professional standpoint, if you are acknowledging things in a funny, humorous way where you’re willing to laugh at yourself, people respect you more even if what you’re acknowledging is your shortcoming.

They did a psychological study where they looked at people in job interviews. And people who acknowledged their shortcomings, like the things they didn’t know but made a joke about it, were much more likely to get hired than people who didn’t acknowledge it at all, or than who acknowledged it in a serious way. Because we like those people, we trust them, and we want people to admit that they’re not perfect, because we’re not perfect either.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really interesting. And I’m just speculating as to the why behind that. And it feels as though, if someone is capable of acknowledging their shortcomings in a fun, lighthearted way, it kind of gives a subtle implicit permission that, “It’s okay to talk about those kinds of things with me and maybe it’s okay to talk about a broad range of things with me.” And so there’s just a little bit more of a vibe of comfort and safety. I’m totally reading a lot into this, but this is how I’d speculate are the underlying kind of facets that make it go that way.

Chris Duffy
I think that’s totally plausible. And I think another piece is that if you’re willing to laugh about the things that you don’t know or that you’re not good at, it probably means that those are places where you would be able to improve as well because you’re open to feedback on them. You’re open to growth.

Whereas, the things that you get defensive about that are like no-go conversation topics, it’s really hard to then grow in those because you’re locked in to like your idea that, “I already know everything there is to know about this.” And none of us do.

You know, I’ll give you another study that I love psychologists at a number of universities looked at, they did a study where people evaluated job candidates. And so they didn’t know that the people they were evaluating were actually research assistants reading from a script.

But when they were evaluating these candidates, of course, everyone rated the people who were qualified more highly than people who were unqualified. No surprise there. But between the people who were qualified, there were two people who were exactly identical, except one of them spilled a whole cup of coffee on their shirt before they came in for the interview. And they said like, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, I spilled coffee all over myself.”

And that person, the coffee spiller, was consistently rated higher, was rated more confident, and was the one that people thought they should hire for the job. And, for me, the big lesson that I take away is not, like, if you’re applying for a job, dump a scalding hot cup of coffee on yourself. That’s not the lesson.

The lesson is that we have this idea that we’re supposed to be perfect, that people want us to be flawless and perfect and have no mistakes and just impressive. And, in fact, when you’re like that, people can’t latch onto you. They can’t relate to you at all.

People much prefer someone who is a little bit of a mess, but is still good at their job and good at the things they need to be good at. And so, to me, I think lowering the bar in that way makes you so much more desirable as a job candidate, but also just as a person to work with.

I mean, think about it, Pete, like I’ll give you an example. In your real life, I think there’s an intuitive example, is if you, Pete, walk into a room and you meet someone and he goes, “Hey, by the way, Pete, nice to meet you. I have a six pack. I make a million dollars a year. I give to charity every single day, and I work at a soup kitchen. And, by the way, both of my kids went to Harvard, and I think I’m probably going to be nominated for a Nobel Prize.”

Like, you don’t like that person. You know what I mean? At best, you’re intimidated, and more likely you’re like, “I hate this guy. I never want to see this guy ever again.” That’s certainly how I would feel. Whereas, if you meet someone who’s like, “Hey, can you do me a favor? I think that my pants might have just ripped, right?”

Like, you have a lot more to talk about, a lot more to relate with that guy, even though it’s a little weird because they’re not perfect and you’re not immediately intimidated and are jealous and have all these other feelings about them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And what’s coming to mind right now is, internet personality. Her name is Elyse Myers and I just got her book.

Chris Duffy 
Oh, I love her.

Pete Mockaitis
She’s so delightful. It’s so funny, everyone loves her. That’s kind of where I’m going with that. I think her moniker is like the internet’s best friend or everyone’s best friend on the internet, something like that. And she’s repeatedly sharing her shortcomings, and her foibles, struggles with mental health and more, but she’s clearly very smart and very funny and very insightful and very personable. And when you bring those two things together, yeah, she’s the internet’s best friend.

Chris Duffy
Well, you know, I think the fact that you said very smart is actually, I think, really a huge and important piece here. I, for years now, have hosted a comedy show with the National Academy of Sciences, where we interview scientists about their work.

And, you know, I’ve interviewed Nobel laureates, I’ve interviewed MacArthur geniuses, all these really incredible people. And the number one thing that I’ve noticed is that people who are willing to say, “I don’t know,” or to be funny or to laugh at their own research, those are the people who are actually super intelligent, right?

Like, the people who don’t have a sense of humor and aren’t willing to admit that they don’t know some things or get defensive and blocked off, those are rarely the real geniuses. Because when you actually are exceptional at something, you have a level of confidence and comfort with admitting the limits of your own knowledge and also with trying to explain it simply and not just relying on jargon.

And so I think there’s a real piece there of, like, smart people, you can signal your comfort and your intelligence by laughing and by the things that you’re willing to laugh at and be open about.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I like that a lot. So can you give us maybe a story, an example, of someone in a professional context who upgraded some of their humor skills and found that genuinely helpful or transformative for their career?

Chris Duffy
One that immediately comes to mind is I talked to a former Navy SEAL, Joe Choi. And Joe was in very extreme life-or-death situations often. Even just the training for Navy SEALs can be really, really dangerous.

And when Joe was promoted so that now he was leading a team, he realized really quickly that the way to actually have people respect him, the way to have the men trust him, and know that in these life-or-death situations that he was someone they could rely on wasn’t to be super serious all the time.

The way he put it to me is that the best leaders that he had encountered as a SEAL, the best leaders took the work really seriously, but they did not take themselves so seriously. And so he found that he was able to motivate his team and to get them to be much more connected to him by being willing to laugh at himself.

And he told me probably the most dramatic laugh-at-yourself story I’ve ever heard, which is he was doing a training exercise where you were supposed to grab onto a ladder hanging out of a helicopter while you were in rough ocean waters.

And Joe managed to grab onto the ladder, he was going to demonstrate what to do. And he managed to grab onto the ladder, but he grabbed onto the wrong side. So instead of being able to climb up, he was actually getting dragged under the water. And he was struggling to breathe. He was about to pass out when he finally was able to pull himself up and flip over the ladder and climb up into the helicopter.

And when he got up, he was kind of gasping for breath and struggling. And it had really been a dire situation. And he says that all the guys who he’s supposedly leading are looking at him after this, like, scary and also, you know, not really like great example of how you’re supposed to do it. And one of the guys just said, “Wow, that was some real frog man shit.” And then they all looked at Joe and they saw if he would laugh, and Joe laughed really hard.

And he said that that became this moment for his group where they came back to it and it was like a bonding thing, but it was also a moment where they trusted that he was confident enough and honest enough about what had happened, that he was willing to laugh and acknowledge that he hadn’t done it right. And he said that that was something that really came back again and again in the group trusting him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really nice. Well, can you share with us, I think we like humor, humor is fun, the points you’re bringing up makes sense. They check out. So what are some things that we do with that knowledge? Do you have any sort of key pro tips or questions or ways you recommend we go forward and do more good humoring?

Chris Duffy
I will say that, I think, the biggest thing that people get wrong about humor is, I think, people often think that having a great sense of humor means you are the one on stage with the microphone or in the circle at the party or at the water cooler where everyone is around listening to your story, and you’re the one that’s getting all the attention.

And I would actually say that not that that’s not good humor, but the people with the best sense of humor aren’t always the ones performing it. They’re not always the ones getting the attention. Often, the people with the best sense of humor are the ones who are laughing the most. So they’re generously giving their attention to other people.

They are noticing things that are odd and unusual and delightful throughout their day. They’re laughing about it, even if they’re not sharing it with other people. And I think that when you broaden your definition of good humor and what good humoring looks like to include that kind of humor, you avoid a lot of the pitfalls.

Because one of the big things that people always say is like, “Well, how do I make a joke that doesn’t offend people? Or, what if I cross a line?” And the answer that I would say to them is the safest way that you can bring more humor into your life is to not be the one making the joke, to find people who make you laugh and to laugh with them. People love that, right?

I mean, like, the number one way to make someone like you is not to talk more, it’s to listen more. So I think if you can bring humor into your life in those other ways, that will really make you magnetic to other people because you’re having fun.

And so something I would ask you is, like, “Who are the people that already make you laugh? How can you spend more time with them? What are the ways that you are naturally laughing already?” So maybe one thing, one exercise that I really encourage, which is really simple, but I think can be transformative is just keep track of everything for a week that makes you laugh, or a month, however long, but write it down.

Write it down on a piece of paper or in a notes app on your phone. And what you’ll find is that just the act of paying attention makes more and more things surface, right? Anytime we direct our attention towards something, we find more and more.

And so having more of that humor and that laughter in your life is going to make you the kind of person who laughs more and has more fun. And that has all these benefits, both professionally and personally.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s a theme that’s come up elsewhere in terms of like gratitude. If you are identifying things that you feel grateful for, or that turned out better than you thought they might in the course of the day, you are more inclined to notice more such things and feel more gratitude.

Chris Duffy
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in like fashion here, by taking note and attending to that which is funny, you’re having more of those good humor vibes going on.

Chris Duffy
I think this is kind of true of anything, right? Like, I talked to a guy recently who is a roofer. And he was just kind of telling me about, like, the good, what a good roof is versus a bad roof, and, you know, the kinds of roof that he likes working on and all that.

And then I was walking around afterwards, and I noticed all these roofs, right, these things that have been totally invisible to me. All of a sudden, I was like, “That’s like a nice roof. Oh, that roof needs some repairs.” And I have no ability to actually, like, repair a roof or know about it, but just having talked to someone who had a real passion for it and knew a lot about it, all of a sudden, this piece of the world that was invisible became really visible to me.

And I think the same is true kind of for anything, right? Like, if you’re always looking for professional chances to connect, you’ll find more chances to connect. And I think what I love about humor is that it offers us the ability to take ourselves less seriously, to make other people want to be around us, and to have a better time all at once.

Because it’s, like, without trying to think like, “I should have social connections.” If you focus on laughing, people want to be around you. You’re a magnetic person. And so just by noticing more of this stuff, you get those side benefits.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, to do the noticing, I’m just going to pay attention. I’m going to write it down. Are there any key prompts or internal questions you recommend that can generate more of this good stuff?

Chris Duffy
So, for me, for more than a decade, I’ve been a professional comedian, both like writing late-night comedy shows and telling jokes and as a standup, and doing all sorts of other stuff. And what I found is that, actually, the most interesting part of comedy is not the performing.

It’s actually the generating the ideas and the noticing the material because that’s the part that I think anyone can do regardless of whether you perform or not professionally, right? Like everyone can have more laughter in their life.

And so the first thing that I would say is the seed of something funny is something that is a little unusual or off or different than expected. The gap between how things are supposed to be or how we think things are going to go and how they actually are is where comedy lives.

So one of the things that I would do is focus really small. The artist, Sister Corita Kent had a practice that she did where she would, literally, carry around a rectangular frame made of cardboard, and she would just, for her art, would hold up that frame and just look at what was inside the frame, everything else, narrow her field of vision, and that’s where she would find the art.

And I think you can, literally, do that for comedy. Just look at a corner of your house and just spend five minutes noticing all of the small things in that, what are the things that are a little off or a little weird or a little different. And you’re not going to find something laugh-out-loud funny right away, but you might find something small and odd that then you can think about and is the seed of it.

Or, a more relatable way, I think, is, Pete, when you go to someone’s house for the first time, and you go in their bathroom, you notice all sorts of stuff about their bathroom, right? You notice, like, “Where is the toilet paper? Is it hanging over? Is it hanging under? What kind of soap do they have? Do they have a hand towel? Do they have paper towels? Is there a pile of books next to their toilet? Do the books kind of seem weirdly wet? Is there a candle? Is there a little spray?” All this stuff in their bathroom.

But if you go to their house a few times, that fades into the background really quickly. It just becomes a bathroom. So the more that you can switch into that new bathroom mindset where you’re actually noticing the things in your life, the more that you can see the things that are odd and unusual and delightful. And that can really make you laugh.

So can we do an experiment like in real time rather than having this be a…?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was just about to go there in terms of looking at a corner for five minutes, how might that turn into some chuckles.

Chris Duffy
So, okay, so right now you’re in a hotel room, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I am in a hotel. I’ve had some flight cancellation action.

Chris Duffy
Great. So a hotel is kind of one of the most kind of stereotypically antiseptic places, right? Like, all the character has been taken out of it. And sometimes that can be hard to find something funny, but sometimes that in itself is the funniness, right? Like, that they’ve tried so hard to make no design choices, that it is bland in a way that is exceptionally bland.

So I would look around and be like, “Is there any art on the walls?” Hotel art is often funny to me, because it’s like, “What is the choice? Why is that the art?” What strikes your interest right away? Or what do you notice right away?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s interesting is there’s these vases on top of inside-floating shelves that are tapered and they’re like pierced. It’s almost like it was a dagger that punched through this hanging shelf.

Chris Duffy
That is already incredible. I mean, that’s already really funny. Like, to think like the person who was like, “I know what they need. They need shelves that have been stabbed by a dagger. That will be our brand.” Like, that. And that’s a good example of, like, you could spend a week in a hotel room and never notice that, I think, but then you see it and you think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I like what you did there because, in a way, because what you said is like, “The seed is something that’s a little off, unusual, unexpected.” And that was that, but you didn’t bring me into the chuckle zone until you went that extra step associated with imagining the people who were discussing this, and deciding, “Ah, yes, this is what’s necessary.”

Chris Duffy
“This is our masterpiece.”

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s just funny because, but, really, who had this conversation? How did this come about? It’s genuinely silly.

Chris Duffy
Well, it’s also one of those things where, like, I think about this a lot where, like, when I’m in my own house and trying to find things that make me laugh. One thing that I always think is so funny is, like, on my washing machine, it says like, “Bright Whites. TM,” trademark.

And I’m, like, I love the person who was there who was like, “Listen, LG is going to own the phrase bright whites. That is our phrase. That’s really important.” And I’m like, “I think that that is not actually a trademark. Like, you might technically have that trademark, but Bright Whites is not memorable for anyone else. That’s just the white setting on my washing machine. I don’t think that you needed to trademark that.”

And, like, thinking about the person whose job that is, like this was probably like a series of interviews. There’s this, like, in an interview, they’re like, “I have a vision for naming the white cycle, something that we can own that will be like part of LG’s brand.”

And then they had a bunch of meetings and they filed paperwork and there was a lawyer involved. That kind of stuff, thinking about like the world behind the things that you’re seeing that are odd is often where I find things the most funny.

Pete Mockaitis
That is good, yes. And so, once again, it’s sort of like you’re noticing the thing and then you’re going deeper into it. I’m sort of imagining the lawyer there bumping into Bright Whites on like a GE washing machine, and said, “What?”

They just become utterly furious. And he, like, calls up their lawyer and starts cussing them out and screaming. It’s like, “If you think you can pull this stunt, you got another thing coming. I’m going to see you in court.” And they duke it out.

Chris Duffy
“You think you could screw me like this? Oh, you can’t. I will not allow this. No one messes with me.”

Pete Mockaitis 
Yeah, “Bright Whites. The trial of the century.”

Chris Duffy
It’s true. And that often is called the trial of the century. A lot of people don’t know that, but that was the real trial of the century. Something that is a trick that we often do to make something funny in comedy, in professional comedy, but I think you can apply this to your own life, too, is to take an observation and then layer on top an emotion.

So if you’re writing a joke, like one of the ways you can write a joke is, “I find it so scary that…” blank. “I find it so exciting that…” blank. “I am so happy that this thing happened.” Like, putting an emotion tells the audience how to feel about it. And often that, like, “I’m happy that this thing happened…” is what makes the audience laugh, because then you’ve set up like, “Here’s what I expect.” And then you can turn it in another direction.

And I think anytime we’re communicating, letting the people we’re communicating with know how we feel about something, and then the specific detail that we feel that about, that really lets them latch onto something really clearly.

So, like, “I am so confused by the vases in my hotel room,” or, “I absolutely love the way the vases in my hotel room were pierced by a dagger.” That is a sentence that people can latch onto emotionally.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, I’m sort of combining these things. I’m thinking about, if you have an emotion associated with a thing that is unusual, it feels like we’re in comedic territory, per your previous notion. So I’ll throw this out here. When I have all of my laundry done, folded and placed in the dresser, I feel a sense of power.

Chris Duffy
That’s great! Yeah!

Pete Mockaitis
Like, I am unstoppable. So I feel like that’s a little bit unusual to feel a really strong emotional association with these somewhat ordinary occurrences in life. So it feels like we’re in fertile comedic territory here, Chris, but nothing hilarious is coming to mind.

Chris Duffy
Oh, I think that is hilarious. I completely disagree. I think that you feeling like, “I am powerful and I am the master of my domain because I folded my laundry,” is so funny and so relatable and wonderful. And I actually think this hits at a thing that is, you know, talking about how to be awesome at your job.

You just naturally did this piece, which is you took that noticing and then you put it onto yourself. So now we’re laughing at ourselves and the fact that you’re like, “The most powerful I ever feel, the most in control I ever feel is when I finish folding a towel. That towel is perfect,” right? Like, there’s something hilarious about that, and also very relatable, but it’s also that you’re laughing at yourself.

And this, again, like from a professional standpoint, being willing to laugh at yourself, being willing to like give people that in, that lets people connect with you. It lets people not feel intimidated by you, but also be impressed by you because it is really impressive to have this kind of self-knowledge. And so I think you just naturally did it in a really beautiful way. And I think that’s genuinely very, very funny.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting. So that’s funny for you.

Chris Duffy
This is an important thing. Like, it’s funny for me, but often the things that are funniest for other people are actually quite obvious to us. They don’t seem funny because it’s like, “Well, that’s just me being genuine and honest.”

But our authentic, genuine, honest feelings are often very funny to other people because there’s this gap between how we actually feel and how we’re supposed to feel, right? You’re not supposed to feel powerful and in control when you finish folding the laundry, but you actually do.

So for you, it’s kind of like, “But, yeah, that’s how I feel.” And for me, it’s really funny because I haven’t ever thought about it that way.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, you’re illuminating a decade plus mystery for me. And that is the TV show, The Big Bang Theory. I’m not really a fan. I don’t find that amusing. And so we got Sheldon who expresses his ideas in a very, you know, scientific-y, multi-syllables, big words, whatever kind of a way. And then the laugh track always hits.

And I’m just like, “The dude is just expressing his mind. This is not actually a joke at all.” And the funny thing is, in some ways, I, at times, can speak like him. I have a friend who’s like, “Oh, my friend is like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.” So, for me, it’s not funny because it’s not unusual because I am also talking weird in a way that’s sort of like Sheldon.

And maybe there’s a level of self-insight, self-awareness to be had from that. And that’s really intriguing in terms of, “They think it’s funny, I don’t, because I think that’s just how some people talk and that’s normal-ish, but apparently that’s very…”

Chris Duffy 
What is funny about Sheldon? He is a normal, attractive, intelligent man. He’s a totally socially normal, intelligent, attractive man. I think he is the peak of masculinity and I don’t see anything funny about him. Like, that is a really funny perspective to have, right?

Pete Mockaitis 
Yes, that is what… well, I wouldn’t call him masculine, etc. But, yeah, that’s intriguing that other people will find, and that’s just a good heads up. It’s like, “Hey, don’t get angry if folks are laughing at that. It’s not hostile. They’re just appreciating something that’s kind of special or unique or different about you, relative to perhaps the human norm.”

Chris Duffy
Yeah. Well, I want to unpack that, if it’s okay. I want to unpack that a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure.

Chris Duffy
On the one hand, sure, most times, I think, people laughing is not something to be offended by. It’s actually like a point of connection. But that doesn’t mean that people can laugh and be really mean in bullying you. So I think it’s possible to, like, you should be offended sometimes. So I think it really depends.

I think one of the things that is challenging about humor in terms of, like, the context that we’re in is there’s no such thing as a universal joke. There’s no such thing that’s always funny. Humor is always subjective. It’s always context-dependent.

So you strike me, I mean, we just met, but you strike me as like a confident, socially-adapted and successful person.

Pete Mockaitis
Handsome.

Chris Duffy
Handsome, charming, wealthy, powerful. You know, I could go on and on.

Pete Mockaitis
That checks out. It checks out.

Chris Duffy
But as a result, like, if we laugh about how you’re like Sheldon in some ways, I don’t think that’s hitting at some sort of like deep insecurity. And so, as a result, it is funny and it’s not bullying. But if that wasn’t the case, and you actually did feel like maybe you were getting, you had like a deep insecurity about how you fit in and that people were always laughing at you, and then we laughed about how you’re like Sheldon, that could actually be a really cruel, mean thing that wasn’t.

So I always go back to, like, “Is the laughter forming connection or is it pushing the person away? Are you trying to exclude them or include them?” And the kind that is really successful in our social lives, in our friendships, in our relationships, in our work is the kind that brings people in and makes people connect to us, not that pushes people away. And that’s always context-dependent. You can’t just have a universal role.

And speaking of that, like laughing at yourself is great in a professional setting, but there are these, like, lines. If you’re the leader of a company, people want to be able to connect to you. But also, you know, I’ve learned about the concept of selective vulnerability, which is like, if you’re a leader and you go into a meeting and you say, “Hey, everyone, the economics are really bad and we’re going to have to lay a bunch of people off, and I’m really terrified and I have no idea how this is going to go.”

Like, that might be really authentic and honest and vulnerable, but it’s not the right thing to say. People are going to be terrified and scared after that. Instead, you might want to be selectively vulnerable. So say like, “Hey, I’m aware that we are going into a really hard time and I just want to say, we acknowledge that and we’re going to figure out the way through together.”

So you’re still kind of acknowledging. You’re not denying the reality, but you’re not saying like, “I’m terrified and I have no idea what to do next,” because that’s not a helpful form of vulnerability. And even if that would get like a laugh in my context, it’s not worth the laugh.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any thoughts about humor in terms of boosting resilience, ability to bounce back from mistakes, failures, these kinds of things?

Chris Duffy
Totally. I think this goes back to, like, my core message, which is that we think we’re supposed to be perfect. And in fact, you’re not supposed to be perfect. The most resilient people understand that, like, a mistake is part of the process. For me, in my work, right, like if I go up on stage and I tell a joke and it bombs, no one laughs at all, if I say, “Huh, that means I’m a terrible comedian,” then I’ll never tell jokes again.

Instead, what I need to say is, like, “Oh, that was information.” And because the goal isn’t to have one perfect night of comedy, the goal is to, over time, get better and better, then I say, like, “Next time I tell that joke, I will try clarifying it, or I’ll phrase it in a different way.”

And I think that’s kind of true for all jobs, right? It’s, like, if you view it as an iterative repetitive thing where you can laugh about your mistakes and not feel like it’s indicative that you are some huge disaster or failure, then you get better and better because the point is to have the hundredth time be better than the first, not for the first to be perfect.

And laughter, I think, really helps us with that process because it takes away the judgment and shame and it makes it so that it’s, like, fun to share how badly something went and it’s fun to laugh at it rather than to think, “This is like a thing I need to sweep under the rug and not let anyone see.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Chris, tell me, any key do’s or don’ts, top things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Chris Duffy
Well, you know, the number one things I want people to do are keep track of things that are making you laugh naturally, pay attention to the world around you. And I would say that, you know, the number one other thing that you should do once you’ve done those is try taking a small social risk and sharing something that makes you laugh with someone else.

Don’t just have the same regular conversation you have every day, “Pretty hot outside, huh?” or, “Whoa, crazy weather.” Instead, try telling them like, “The other day, on the way to work, I saw a squirrel try and jump from one tree to another and it fell. Have you ever seen that? A squirrel missed the tree?”

Like, even if the other person doesn’t laugh, you’re going to have a different conversation than you would have had otherwise. And I think that is both the seed of connection, but also the seed of so much laughter and joy and comedy.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. What’s funny with that squirrel, you’re right, that that opens all sorts of avenues of conversation in terms of…

Chris Duffy
What does it make you think? There’s something boiling around in your head right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I was like, “Well, was the squirrel okay? What happened afterwards? If you plummeted a long distance, you know, was it grass? Was it concrete? Like, did it get up and keep moving? Or was he done for?”

Chris Duffy
Oh, wow. Okay. You know, Pete, that is just indicative of what a kind, caring human being you are. And I will tell you, this is a true thing that happened to me. The squirrel I saw fell a small distance onto grass. It got right back up. But then it looked at me like, “You saw that. Oh, you weren’t supposed to see that.” And then it ran away.

So we just shared a really beautiful interspecies moment of, “Don’t tell anyone about this.” And here I am telling all of the listeners of How to be Awesome at Your Job, and that squirrel is furious somewhere, who is also, by the way, a listener. I could tell. He seemed like he’s listening to this podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, now that makes me laugh because I’m imagining a squirrel with headphones that are, you know, pushing in the squirrel cheeks, you know, even more to make them even more fat and squirrel-like.

Chris Duffy
Yeah, and he’s wearing some of your merch, right, like he has like a T-shirt with your face on it, and he says, like, “That’s nuts.”

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. All right, man. This is your life. Like, all day, your brain gets to play here.

Chris Duffy
As excruciating as that joke was and a terrible dad joke, that is my life. That is for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Chris Duffy
I’ve been thinking about George Orwell talking about humor, and he said, “Every joke is a tiny revolution.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Chris Duffy
One of the best books that I read is Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I think that’s a really relevant book to our world today and also just a beautifully written book.

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

Chris Duffy
Oh, I want to say a microphone. That’s probably the only tool that I use regularly. And anyone who’s seen me try and do home repair will tell you this is the only tool that I’m safe to be around. So a microphone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you sound good, so I’ll ask what are you working with there?

Chris Duffy
Okay, this is a, hold on, I got to look at it. It is an RE320, an Electro-Voice RE320, baby. Oh, yeah, that smooth radio sound. Hello.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go. And a favorite habit?

Chris Duffy
I’ve been trying to do the 7 Minute a day Workout app. And when I do that, I feel a lot better and it only takes seven minutes. So that’s a good habit.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you often?

Chris Duffy 
When people yell something back at me, it is often, “Sir, you need to move or out of the way.” Probably the key nugget, I think, from all of the work that I’ve done on humor is to be willing to laugh at yourself and to connect with other people through laughing more and taking yourself less seriously. I think even in hard times, finding something to laugh about.

And it could be as simple as watching a clip of outtakes from The Office, or going on Reddit’s contagious laughter Subreddit, or it can be an inside joke that you’ve laughed about with friends. But I think that idea that when you’re having a hard day, going back to something that reliably makes you laugh can transform part of the day, that’s something that I think is the biggest thing, and also kind of an obvious and intuitive one, but that we forget to do so often.

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

Chris Duffy
ChrisDuffyComedy.com. That’s the place.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Chris Duffy
At your job, find the person who makes you laugh and spend more time with them this week. And then share something with them that made you laugh. I think that connection, connecting on something that’s lighthearted and fun is going to make that person want to be around you more.

And it’s also going to make them feel really honored that like you’re the person that laughs at them the most in a positive way. And I think that those connections pay dividends in ways that we can never expect professionally.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Chris, thank you.

Chris Duffy
Thank you.

Mar 23
0

1139: How to Become the Manager that People Want to Work For with Ashley Herd

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Ashley Herd illuminates under-taught manager skills required of leaders.

You’ll Learn

  1. How build trust with your employees from day one
  2. Simple ways to make meetings more effective
  3. The key question that helps accelerate your career

About Ashley

Ashley Herd is the founder of Manager Method, a leadership training organization that helps managers drive performance without driving people out the door. A former General Counsel and Head of HR with experience at organizations including McKinsey and Yum! Brands, she’s also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and co-host of the “HR Besties” podcast. Ashley is the author of The Manager Method, and is known for giving practical tools that make leadership feel human and doable.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Ashley Herd Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ashley, welcome.

Ashley Herd
Thank you, Pete. I love listening to your podcast, so it’s a treat to be on here.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. You, too. It’s funny, I had to check. Wait, we haven’t met in person before, have we, right? No, I don’t think we have. Okay, well.

Ashley Herd
No, no, although it feels like it.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. All right. Well, I’m stoked to be talking about managers and methods therein. You said something intriguing, and I had heard that, “Oh, many managers don’t receive any training.” You went ahead and quantified that, depending on what segment we’re talking about. It’s a whopping 40-60% of managers have had no training whatsoever. Can you talk to us about this concept?

Ashley Herd
Well, what often happens, I’ve seen, is this idea of when managers are selected. And I say that intentionally because often it is this selection process that, when you get picked or told you’re going to become a manager or interview to become a manager, there’s this idea of, you know, “This person is great at their job, so we’ll take them. We’ll make them a manager. They’ll teach everybody else how to do it and magic. It’s awesome.”

And despite the fact that most people making that decision are actually managers, people-leaders themselves, that know the realities of doing a job and leading a team are very different, you just kind of forget that it’s a very different skill set.

And so people are put into this position, really focusing on the work without ever giving that consideration or actual training on how to do it with this idea of like, “Oh, they’ll figure it out as they went along.” Sometimes that’s what people did and it works out for you.

Sometimes leaders think that it’s worked out for them, but it has not, actually, and data shows that it does not tend to work out to just magically learn leadership.

Pete Mockaitis
So you just mentioned data, one my favorite words. What are the indicators? What are the numbers telling us about things not working out so much here?

Ashley Herd
Well, you can look at things the boards of directors and leadership levels are going to be looking at of retention, engagement, so people are going or staying. Engagement, sometimes that can be a little trickier to monitor. You often may have employee engagement surveys.

I, personally, now that I do manager training, frequently people come to me and say, “We did an employee engagement survey. It shows that we need manager training.” And the answer to that, “It’s okay.” Well, what does that say? Because generally it’s not going to be quite specific as our managers need training. It’s a lot of run on comments sections about the realities of what it’s like to have a manager or what they’re doing.

But then sometimes with manager training, I say, “Okay, well then employees, managers get training, but then employees want it themselves.” So I do think the reality is people are looking for tips on how to work. And so when you do look at factors like retention, engagement, performance, there’s great quantifiable data.

I personally have no affiliation, but I love Harvard Business Review, HBR.org. It’s great because the things that may seem very common sense to you and I, Pete, and those listening, that if you don’t train managers, you’re probably going to see negative effects from them.

HBR has done a really nice job of having examples of what that looks like. But all of those check-the-boxes that are ticked, that boards of directors and others care about, those do really, really trickle down to the idea of, “My manager isn’t the type of manager I want to work for. I’m either not going to care about my job or I’m going to go find a job where they do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, engagement numbers aren’t great, retention numbers aren’t great. Is there anything dastardly or shocking that you’ve uncovered about the state of manager effectiveness in the workplace nowadays?

Ashley Herd
Well, one thing that I’ve really been interested in seeing, including in the world of AI and whether you’re managing people or AI agents, and they are not one and the same, the thing, but some of the data has really continued. Like, I actually, before, like I was a lawyer, but before I even went to law school, I worked for a company called Corporate Executive Board. They were acquired by Gartner.

And they partnered with Gallup to do research on employee engagement. And I, like a lot of people, including maybe like a lot of people listening, didn’t really understand, one, what that means or what goes into it other than pay me more.

And I do very scientific studies all the time on social media when I post videos, and I see comments that say, “It’s simple. Pay people.” I say, “Okay, but I’ve had some of the higher-paying jobs that I’ve had, I actually would trade that and have actually in my life traded for a lower salary to have a quality of life and autonomy and a manager.”

There are other things that go into your experience. And the data that stood behind that, that Gallup had done on employee engagement, that we did with the company I mentioned that’s now Gartner, is the number one driver of employee engagement, meaning how much you care about your job and the work you put into it, it isn’t pay.

Like, pay will keep you in seat or not often, but it’s whether your direct manager helps you understand if you’re good at your job, how that impacts the organization’s goals. Like, really the human equivalent of, “Do I matter?”

And that research has been redone sometimes identically, but sometimes in other ways, and that still continues. I mean, that’s over 20 years later since that was originally done. And so I think one aspect is how continuous this idea of people really wanting to feel like they matter as a human at work, that that stood still, including as technology has evolved.

Pete Mockaitis
To feel like they matter. Yes, and I’ve seen a number of studies which say, you know, “Appreciation is the top thing.” And that’s in that zone of feeling like we matter. And what are the top drivers that contribute to feeling like you matter or don’t matter in so far as stuff your manager is doing or not doing?

Ashley Herd
Well, I’d say Gallup, and, again, like while there’s no affiliation, there are some organizations I really like and trust the research, and Gallup continuously is one of them. And so they’d have this idea of, “Okay, let’s look at regrettable attrition.”

What that means is it’s like the people that they leave, and the manager says like, “Oh, shoot. I really wish they hadn’t left.” Gallup did a whole study around that of like, “Okay, let’s take out times when someone is not a fit for the job or times when the employer is making the decision, lay off, things like that.”

“But when people quit and the manager or organization wishes they hadn’t, what would have changed their mind?” And they went through the factors on this. And it was incredible because, as I mentioned, compensation can keep people in seat. And about a third was compensation, “Compensation would have kept me here.” But also about equal to that, about a third was two things.

One, if they had more positive interactions with their manager, and, two, if they’d had less negative interactions with their manager. And so what that can look like isn’t some, you know, big question of, “Did my manager put me up for this promotion? Did they give me this strategic guidance?”

Sometimes it’s literally thinking about that of, “Okay, I have a manager. We’re in person. I’m sitting in my cube, and I sit there every day and watch my manager stop by this person across from me, and never stops by me. Like, I just literally feel like I don’t matter.”

Or, on the flip side, “Okay, I have a manager that they have a kid that’s in Little League. Okay, their team.” Sometimes team members will say, “I know more about my boss’s kid’s batting average than I know of my own. I can’t go to a single one of my games while my boss is somehow leading this team and coaching their team because they can take the time off, but I’m not allowed to.”

And so that type of environment versus, “Okay, my manager has a kid that’s in Little League. I don’t have children. I don’t really have nothing to relate to them on. But if I have a manager that says, ‘Oh, but I’m personally into fly fishing,’” meaning me, the team member, “That has nothing to do with my manager, but they stop and ask me about that…?”

Conversations like that and moments like that, I mean, those don’t pay the bills. But when you’re coming down to your decision of, “Do I apply for another job? Do I want to stay here?” When you have a workplace that you show up to and you do feel like you have those interactions, that can truly influence people choosing to stay even when they have opportunities elsewhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I love it. And it’s funny that that comes up in terms of it seems so simple, yeah, more positive experiences and fewer negative experiences, like, “All right, let’s turn that into a tremendous prize for a research insight.”

Ashley Herd
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
But, nonetheless, it’s not a super common practice, apparently, as is showing in the data associated with people’s experience of their engagement and their retention. I’d love it if you’re familiar with any of the super simple behaviors – you just mentioned one, you ask about their life and the things that they’re interested in – super simple behaviors that are pervasively neglected would just make a world of difference for folks.

Ashley Herd
I’ll give you three because, from my time at McKinsey, I learned the power of three, and so I say sometimes I’ll give you four to go above and beyond, but we’ll stick with three, the magic number.

One is if you’re hiring somebody, so let’s say you’re a manager and you’re hiring somebody on your team. Great. They go through, maybe you call and let them know, “Hey, you’re going to get the offer. You’re going to hear from HR on the paperwork. Congratulations!” And, in a way, you almost treat it like a lottery prize, like, “Congratulations! You’re on our team. HR does the paperwork. They take care of things.” And so the next you see them is on their first day, virtually or in person.

But there’s a step that can often be missed. If you’re a manager, have you ever had a conversation with a new hire and told them why they got the job? Or, on the flip side, if you’re listening to this and you’re not a manager, how often have you gotten a new job and the person that’s going to be your boss tells you, “Hey, this is why you stood out in the hiring process, and this is why we’re uniquely excited to have you join our team”?

It doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t really take much time. But that kind of conversation helps tremendously with things like engagement, because you’re starting and you feel like you matter, that it really is that two-way street. And so that’s something I often recommend, especially as a hiring manager, because I’ve been in legal and HR.

Those are not two of the most popular departments in any organizations. HR is more popular when you’re giving people new hire paperwork, but to keep present and tell people that really sets it up as a two-way street. And so I say that’s neglected just because it doesn’t, most managers don’t pause to think about how impactful that can be.

The other, I’ll say, is during employment. So let’s say delegation. You listen to all sorts of podcasts, of course, including Pete’s here, and you hear, “Okay, I should delegate. Give opportunities to my team member. It’s going to help them grow. It’s going to help me not feel like I do everything.”

But one thing that happens is you have a conversation and you tell your team member what they’re going to do and you feel great about it. But that team member, they hear it and they’re not so excited. They think to themselves, “Okay, well, now my boss is just trying to pawn work off on me, and I already have a full plate. So I guess I’ll just have to work more hours to figure this out.”

And so what’s neglected is having a conversation to, again, one is get their interest in working on this, “Sometimes you’re going to be able to work on things you’re interested in, sometimes you’re not,” but also explaining why you picked this person out for this opportunity and how it connects to actual development opportunities.

But then also to have the conversation of, “I don’t want to assume. I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s on your plate, but I don’t want to make assumptions. Let’s talk about this and how it can fit in with other things. And if there’s anything that can and should move off your plate to work on this.”

Again, that’s something that’s often neglected, it’s that step of between telling you what you’re going to do and how it gets done. The last thing I’ll say, and then I’ll flip back is, sometimes what gets neglected is when people quit. So we’ll go back to that regrettable attrition.

I’m meeting with Pete. Pete sets up time with me. I kind of have a sense of what’s coming because Pete is on my team and he tells me, “Hey, I need a quick minute.” Pete tells me, “I’m sorry. I’m leaving to go to another company.” I’m pissed because I take it very personally, because I see all the time on the internet. I’m like, “People don’t leave people. Pete is leaving me. This is super personal.”

Well, sometimes that happens. Sometimes Pete wants and needs to make more money. Sometimes Pete is moving. All sorts of other reasons aside from just the manager. But what gets neglected is pausing by managers to think about how it matters of, “How I talk to you, Pete, in that situation and understanding that you may have been incredibly stressed before telling me that and felt super guilty.”

But people make professional decisions all the time. And as a manager, projecting calm and not taking it, you know, back personally or getting frustrated back at Pete, and also then how I talk about you, Pete, to the rest of the team.

So sometimes what happens is managers bash and say, “You know, Pete is leaving us, so we’ll figure it all out.” But in those three moments, each of those is often just a pause to think about sometimes what you can do or how you can react that make such a difference in leadership beyond those moments.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And that seems to be just a theme throughout is pretty much like and you’re going to share with us a framework. But you are, you just have a pause and think about the other, the human being in front of you, and where they’re coming from, and what they’re thinking about, and how they’re feeling, and then providing a little something-something, in terms of, “Hey, here’s why we picked you. Here’s why I think you’d be great at this.”

Or, “Hey, well, it’s going to be a bummer to see you go and we’d love to hear some more about what might’ve caused you to stay,” or whatever, you know, in terms of, in some ways, it doesn’t seem that hard, and yet it’s often not done. Why do you suppose that is?

Ashley Herd
Probably, some of the biggest doubts I’ve had about what I do is, like, “Am I going to write my book?” or, “When I put things out, is it just common sense?” But common sense really isn’t that common. And why I think it happens, and why a lot of research does back it up is that people do just get busy.

And some of it’s research, some of it’s just common sense, is we all have intentions about what we’re going to do and say. I mean, look at it. If you made a to do list this morning, Pete, hopefully it was have a fun podcast conversation with Ashley.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right, it is.

Ashley Herd
And anything else, I mean, we do this all the time though. We make these to-do lists for ourselves. Sometimes, morning me has this idea of, afternoon or evening me, and it’s two different people. I have no idea what I thought was going to happen, but the reality is we get busy and you’re just trying to get through things.

And no matter what your role or title is, how many years you have experience at work, you get busy. And so you do not pause. I mean, that just happens. And so you’re just reacting in the moment, and you’re trying to get through things, and you’re making assumptions just like you wouldn’t want someone on the other side to do but you’re doing that yourself. And I really do think a lot of it is because we just get busy and we don’t think about it.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes sense. Well, I want to dig into your framework, but maybe we could just zoom out. Tell us, The Manager Method, your book, what’s sort of the big picture message here?

Ashley Herd
So the big picture is to meet managers where they are. So whether you are a brand new or aspiring manager, or an experienced senior executive, I have found that people in leadership have so much in common. And so I’ve taken from my experiences working at, including in the corporate departments, from KFC to McKinsey, and seeing that often managers don’t take time to pause.

And so what this is, is a framework that you can use in any situation as a people leader, and then all sorts of examples of how to bring it to life, whether you’re hiring, or whether you’re delegating, or whether it comes to taking time off for yourself and as well as your team. And so all of those different aspects of work. So it’s designed to be, hopefully, an easy read, but also one that sticks with you, that helps people actually lead better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share with us a story of someone who dug into some of these principles and saw a cool transformation?

Ashley Herd
So one is, and I think I actually saw this, this is somewhat spurred it on, but I once had a boss, a future boss that was going to interview me. As I mentioned, I’ve taken a pay cut once in my life from higher pay to lower for quality of life. That happened when I was a lawyer. I moved from law firm to in-house counsel.

And I was interviewing with a client, which has all sorts of aspects to it. It was a general counsel of a publicly traded company. At the time, I had a toddler. I worked 24/7. I traveled all over the country on employment litigation cases with the law firm. All I did was work. I didn’t really like the person I was, honestly, for myself or my family.

But this client I interviewed, and I had all these questions in my head because you hear like it’s kind of being a consultant, going to industry, like, “Oh, is it better? Hope it is.” But this general counsel, who was a man, had two teenage sons, but also stay-at-home wife and a nanny, had no idea or no reason to understand fully what I was going through.

But he said, proactively, “I want to be clear that moving in-house, in this role in particular, is a pay cut, about 20-25% pay cut,” which is true. But he said, “Part of your compensation package is a more predictable schedule. You will work eight to five, you will not be expected to work out of those hours. We have a lot of fun. We take our jobs seriously, but we do really enjoy each other.”

And these are conversations, I don’t know if any lawyer has ever heard in a job interview, certainly not proactively from a general counsel or senior leader since, but I saw this, in proactively having that. So what that did for me was communicate information about what I was going to be paid very transparently, but also for me, I was willing to take that for transforming what my life was like.

And so I’ve taken that, and now had conversations with managers, and included in the book, about things to proactively tell candidates when hiring. And I’ve had so many managers that have said, you know, things like, “What kind of decisions can you make? What are the actual hours that you have? What are the things that may drive candidates away because they’re so bad? And then can you rethink those so you’re not having people quit and you’re constantly doing the turning wheel of hiring?”

But I’ve had so many managers that say, “You know, there’s things about this,” or, “If I had a candidate that brought up to me work-life balance, I wrote them off. Maybe in the moment I didn’t, but I thought it was that showed me that’s what they care about. And I need someone that’s going to focus on work. We can figure out the work-life balance.”

But it’s when I thought about it and understood, “Okay, but it’s not a game. And it’s important to me to have people that start and understand the realities of the world, for better or for worse, in proactively providing that. Because people often aren’t going to ask that question, because for that exact same reason.”

And so that’s what I’ve heard is the feedback of whether it’s things from interviewing or otherwise, how helpful it can be for managers to have those conversations, but ultimately, how you can bring people on that are a fit for the realities of what your role is. And doing that can help everyone’s lives be a lot more effective at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s great. And I’ve had that experience and when I’m hiring people, and I’ll say, “Hey, here’s my personal opinion of why I think this role is really cool. And here’s my personal opinion of how this role, in some ways, will really suck. And you know you the best in terms of if that seems like appealing and a fit or like a, ‘Uh-oh, maybe we should just stop talking right now.”

And I think that that’s great for everybody, in terms of there’s no surprises, because that’s super costly, it’s like, “Oh, shoot, I thought this was that, but apparently it’s something completely different.”

Ashley Herd
Yeah. I mean, you see the cost of hiring and you can see the ranges from 50 to 200% of salary, again, depending on whether someone started their role, all of those things. But we know it is expensive by money. It’s expensive at time.

And then there’s the whole morale of you have someone that starts on Monday, and by Wednesday they’ve ghosted you and they are not coming back to work, and what that means to the rest of the team. And that just creates a lot of grumbles. But I love that you do that, Pete. What are the reactions that you get when you say things like that? Or, like what are the aspects of roles that may suck or not suck?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, terms of it’s like, “Hey, you know, this is kind of repetitive. I mean, we’re going to be doing another episode, then another episode, then another episode, then another episode. And you might have perhaps eight key things that you’re trying to accomplish with them again and again and again and again.

And so that might feel great, like, “Oh, I can get into the groove. I can master this craft.” Or, it might feel not great, “Oh, I’m bored out of my mind.” And so, hopefully, the variety of the topics and exchanges will be of interest and supporting.

And so I think, as I’m recalling those times, it’s just like, “Oh, good. Understood.” I think it’s just a little bit – relief might be a strong word – but it creates a little bit more calm and peace on a couple of fronts. One is like, “Okay, I could see what I’m getting into,” as well as, “Oh, okay, this person I’m talking to is real in terms of it’s not all rosy, okay? And that’s to be understood and expected.”

And then I think it creates a bit more freedom in the conversation to express what’s really on everyone’s mind, because we don’t have to kind of play a game in which these are…And I’ve seen YouTube videos on this, like, when the interviewer asks this, “This is really what they want. And so what you’re thinking is this, but you don’t really say that.” I mean, just this whole layer of obfuscation, it’s like, “Oh, we can let go of some of that. That’s nice.”

Ashley Herd
It is. And it sounds like common sense because you think, like, “Okay, well, this is work and I’m the leader. If people don’t like that, then they should look elsewhere.” And they can, but you’ll also tend to have consequences of that.

If you create, whether it’s a hiring process or a workplace, that your attitude is people can go work elsewhere, then probably the people that you want to work with you will be looking elsewhere sooner rather than later. And you and I both, if people wanted to work on our teams, that they have a lot of data they could look at.

Namely, they can listen to and watch your podcast, have and say, “Okay, I wonder what Pete is like in real life.” But you get a glimpse into what someone is like. Oftentimes, someone is interviewing and, aside from your LinkedIn, maybe it’s a profile picture from 20 years ago or all those things, but people are, they are, they’re just trying to find out the realities just like you are of them.

And I’ve just seen so many managers that they forget, not that they don’t care, you’re just not thinking about the fact of this is a real human on the other side. And so if we have 10 rounds of interviews, that can mean 10 times of them trying to figure out how to lie to their boss about exactly where they are at that moment. And so we may be making this process a lot harder than it should be.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And that’s a great point, it’s like, for most, the vast majority of humans have a very tiny public profiles, like, “Okay, you got a LinkedIn profile, but you haven’t posted anything for years, and maybe you haven’t updated some of the positions either. So I don’t know if you’re the guy who just screams, ‘You can’t deposit excuses, you know, every week’ or what you’re like at all.”

Ashley Herd
Yeah, and so they may look, it’s like, but I hear all the time, like, Glassdoor, and HR leaders will say, “Oh, you can’t trust Glassdoor.” And I say, “Well, sure, I know. I know from very real experience.” Sometimes you look at a Glassdoor of you, and you think to yourself, “I know who that person is.” And there’s some more context to that that could probably even it out a bit.

But when you do see themes like that, or if you’re a manager that has a reputation that people have identified you by name or by function, that’s what people are building their information on. And so knowing that the candidates you’re talking to, these are real humans with real lives. And those are people that, ideally, you want to have come join your team and want to be there and grow, and so providing as real of information as you can.

I totally love the way you put it. I think the value of having peace and calm and just feeling this is somebody you can have a communication with and trust what they’re saying, that is such an underrated skill in management, meaning underrated by managers thinking about how important that is for them to establish.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, let’s hear about your pause, act, consider framework. Walk us through it.

Ashley Herd
Okay. So, again, three steps, all revolutionary. And I’ve mentioned the pause a bit. And this is a step that I do see people miss, whether you work in an organization that all your job descriptions say fast-paced, or you work in an organization where that’s not written down, but it always feels like it’s respond immediately, reply to emails, always be available.

Technology has made it often that despite the word asynchronous, you often feel like there’s this expectation that your value is in being fast in responding. And so you are, you’re getting things out. Sometimes you’re frustrated. You immediately respond with that.

The third word is act, so it doesn’t mean to stop or not do things at work, but it’s to take a breath, take a beat, sometimes take longer if it’s really something you need to think through, but it really is to give yourself an opportunity to consider other things, which is the second step because the pause is not just, “Okay, be quiet for a moment. Look strategic, like some YouTube trick of look strategic and then do exactly what you were just going to do. Just make it think and think that you’ve been thinking about it.”

But, yeah, this space. So it’s to consider, and you can consider things. The one thing I say to people, if you’re just going to remember one thing, is consider what you’d want to have happen if you were in that person’s position.

So, talking about job interview, for example. Like, if something is crazy, like my first job that I took, the title was marketing associate. This was not a marketing role. It was sales and it was cold-calling and it was called marketing associate, but, really, it was sales.

And so, whether it’s the titling of something or how you describe it or anything that’s going on at work, thinking about how you’d want to have the conversation on the other side because managers I really see, even if you’re not a manager at work, just thinking about the person on the other side of that, because we’re not thinking about that person from the receiving end.

So, okay, if something’s, this job is absolutely crazy, wouldn’t you want to know? And again, the way Pete phrases it, the things that might suck, the things that are great, but describing it, at least giving people the truth, and letting them decide.

Sometimes you’ll be disappointed because you really like someone and it’s not for them. Or, if you’re giving performance feedback and, “Well, I don’t want to do that. It feels mean.” Okay, well, what if I was on the other side and I knew my manager had feedback for me? I wasn’t doing something right. But they weren’t saying anything because they didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

But I’d probably say, “Well, let’s have the conversation. But maybe ask for my perspective or say it in a way that’s not going to hurt my feelings, or that doesn’t feel so harsh.” And so that consider is, really, I think the most helpful step to think about how you’d want to be treated.

Think about any other factors. Okay, they knew or they experienced. What are the what are the options? But then act is to actually do something about it. Like I mentioned, morning me often has a lot of expectations about how I’m going to act throughout the day. Sometimes I don’t feel like doing something. I say I’ll do it tomorrow. But making sure that you actually do the thing.

And so having the conversation, making the decision. If Pete and I are having a conversation, I give him an idea. And Pete says, “Let me think on that. Okay, I’ll get back to you.” Well, if you, Pete, never get back to me and I never hear anything about it, I assume that you’ve thought a lot about it. Maybe you’ve talked to people about it and you think I’m a complete idiot.

But reality, what’s happened is you probably forgot about it like a human being. And so the act is whether it’s making the decision, or if you are thinking about something, having a note for yourself, having a reminder so that you are getting back to people. And it’s really, again, not revolutionary, but three steps that, whether you’re in management or in any role, that can really help you be awesome at your job, no matter what that job is.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so good, the pause, consider, and act, because, I guess, I’m thinking about, I’ve had a number of occasions in which I am in a meeting with my business partner and we’re talking to someone, maybe it’s a sales context, maybe it’s operational thing. And he keeps saying things, like, “Oh, I should have said that,” “Oh, I should have said that.”

And it’s usually because of exactly this. It’s the pausing and considering of that other person, where they’re coming from, what might they want to hear in this situation, as opposed to, you know, whatever, getting on to the next thing. Or, my hang up, I think, is more so that I get very excited and very curious.

So it’s like if someone sends me just an amazing piece of work, and so it sparks all kinds of new questions and ideas and possibilities. And so I say, “Oh, what about this? Well, what about this? Have you thought about that? And how about that?”

But what would be ideal is, before going down that, would be to talk about more positive interactions and fewer negative interactions to say, “Wow, this is a very impressive piece of work. Thank you so much. It must’ve taken a lot to pull all of this together. Wow, this opens up all kinds of exciting new opportunities and possibilities.”

Like, that took maybe 20 seconds. And then they say, “Well, yes, thank you. It was a lot of work and it feels good to be acknowledged.” And I’m not nowhere in my heart am I thinking, “I wish to punish this person,” or, “I take them for granted. And, of course, you just did your job. You don’t need a cookie or praise for…” you know? Like, that’s nowhere in my psyche, and yet I can blow right past it.

Ashley Herd
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d also want to get your pro tip when it comes to great meetings.

Ashley Herd
Well, I’d say two pro tips. One is for one-on-one meetings and one is for team meetings. My biggest pro tip for one-on-one meetings is to show up for them and show up on time and be focused. So that was kind of three things at once, but those are going to be things that sound very basic.

But it is wild when I do a scientific study of a video about one-on-ones with your boss, for example, and I make a video about you have a 30-minute one-on-one with your boss. The comment sections are much more than not comments of, “One-on-ones haven’t had those. They’ve been on the calendar, but I haven’t had one in about two years.”

Or, I’ll make a video about, “Okay, but you’re a boss that shows up 25 minutes into a 30-minute one-on-one, and says like, ‘Okay. Oh, I was meeting with SVP of XXYZ,’” but that happens constantly. And how you as a manager are probably thinking, “I’m giving an explanation of where I was,” but the team member is thinking, “Okay, well, wherever you are, you’re with people that are more important than me, but I have 47 things I really need to get through with you. So how are we going to make this happen?”

And so it is a step that, again, in the book, I have tips about things on agendas and how to make the shared agenda and how to make them more actionable. But it is amazing when you give people focus time where they know they’re going to be able to run through things, and you’re going to be looking at them, not at your cell phone, not at your second and third screens, all over the place.

But when you can have that time, it helps tremendously. It helps your team members, but it also often helps you avoid the people trying to reach you. Because you’ve told them, “Oh, I just have an open door policy. I don’t do one-on-ones. Come find me if you need me.”

And then everyone’s trying to find you, and it can feel crushingly stressful. And it’s, obviously, not effective. And so that’s my biggest tip for one-on-one meetings is to just consider how impactful that could be for both you and them.

For team meetings, I’ll just say one thing that’s a pro tip is in those, taking an opportunity to give opportunities to team members, including those that don’t speak up as much, but just to take a few minutes and you can rotate it, to talk about something that they do that feels super easy to them.

So maybe that’s a process they do. Look up, some people are going to be much more comfortable just talking about work and focus on a work thing that they know how to do. Other people, this may be the opportunity for them to say, “Oh, this is how I make this banana bread that I bring to every potluck. But these are my tips of how I do that.”

But why that can help is to give people an opportunity to explain something that choose whatever they want that really feels genuine. Or sometimes they’ve done something well and the manager say, “Okay, come and talk to the team about how you did that and some of the challenges you went through.’ But it also then can build that communication and confidence skills.

Again, it doesn’t have to happen every meeting necessarily, but it can absolutely be a way to give people who just show up to every meeting, otherwise, don’t feel like they have anything to say, but it can give them the opportunity to really have communication, learn from each other.

And I’ve sat through some of those meetings. And some of the things I can tell you, years later that I learned that stuck with me, even those non work-related topics, much more so than just any work-related thing. But it also changed the way that we work together because I saw those people as real humans rather than just super transactional.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me, Ashley, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Ashley Herd
Well, the one thing I’ll say is, because if you’ve been listening to this and you’re not a manager and you think, “Okay. After listening to this episode, now I really want to become a manager. So I want to be good at my job,” one tip I have is, is to think about if someone gives you something, like if your boss asks you something, finding out why they’re having it, why they’re working on it.

And also explaining why you want to ask. So, “Okay, I’m meeting with Pete.” Pete says, “Okay, can you give me three bullets on this status that you’re working on?” “Okay, I can do that.” I may have no idea what Pete is doing that for.

But so if I add and say, “Okay, let me know what that’s for. And I ask because, if it’s for an email, I’m happy to format that in an email to the audience, or if it’s for a slide, I’m happy to put that together to require less work for you and make sure I know the audience and I’m creating less work for you. Not more.” It takes about seven and a half seconds to say more.

But when you become known for thinking just a step ahead in doing that, whether it’s putting something in a format that’s helpful for someone, or asking those questions, it helps you to become the person that’s trusted. And, again, we always have to be careful about then not being the go-to person that just takes on everything.

We all could use someone that we work with that helps think that step ahead. And so when you start doing that, not only can it help your own career, but sometimes it’s the ripple effect of how other people start doing that as well. So it can even come back and benefit you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes, those follow-up questions can change everything in terms of, “Oh, well, I would have done this in a completely different way,” or, “Oh, well, if that’s what you’re after, I don’t think what you actually need is three bullets, but perhaps instead is this other thing.” And it’s like, “Oh, fantastic. Thank you. You’re amazing.”

Ashley Herd
Totally, because you may even say at the bottom, one thing I did for managers constantly was say, “Okay, here’s what to say, and you don’t need to say this, but if someone asks this, this is what you can say. Just have some of that below this of the FAQs in case someone asks. And some of that information, again, can just help that person tremendously, but also also help in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Ashley Herd
I do love the quote from Maya Angelou, that people forget what you said, but they never forget how you made them feel. And I know that’s one that is said quite a lot, but I see it. The more and more I live, the more years I have, which I wish I were Benjamin Button and reversing, but that hasn’t happened yet. But I think back to how true that is.

I first heard that years ago and I didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now. But so I think bringing that into the workplaces, it’s not just what you’re working on, but especially as a manager, you think about how you work with people. You can transform people’s work and also their lives outside of it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Ashley Herd
There was recently research in Gallup, this was in, I think, January of 2026, that’s about how people are selected for management. And it really quantified this aspect of what percentage. I think it was 60. I may be misquoting that, but you can Google. But it’s how people are picked to be a manager and then what to do about it.

And so as organizations think about management, because I’m a huge proponent of not just selecting people for management, but exposing them, having a real two-way street considerations and career paths that don’t require you to be a manager. But it’s a really nice piece of research that just shows the reality that so many organizations have, which is how we started the episode.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Ashley Herd
I love A Separate Piece by John Knowles. I never went to boarding school, and it’s all about boys at a boarding school. But I read that when I was a sophomore in high school and it has stuck with me for some reason for decades.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool.

Ashley Herd
I’d say a calculator because when I was in elementary school, I was told I needed to learn math and so I worked really hard at it, and that I couldn’t talk for a living. And I do tend to talk for a living and I also relied much more heavily on a calculator than I’d like to admit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Ashley Herd
I’d say a favorite habit is gratitude, both with yourself or with telling others. And sometimes it can feel super corny. And so if you have gratitude to express and it’s not something you normally say, and so, Pete, if you were to say, if I started telling people, I’m thankful for this because then people would call 911 because they think that you are being held for ransom and that’s your help signal.

You can say, “I was listening to Pete’s How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast, and the speaker, Ashley Heard at Manager Method, said to think about somebody that you’re grateful for and why you’re grateful for them, and text someone and tell them that, and tell them what you’re grateful for them for.

And any discomfort you feel for seconds will go away because they will likely feel delighted and they won’t think of it as, “Okay, you’re only doing this because you heard it on a podcast.” They hear this and think, “Well, of all the people that you know, you thought of me.” And so you can make someone’s whole day and far longer by expressing that gratitude.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really connect and resonate with, and quote back to you often?

Ashley Herd
So in the book, I talk about how to not be a tight jeans manager, and also not be an oversized sweatpants manager, but to instead be a cozy joggers manager. So you can read in the book about what that means.

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

Ashley Herd
You can go to ManagerMethod.com, which is my website. You can kind of find me anywhere from there. If you go to @managermethod on different social media platforms, you can see some of my 59-second plays that I write and act most days.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Ashley Herd
It’s to try that. Try to do pause, consider, act. Like, if you find yourself immediately going to react to something, just pause and think about some of the different options and what you can do differently. You may do the same thing, but at least think it through, and I bet you may tweak something a bit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Ashley, thank you.

Ashley Herd
Thank you so much, Pete. Thanks for having me and thanks to all for listening.

Mar 19
0

1138: Breaking Free from the Invisible Norms that Limit Our Best Work with Nilofer Merchant

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Nilofer Merchant debunks some of the pervasive beliefs and practices that keep us from succeeding at work.

You’ll Learn

  1. Striking examples of how hidden norms limit us
  2. Why you owe it to yourself to play office politics
  3. The mindset that creates more win-win solutions

About Nilofer

Nilofer Merchant spent over 25 years leading technology companies (Apple, Autodesk, GoLive/Adobe) and personally launched over 100 products and services, netting $18 billion in revenues. She is ranked among the top 50 influential management thinkers in the world (one of her TED Talks has been referenced 300 million times). Our Best Work is her 4th book.

Resources Mentioned

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Nilofer Merchant Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nilofer, welcome.

Nilofer Merchant
Glad to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m glad to be here as well. I’m excited to talk about your book, Our Best Work. And could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made about humans and work while putting this one together?

Nilofer Merchant
You know, I think right now we’re in this AI age where we’re thinking a lot about what is the role of technology in our work. And I think I’ve kind of come back to the basics, which is if we don’t understand how to actually create that connection between us humans, we’re never going to be able to take advantage of the technology. And it was not so much a surprise, but sort of like this deepest reminder that it’s all about people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is an intriguing assertion. Tell me more.

Nilofer Merchant
Well, so one of things I wanted to just share is most of us are in a position where we think we don’t have power, especially now when people are cutting back. A couple days ago in tech, one of the companies, Block, ended up firing 40% of their staff.

And they’re having this conversation about, “Am I allowed to push my own agenda right now? Because it might be time to hunker down and crawl underneath a desk and just do whatever I’m asked to do.”

And I’m like, “Actually that will not lead to goodness, not for ourselves, not for companies, not for the industry, nothing.” And yet, I can see how much fear is in the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is well said because, emotionally, that’s natural in terms of, “Because there is fear and because there is risk, I am less inclined to put forward my stuff. It might be kind of out there. It might be rock the boat, disrupt things or it feels emotionally, like, not a great time.”

And yet, in some ways, it is the absolute best time because, one, you might not have that much to lose. And, two, I think when folks get jolted with something that wasn’t even on their radar, it’s like, we don’t know what we don’t know. And then someone’s like bringing these things up. I am personally inclined to think, “Oh, you are very valuable and I want you around. Thank you.”

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, you know, one of the things about the Block news was really fascinating. Jack basically fired 40% of the organization, and people were asking me what I thought about it. And I said, “Well, I mean, if your only goal is revenue optimization and sort of profitability, I understand why you would do that because AI does lend itself to efficiency.” But that is really appropriating more value and values to capital.

If it were me, I would have sat there and thought, “Okay, if I can do twice as much with the tools, and I’ve already hired this exceptionally talented group of people, and they’re onboarded and running, why wouldn’t I figure out how to grow the business?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and not to go down an AI rabbit hole, although a reasonable proportion of my conversations are doing that these days. But that’s exactly the vibes that I feel when I read this news. It’s like, “Okay, yeah, I imagine because of developments, you’re able to do the stuff.” Like, I mean, in Block’s world in particular, “We’re making software features, additions, and we’re doing customer service-y things.”

So I can hear like, yeah, in that zone, yeah, that makes sense that you can pull off that amount of features and that amount of customer service requests with fewer humans handling it. Like, I buy that. That makes sense to me.

But what I find tricky is exactly what you’re saying there, it’s like, “Well, is that what we’re trying to do in this organization, is just to maintain the status quo more cost effectively?” And maybe there’s a time and a place where that is the right strategic business move, but I’m with you. I’d say, “Ooh, this is exciting. We have all this capacity to go create, invent, and push forward into new territories. So let’s have some fun with it.”

Nilofer Merchant
And if I was a listener to this conversation, one of the things I’d really be thinking about is, “How do I use this stuff for my own gain?” So whether it’s, “I do my job better at my own desk by using some of the tools and technologies,” it could also be as a team, we get together and say, “Hey, listen, we can reimagine who we are.”

And go, “Oh, if we can do more and we can do things better just using tools, then, okay, what else could we imagine for ourselves that we’ve not been able to do because we were so busy doing what we’ve already been doing?”

And there’s, I think, an upside there that any of us can kind of take on and go, “Oh, what is the thing?” In fact, a friend of mine just sent out a thing where he redesigned his website and did a whole series of things using tools, migration, etc., that he could have hired a designer for, but he could do it all himself.

And so he said, “I saved so much money. I’ve also taught myself new things.” And I was like, “Yes, isn’t that what we want to do?” It’s, “How do we take advantage of this stuff instead of it happening to us?”

It reminds me of the early days of the web, which I was lucky to partake in. And everyone was like, “Oh, the web will put designers out of business.” And actually, the designers who won were the ones who figured out how to use the web for their own gain. And I feel like we’re in a similar place, maybe at a little higher speed trajectory.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us what’s the big idea or core thesis behind your book Our Best Work?

Nilofer Merchant
I started with this question, “Our best work changes based on how you define those three words.” So if you define “our” as a small group, you know, the people maybe who are capitalizing the business, or you define it as “our” as the entire organization and team.

If you define best as, “Oh, it’s about making money and capital optimization of revenue,” or, if you define best as solving really meaningful problems. If you define work as the contract, right, “I scope this job for this person to do,” or we define it as a calling and a way for each of us to express ourselves and be a part of the world, those aren’t just linguistic choices. Those are like forks in the road.

And one grows, you know, if you go towards a couple people benefit and it’s about how fast we can make money and it’s about we scope out jobs and ask people to do those jobs, that creates one type of economy and one type of workplace.

And then you go towards the definition of inclusive and meaning and really doing things that call to us, and you end up in a completely different place. And I feel like if we could explore those questions, if we could just even examine, “What are we doing today that might hold us down to the sort of existing model?” instead of going, “Oh, what could we possibly create?” that was, I don’t know, motivating for me to explore.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Okay. And can you tell us a cool story of a professional who zeroed in? You identified 24 invisible norms that limit us. Can you share with us a fun story of someone who identified, “Oh, wait a sec, here’s a norm that’s been limiting me,” and what they identified and how they busted it and what cool stuff happened on the other side?

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, so one of my really good friends came to me after her boss said to her, “If you have good ideas, they’ll get stolen. Just get used to it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, the boss said this?

Nilofer Merchant
The boss said that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nilofer Merchant
“Just get used to it and make your next set of ideas.” And she was basically asking me this question about, “Is it me? Like, is it me that I’m not accepting that as true and I should just get on with it and be an adult and go on and come up with the next idea? Or is it him? Like, is he being an ass by not protecting the interests of my team and the work we’ve been doing for a while?”

And I said, “Actually, it’s neither of you. It’s that the organization has accepted that idea theft is a good thing. That as long as we get the flower from the field of wildflowers, as long as the organization benefits from it, it doesn’t matter who came up with the idea.” And I was actually saying, “What it does is it kills the entire field of wildflowers.”

And so that norm of saying, “Ideas get stolen,” which almost all of us have heard in our careers. We’ve been told, “Oh, don’t worry about it if your idea gets stolen. It’s actually a compliment. Just move on.”

And she was basically saying, “Is that a norm I should accept?” And I was like, “No, it’s not a norm we should accept, because it says that the genesis of an idea, that original source, that point of view, that creativity is not to be valued enough. And that’s actually on the organizational norm that we allow bad behavior to happen.”

And then we say, “Whatever happens, happens.” And I’m like, “No, no, no, it’s whatever we allow to happen, happens.” And so that’s a big shift in how we can think about accountability at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly, whatever happens happens, I mean, that’s true only in so far as it’s completely outside your control and influence. But inside an organization, it’s like, “Well, hey, actually, you know, we’re the humans kind of who make the rules and the norms, and the incentives, and the carrots and the sticks associated with what sorts of behaviors we think are fine and not so much fine, as opposed to just victims of the economy or the climate, you know, that, are sort of beyond us.”

Nilofer Merchant
Or the culture.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Nilofer Merchant
And one of the things that people often think is that, “If a management norm has been here for a long time, it must be like working for a reason.” And I’m basically saying, “Listen, just because it exists does not mean it’s persuasive, right? It’s just persistent.”

Pete Mockaitis
Or helpful, useful, beneficial in any way, yeah.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, right. So we get a chance to examine that water that we swim in and go, “Hmm, is this helping or hurting?” And I think the book is really doing that sort of, “Is this helping or hurting?” examination. And then, more importantly, “What else could we do?” And holding open that space for, “What else could we imagine that we could create as a norm at work?”

Pete Mockaitis
Now, in that story, we had some concern about idea theft. What became of it?

Nilofer Merchant
Well, so she had actually been working on a plan with her team for six months, had conceived the plan, had gotten the plan funded, had done all the vendor management, in addition to their day job. So it’s not like they got relief.

And so they were really pushing for a brand new thing that they thought the team would benefit from. And somebody else came along and basically presented that idea to the CEO and CMO as if it was theirs, not so explicitly, but enough where it kind of gave that appearance.

And when this friend came to me and said, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, if your boss is unwilling to protect your team, then what’s going to happen is the idea might be executed, but it won’t link back to the original genesis, right?”

Like, all of us, when we come up with an idea, have a rootedness and a fullness of an idea that we want to see manifest. And so if they sort of take credit and we do the skimmed version of the idea, it will never actually be what it needs to be.

So that idea ended up becoming an ad for a Super Bowl. And then by the time they kind of came around to, “Oh, gosh, we need the next new idea,” my friend had already left because she wasn’t going to stay in an organization that didn’t respect her and her ideas.

And so the organization lost the ability to do the next big success because they lost the person who was that great idea generator. And so I always define success as not the ability to do one thing well, but the ability to do things well over time. Like, that’s what causes real growth.

And so they lost the ability to do things well over time. And my friend was disillusioned and disheartened, but she also knew that talent doesn’t beg. And she was able to go on and find another place that really respected her.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And just to close the loop here, when it comes to idea theft, call me naive, idealistic, a softy. But so, my understanding of idea theft is just that folks want the credit and the status and the advancement and the associations of it, “There’s a clever, smart, creative professional right there.” And that’s why they do it.

But, I mean, in my world, I just think, “Wow, like, that’s so easy just to say, ‘Oh, yeah, Nilofer has been working on this and it’s brilliant. Why don’t we loop her in and see how far we can take this thing?” I mean, that takes like a sentence.

And I’m thinking like, if I witnessed that behavior, I think more of that person. I think more of the person who’s sharing credit and including other folks. I think that person’s more awesome than the person who I’m misled to believe has had the idea.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, it’s a difference between scarcity and abundance. Like, if I believe, “Hey, man, I’m talented and you’re talented, then I’m going to give credit to a whole bunch. I’m going to figure out how to get all of our talents on the table.”

But if I believe that the world is a scarce world, and only so many of us can get credit, and only so many of us can win, and I have to out compete you, then I’m going to nudge you aside from the table. I’m going to use all my elbows doing it, and in order to “win.”

And so it’s also the cultural norm that that CEO and CMO didn’t ask, “Hey, who all has been working on this? And tell me more about what the genesis of the story was?” and so on and so on. They could have just asked in a couple questions and been able to go, “Oh, let’s bring those people in,” so they could have also been the fix. So that’s where it becomes more than the people involved. It becomes, “What do we accept as valid behavior within an organization?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to dig into your chapter four, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” I think that there’s a lot of wisdom there. Can you unpack a little bit about what’s the norm you’re zeroing in on and what is to be done about it?

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, so the norm in that chapter is the fact that a lot of people inside organizations have been taught that politics is icky. And it is that person elbowing at the table and getting credit and getting advancement because they play politics well.

And so one of the things I was doing there was saying, “Okay, politics is about the icky behavior of shoving other people aside in order to win, and it’s been labeled as icky,” none of us really want to be icky. And so we’ll go, “Oh, we’ll leave politics to those self-serving people, and we’ll do what’s right for the business.” So we kind of, like, distance ourselves from it.

And I’m actually arguing that we ought to think about the definition of politics a little here, and understand why we need to play. And I basically define politics as the way we decide what we’re going to do. And so if it’s about the way we decide what we’re going to do, then you’re really hurting yourself, your team, the work, if you’re not sitting in there advocating for what you need.

It’s the people who say, “Well, so-and-so is going to get credit anyway, and so-and-so is going to do it, then I will just pass.” And I’m like, “The minute you stop showing up for yourself, you’ve actually given up on yourself.” And so at least you owe it to yourself to be able to say, “Hey, this is what I think we need and this is what I think we want.”

And in this idea’s economy, original ideas come from that place, only one stance. And so we actually need to put ourselves back on the table and go, “Yeah, I owe it to myself and to the business to show up and advocate for what I want.” And it’s hard, right? It’s really hard to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I really like that definition. Let’s hear it again. Politics is…?

Nilofer Merchant
The way we decide what it is we’re going to do.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I like a lot about that definition is it’s neutral as opposed to, “Aargh, politics are just the worst.” Or, maybe if you’re one those rare birds, like, “Ooh, I love politics. Let’s play the game,” you know? But it’s neutral. like, that’s what it is.

And then it also inspires you a bit, I’d say, to not accept as an explanation for something. “Oh, politics.” It’s like, “That goes without saying, it’s politics. That’s because, definitionally, according to this definition. So let’s specifically say, what does that mean?”

“Oh, well, the SVP of operation was concerned about this and how that impacted that. And so he said, ‘Let’s not do that this quarter.’” It’s like, “Oh, well, now that’s something we can get our arms around and deal with.”

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. And so the more transparent we are with that, it could be, you know, we actually think marketing is a bigger feature set in our team success than product, right, because we’re a plus one product or something. Then all of a sudden you kind of know where you are.

And so when we start saying what the actual thing is, it gives everyone more context to go, “Oh, this is what’s going on.” And that’s what we really want to do. We want to engage so that we have transparency. One of the stories I told in the book was when I was working with a big company who was really good at doing trade-offs.

It’s REI. So in America, one of the best sports retailer kind of organizations, one of my favorite places to go hang out. And I was working with the team, and they started to say, “Well, we can’t do that because so-and-so won’t like it.” And I go, “Have you asked if so-and-so won’t like it or do you just think so-and-so won’t like it?”

And they were like, “Well, the team in Tennessee always gets what they want. We never get resource, so we think that’s a no-go.” And I go, “You know, it’s totally cool if that turns out to be a no-go. Like, I get it. But if you haven’t asked, then you haven’t gotten clarity on what really matters here.”

And I’m always like, “Deny me, turn me down. That’s your job. If you’re in a leadership role and you have to make those kinds of resource allocation decisions, that’s your job to figure out what to say yes to and no to. But you owe me an explanation so I can understand how that fits in with priorities so I can make better decisions myself.”

“But I owe myself the full proposal. Like, let me bake it, let me complete an idea, let me pitch it to you, let me tell you it in context with other things, all of that. I owe it to my own belief system to show up and advocate for it.” And then if I get shut down, I get shut down and we can go, “Gosh, it’s just not a priority.” But you owe it to yourself.

And I always think the times I’ve regretted in my own career not showing up to myself are like the times when I feel crappiest about my career. And I feel the same way about every team I’ve ever worked with when they say, “Oh, so-and-so won’t care.” I’m like, “Well, give them a chance. Give them a chance to care.”

And, first, you start that by you caring about your own ideas and your own principles. And then you get to advocate for that, show up with your best work, and then people can decide if that’s also our best work.

Pete Mockaitis
And I like your perspective there that we start learning something and we illuminate what’s going on in terms of the priorities or the people or the power structures that are behind things, as opposed to if we just say, “Oh, well, they wouldn’t like that.” You’re just quiet and just do nothing with it. Well, then you’re completely stuck.

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. And it’s like The Wizard of Oz. You know, we all think there’s a man behind the curtain who is managing everything and making everything happen. And then we pull back the curtain and we realize no one’s really there.

If we can pull back the curtain and realize most of the reasons why decisions are being made the way they are is because no one’s made a better argument. No one has shown us what the trade-offs are. No one has shown us what the downstream effects are.

And so if we can go upstream in our own thinking and say, “Let me at least show up to it,” then we get transparency and visibility and understanding. We’ve shown up for our own agency and we’ve revealed that, quite often, we don’t know why we’re making the decisions we’re making. It’s just what we’ve done. And so we get a chance to help the business grow, right, and show up.

I guess that part I feel like we all stand a little taller when we can show up and be our fullest self. Because work is a place where the self can meet the world, it’s not just what we do for money. It is also the way we become who we are. And so this is a way to practice becoming who you are and showing what you care about, even if we’re scared.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we also have to hear this Marie golf story.

Nilofer Merchant
So I was working at Apple in my 20s, and one day, one of the people that I worked with said, “Do you know, doesn’t it feel to you like the meetings are perfunctory, like the decision has already been made?” And I said, “You know, that’s funny, I was thinking that too. Like, every single thing I say, I feel like it’s just, you know, hitting a wall and kind of sliding down. And I keep thinking it’s me, like it’s a communication issue, I need to learn how to pitch this better or whatever.”

And she goes, “No, I have this other feeling that something else is going on.” And so we took that conversation to a couple other people down the hall, and everyone was like, “Yeah, actually, that’s it. That’s exactly what it feels like as the decisions are being made somewhere else.”

So we ended up thinking, “Well, how would we suss that out?” And a couple of us knew the admin. So we said, “Are they having a pre-meeting like the morning of or something that’s causing us to kind of go into meetings that are already decided?” And they said, “No, there’s no pre meeting, but they are playing golf the day before. They have an offsite every Thursday before the Friday meeting.”

So we said, “Oh, who’s invited?” Just like out of curiosity, right, like, “Oh, who’s coming?” And it was basically every decision-maker in the room was going to the golf game. And we thought, “You know, this is not Machiavellian. This is just opportunistic.”

They know there’s a bunch of decisions to be made. It’s on their minds. They’re probably just talking about it together to be like, “Hey, what do you know? And what do you know?” and blah, blah, blah. And they’re making some pre-decisions. So by the time they come into the room, they’re not probably listening very much.

So one of us decided that we weren’t game for that, but we didn’t know quite how to say anything or do anything without sort of it seeming like we were calling them out. We wanted to call them in. And we wanted to figure out how to participate in this conversation.

So one of the people, a really tall woman named Marie, Marie Schmidt, six-foot tall woman had played volleyball in college, like had played a bunch of sports. She’s really athletic. And that was the point of that story.

And she goes, “You know what? I’m going to learn to play golf. I’ve never learned, but I could do it.” And she went and took lessons. She played every single weekend. She got really good. I remember she even bought custom clubs so that it would suit her body type, which I thought, “Wow, that is a big investment.”

And then after her scores got good enough, she actually emailed the group and said, “Hey, I hear you guys play golf. I’ve actually come to recently love golf. And here’s my scores. And I wonder if I can join in on the team.” And, right away, the golf game went away.

Because what was being called out was, “Listen, you’re doing something that’s actually excluding a bunch of us. And maybe you meant to, maybe you didn’t.” But as soon as it became visible and got called in to that conversation, they ended the golf game. And they showed up to the meeting not predisposed to certain answers so that we could actually have the conversation in the room with all the people who needed to be in the room.

And that, to me, shows the power of showing up for yourself and just advocating for what you believe is right. Because it’s not like she made some overt like, “Oh, you guys suck,” kind of thing. She just did this beautiful, “Decisions need to be made in the room. Let’s make them in the room.” And have that changed to happen.

And I love that it also shows, like, you can play the long game quite literally and not do it as, you know, “Oh, tomorrow we got to fix this.” It can take a little bit to be like, “Hmm, how do I maneuver the chess pieces on the board so I can actually play the game really well?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like the story a lot for the similar reasons, in terms of that proactivity. Because, in some ways, it just feels natural emotional response to say, “Oh, that’s not fair. That’s dumb. I don’t like that.” And it takes quite a lot of effort, you know, to learn a new sport and get custom clubs and all the things. And then there could be an interior reaction of, “I shouldn’t have to do that and, therefore, I won’t,” and then it’s over and done.

But it’s also a choice of what we are free to engage, it’s like, “Well, you know what? If that’s where it’s happening and this is important to me, even though it’s pretty dumb and I shouldn’t have to, I’m going to go ahead and make the sacrifice and then see what unfolds.” And what might happen is you’re included, “Hey, great to have you.”

Or, what might happen is they say, “Oh, I guess, actually, this is not appropriate. That didn’t occur to me before you brought this up.” And either way, you’re making some advancement. Of course, it’s entirely possible they might just say, “No, you can’t play golf,” and they keep doing their thing.

And then, again, that is illuminating. You have additional information from which to decide, “Should I find another workplace? Should I challenge this in a fresh way?”

Nilofer Merchant
That’s right. It’s making progress. And making progress is how we actually, all of us, really can measure success. And one of the beautiful things about what you just, you know, we’re chatting about Pete, was that in that story, there are no villains and there are no victims.

And I love it when we move past this architecture of bad guy, good guy, right? Or the person who says, “Oh, I don’t want to go and, therefore, I’m the victim in this situation.” I’m like, “Well, we all have choice. We all have choice.”

And the question is, “Do we understand our choices? And can we create more choices for them, for us, for all of us?” And as soon as we’re working from a place of choice, we have an ability to actually influence a lot of things. And so it’s more how we hold the mindset, how we invite people into conversation. And then as we move on in our careers, we get a chance to go, “Okay, what are the cultural norms I want to help create?”

And so if we create a culture where we say, “Listen, we’re going to call people in when things aren’t working. We’re going to be able to say, ‘Dude, do you realize that you monologue a lot? And when you monologue a lot, it takes up all the oxygen in the room. And it’s probably not the kind of behavior you really want to do. And do you want to change?”

And that person could go, “Oh, yeah, I was kind of taught that behavior, right? And the only way I ever got things amongst my siblings was to just talk it out with them. And so I need to change my ways.” Like, that kind of conversation can now start to happen instead of saying, “You’re an asshat and I don’t even want to deal with you.”

Which, by the way, might be true. It’s like, “Okay, well you’re here. So now what do you want to do as an agent of change? And how do you show up ready to create that best work? How do you show up with that agency and that power?” Not because we give in to people, but because we say, “What else is possible here?” And it’s going to be a test of imagination for us to reinvent how work works.

The engagement data, whether it’s Gallup or other data, says that we have something like 80% of people at work disengage. It’s crazy. And that number, by the way, hasn’t changed. It just keeps getting worse. The latest statistic was that middle managers were the group that dropped out last, and so they’re just miserable.

So many of the statistic at work says work isn’t working for most of us, which is why people become entrepreneurs and they find other ways of manifesting themselves, because work just generally sucks. And I think it’s about like, “Okay, well, yes, it does suck.” And the question is, “What part of the solution are we?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. And talk about solutions, you’ve got some pro tips, some key steps, some key questions you recommend folks engage with as they’re navigating the political side of things.

Nilofer Merchant
Yeah, one of the things I really want to do with this book is not to say, “Hey, here’s what’s not working,” but how do we become, you know, in just the smallest way, more agentic in our power? And so in the power, that politics chapter, I talked about how do you show up and actually ask people, ‘What’s happening here?”

So if you have an idea about the decisions being made a certain way by certain people, you might want to kind of map that out and then go to other people that you work with and say, “Is this how we’re making the decision?”

And have people have that conversation with you and say, “Okay, I’m interested in influencing that decision. How might I do that?” And enrolling other people with you, because this is not meant to be a go-at-yourself kind of work.

Change at this magnitude of actually changing our norms is going to take at least two of us gathering together and saying, “ I’m not in it by myself,” right? Because it’s easy to think, “I’m the problem or you’re the problem.” And, actually, if it’s the norm, then what we want to do is have a couple of us kind of sit at the same side of the table and look at it and go, “Hmm, what is that? What is the situation?”

And then, as we kind of kibitz about that, we can go, “Oh, well, then what are different ways we might navigate that situation?” And we can start helping each other to do that. So I think, my goal is read it with someone else, a bud at work, and then figure out if something’s important to you, how do you team up together and start doing this work? And then you can problem-solve and get creative about that because, otherwise, you’re going to feel alone and not as powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
And you mentioned, you know, “Who is the problem versus what’s the problem?” You mentioned William Ury and the distinction between people and positions, it can be easy to just accept something when, in fact, that is a position that ought to be challenged. Can you speak to that?

Nilofer Merchant
So when I was in community college, I got an opportunity to also represent the entire student body of the community college, not just at my one school, but then for the entire state of California. So for all 106 community colleges at the time, so it was a million plus students.

We were lobbying for community colleges to actually change from being trade schools, which they were at the time, mostly teaching mechanics and nursing and that kind of work, to actually being the front load for your education.

And he got brought in to teach us how to do that negotiation. And one of the things he said is we often assume what people’s interests are, and we assume that they’re baked. So we assume we know what they are, and then we assume that they’re unmovable.

And if we can actually really figure out what’s underlying someone’s interests, then we can often find other ways to accomplish that. So we might say their interest is, oh, what’s a funny one? Their interest is to have lunch. And then we go, “Well, it’s dinnertime, so we really can’t solve that problem of lunch.”

But if we sit there and go, “Oh, the goal is to have food,” or, “The goal is to have nutrition,” or, “The goal is to feel satiated,” there are other ways to solve that problem just by changing what the goal is from lunch to satiation, or lunch to nutrition.

And that’s where I think we kind of get stuck. We get stuck with the initial definition of, “This guy says he wants lunch.” And so then we go, “Oh, well, we can’t give him lunch because it’s dinner time.” And I know I’m making up a funny example, but that holds true for even the most complex situations.

And we can go, “Oh, what actually is he trying to solve for? What is it that we can then create together?” And we’ve just got to figure out how to show up and assume that most people don’t really know what they want. They only know what they can have right now. And so they state the thing they think they can have, like they think it’s lunchtime kind of thing.

And if you can go, “Let me learn more. Let me explore,“ then everyone’s in a learning mode, you know, using Carol Dweck’s beautiful framework of growth mindset, then we’re just going to learn together. And then as we learn together, we can actually find multiple ways to solve any problem.

And if we kind of assume that abundance mindset, the growth mindset, and kind of show up with sort of really deep curiosity, we can usually figure out that the presenting problem is not the actual problem. And no one is a villain and no one’s a victim, and so then we start getting creative together.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve taught my children, when someone says no, a great thing to say next is, “What are your concerns?” And it is so hilarious to see my sweet little seven-year-old girl, Mary, when she’s told no, and she’ll say, “What are your concerns?”

And it does, it gets right to the heart of that, in terms of we might assume that we’re getting a no because, I don’t know, they don’t like us or they’re obsessed with power and money and prestige or whatever. We just have any number of assumptions about what they’re after.

And then the no is really just like, “Oh, I’m not scheduled to have a meeting with that person for another three weeks.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, how about we talk then?” It’s like, “Oh, that was way easier than I expected.” And your example about lunch, nutrition, it can be quite surprising what you learn in terms of, “Oh, they don’t even want food of any sort. They just wanted a break and some socializing.” “Well, we can do that. Let’s, yeah.”

Nilofer Merchant
Exactly. I love this. I love your example of your daughter because you can imagine her asking for ice cream after dinner, “What are your concerns?” “Well, I’m concerned you’ll get too much sugar before bed.” And I can imagine her turning to you saying, “Well, then after school tomorrow, right?” Like, she can negotiate really well. You’re teaching this kid to become a monster in the best possible way.

Because you can then go, “Oh, well, we can get that. We can solve your concerns and get what it is I want at the table.” And that’s exactly right. It’s that, “What are your concerns?” and what else is possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, certainly. Well, tell me, Nilofer, any other key things you want to make sure to share before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Nilofer Merchant
Well, I hope we’ve communicated that it’s not you or them. It’s us. I hope we’ve communicated that management norms aren’t so much persuasive as they are persistent. I hope that we’ve communicated that politics is simply the way we decide what we’re going to decide. And I hope people understand that it’s a way for them to join together and figure out how to fix work.

Like, none of us are happy, really, very few. And even the bosses aren’t happy and I get a chance to talk to a lot of really top leaders, and I can categorically say people are miserable. And so this is, hopefully, a hopeful book and a hopeful set of ideas about how do we pay attention to the intangibles around us and make work better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nilofer Merchant
You know, there’s a beautiful quote somebody just reminded me of Nelson Mandela said, “Don’t measure me by my successes. Measure me by how many times I got up off the floor.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Nilofer Merchant
I love the one where a team, basically a group of people are asked to watch how often the ball is passed. And between, I think, it’s like some of the teams wearing black shirts and some of the teams wearing white shirts, and they’re asked to count the number of times the ball is passed between the team and who had the ball most in terms of like which shirt.

And a big hairy gorilla, like actually a person in a gorilla outfit walks through the scene. And then after the experiment is over, people are asked how many people notice the gorilla. And something like 50% of the people don’t notice the gorilla at all. And it’s huge. You can’t miss it.

But there’s something about how, when our attention is directed one way, we can get kind of lock scoped and not see the full range, the full aperture of what’s going on in the room. And it reminds me that if we can actually stop being so obsessed about the specific and start just really opening up our own apertures, we can see more of what’s going on and, more importantly, navigate that more of what’s going on.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Nilofer Merchant
I’m going to choose Mary Oliver’s Devotions, which is a beautiful book of poetry collected over her lifetime. So it was published towards the end of her life, so it’s really a beautiful body. And I find it one of those books that you can open up and have it speak to your day about how to be more present to yourself and to the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Nilofer Merchant
I’m pretty much loving all the tools right now that let you do coding online and just, like, create websites and stuff. I’m playing with quite a few of them, so I can’t say I love one particular one, but I love that I can now go back to coding using natural language and having it actually translate that to all the code because it gets you back to that place of being a creator again.

Pete Mockaitis
And, well, just a quick follow-up. In terms of the quick creation of a website with natural language, just like the chatbots, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, or is there something special that seems kind of cool there?

Nilofer Merchant
Oh, there’s like 12 of them so far that I’ve tried so I can’t even tell you all their names.

Pete Mockaitis
Twelve.

Nilofer Merchant
But one of the things that you can now do is, like, go from, “I want to build a data tool set that tells me the answer to X.” And within, like, really short window of time, it can pull all this data that, literally, would have taken three researchers a couple of weeks to do, and organize it in a way that it would break Excel. And I think that gives us the opportunity to sort of prototype ideas.

We can always work with a bigger team later and kind of get it better, but to go, “Oh, what if I could do this? What if the business team could do X or Y?” And just play around with it to go, “This is what an early idea could be.” Because sometimes if we show up with an idea that doesn’t have proof of concept, it’s hard to imagine.

But if you can show up with a nascent idea that also is associated with a thing, then people can go, “Oh, I can see how that would work,” and it would just help that imagination process go forward.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Nilofer Merchant
I think that habit that Duhigg said, which is “Choose the one thing you’re going to do the next day before you go to bed,” because if you can do that, your brain can actually start solving that problem as you sleep. And then you wake up just ready and charged up to go. So I love that habit.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate with folks, they quote back to you often?

Nilofer Merchant
The one quote that people always say back to me is they say, “Any good work is not created, it’s co-created.” And I wrote that in my very first book, which was called The New How, and it was about collaborative leadership. And I am so surprised at how many people have turned that into T-shirts and pins and just different ways of communicating all work isn’t created, it’s co-created.

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

Nilofer Merchant
Website is NiloferMerchant.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have any final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nilofer Merchant
Showing up over and over again to yourself. It’s not about proving to other people how good you are or how worthy you are. It’s showing up to yourself and making progress against your own goals that helps you actually become the person you’re meant to be.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nilofer, thank you.

Nilofer Merchant
Thank you for having me, Pete.

Mar 16
0

1137: How to Build an Unbeatable Mind with Former Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine

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Mark Divine reveals his strategies for forging mental clarity, focus, and resilience at an elite level.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to fix your broken attention span
  2. A simple 20-second breathing protocol for resetting your nervous system
  3. How to fuel extreme motivation

About Mark

Mark Divine is a former Navy SEAL Commander, entrepreneur, and NYT Bestselling author with PhD in Global Leadership and Change who has dedicated his life to unlocking human potential through integrated training in mental toughness, leadership, and physical readiness.

He owns and runs the SEALFIT Training Center in San Diego, California where he trains thousands of professional athletes, military professionals, SWAT, First Responders, SOF candidates and everyday people looking to build strength and character.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Mark Divine Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Mark, welcome!

Mark Divine
Hey, it’s great to be here, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to hear your wisdom when it comes to having an unbeatable mind and resilience and so much good stuff. Could you maybe kick us off with a thrilling story that tees up some of these great lessons about mental toughness? No pressure.

Mark Divine
Thrilling story. Okay, so I was at SEAL Team 3 doing some parachute training. I jumped out of a helicopter about 1200 feet in the air. I was a second jumper out and it’s a static line jump so it was pretty low. It was nighttime. So I’m popped out and my chute deploys, which is always a good sign, as you might imagine. And I’m thinking, “This is just beautiful evening and I’m doing a dream job,” like anyone would love to be, like jumping out of a helicopter in the middle of the night and the moon is bright and everything.

And I, suddenly, see another jumper coming toward me, which was unusual because, as a second one out, I should have been above this guy, but somehow he must have had an uplift and he was coming right toward me. And, of course, from our training, I knew that for a mid-air collision, you’re supposed to pull your right toggle.

And so I pulled my right toggle, and he’s supposed to pull his right toggle, and both jumpers would then veer away.

Pete Mockaitis
Makes sense. Good standard rule.

Mark Divine
Yeah, that’s the SOP, standard operating procedure. So I pull my right toggle, he pulls his left toggle, and he collides with my chute, and my chute just collapses. Now, mind you, I’m about 1,000 feet in the air then, and that is about one second per 100 feet, so I’ve got about 10 seconds to live.

And so I immediately went into the practices that I had been training, you know, not just in the SEALs, but for four years prior to, through my Zen and through my martial arts training. And that was the default mode for me, which was I obviously very grateful for because it saved my life. So I just started breathing really slowly, calmly, and reciting the mantra.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s not too many breaths with 10 seconds.

Mark Divine
Right. Exactly. I had about six or seven of those breaths on the way down. Probably a lot less than that, actually. And the key point is I didn’t react with fear. So my parachute absolutely collapses. So I go through the SOPs, I’m calming my mind, I’m breathing deeply, I’m remaining positive about this situation, and I start to yank on my risers, which is the first thing you’re supposed to do to try to get them to get air, and I got nothing, no response.

And so I think, “Okay, second order of business here is to deploy my reserve.” So I take a deep breath, calmly. Pulled out my reserve ripcord, punch it, throw it out, and my reserve doesn’t catch any air. Now I’m down to about 300 feet.

And at the same time, I’m just super calm, right? I’m not like freaking out, which allowed me to think, “Okay, maybe I can go back to the main and work that one again.” So I went back to that and started yanking on those risers again.

And about 100 feet above the ground, which is practically nothing, my main chute caught enough air so that when I landed, I landed hard, but I was super relaxed and I did a perfect parachute landing for a PLF, meaning I just rolled out of it and ended up actually standing.

The reason this was interesting is that had I not had the training that I had, I would undoubtedly have reacted with fear. And my heart would have been racing, my mind would have been racing out of control. I wouldn’t have been able to calmly and methodically think through how to solve the problem in the eight or 10 seconds that I had.

And so I walked away without a single broken bone, which is pretty incredible. That scenario, not necessarily like a parachute accident, but I had multiple scenarios like that in my SEAL experience, my SEAL days where, you know, shit hit the fan, everything went wrong. And instead of reacting negatively or reacting out of fear, I was able to calmly deal with the problem.

Now, you might think, “Well, all SEALs are trained this way.” And it is true, right? We are trained to be calm under pressure and whatnot. But to have these skills in the first year of my SEAL career was fully attributed to meditation. And I started a practice of Zen meditation when I was 21. And it’s a big part of really why I became a SEAL. And I could tell that story, too.

But it really had a profound effect on my nervous system and my ability to focus and to just develop clarity under extreme pressure, which I found to be pretty useful as a special operator. Anyway, so I think experiences like that led me to want to delve deeper into those practices, into the development of what I now call unbeatable mind, development of the mind and the body and the spirit, and really plumb the depths of what’s possible for a human being.

And so that’s why, later on, I ended up kind of really refocusing and really going deep into that territory of human performance and the what’s possible for humanity, which is what I do today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, mission accomplished, sir, and a thrilling story delivered. So you’ve learned a lot about this stuff with regard to mental toughness and staying calm under difficult times. Can you share what’s perhaps the most surprising or counterintuitive thing you’ve learned that when you share with people, they’re a little bit puzzled, like, “Really? Is that true?”

Mark Divine
Well, when I teach SEALs, I have to, like, use stories for the young guys, right? Sometimes I’m training 18-year-old kids who want to be a Navy SEAL. And one of the stories I tell them, and they come in and think, “Okay I’m going to…” they’re going to learn mental toughness and how to be a badass Navy SEAL from Mark Divine and through my SEALFIT team and program.

And they think mental toughness is just about really learning how to be hard, like how to tough it out, how to get through, you know, like my teammate Goggin’s story, it’s like, “Okay, you can always do more, you know? When you hit the wall, you’re capable of 40 times more, I just got to be tougher. Suck it up, buttercup.”

And I say, “You know, that’s actually really flawed thinking,” right? It’s important to be hard when you need to be hard, but it’s also incredibly important to be soft when you need to be soft. And what I mean by soft, because SEALs don’t like that language, like, “I’m not soft.” I say, “What I mean by that is to be really flexible and pliable and relaxed and to learn how to to let go.” So you can interpret that a lot of ways.

So the story I would tell is, like, “If a tsunami is coming, and it was inevitable that it’s going to just knock everything down in this path, would you rather be the mighty oak and strong? Or would you rather be like the the lowly reed and super flexible?”

And they said, “Well, in that scenario, I’d rather be the reed because the reed is just going to get washed over and then it’s going to pop right back up and carry on with its life. Whereas, the oak is just going to get swept away and it’s going to get killed.” See, that’s right.

So mental toughness, the big aha is that mental toughness is actually a balance between the hard and the soft. And, also, if you want to use the Eastern concept, the balance between the yin, which is the hard, and the yang, which is soft. Yin represents forcefulness, you know, get-it-done mindset, pushing through the pain. And the yin, the soft side represents receptivity and creativity and flexibility and taking time to recover and relax.

So one of the reasons that the SEAL athletes that I train are so successful is this principle put into practice through their training regimen, through how they navigate their lives, through how they approach even a single day. You’ve got to balance the hard and the soft, otherwise, you’re going to break.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could we hear a story of someone who internalized some of these principles and saw cool transformation as a result?

Mark Divine
Every one of the SEALs that I’ve trained have internalized it. They commit. I’ll give you an example. So there’s a guy named Shane. Now Shane recently got out of the SEALs and went to Rutgers Med School. He’s now a doctor.

But he came to me as, like, an 18-year-old, like hardcore, you know, heavy weightlifter and just really kind of beast-mode guy. And most of the guys come, you know, if you want to be a Navy SEAL these days, like you’re already pretty fit.

And what I do through my training, or did, was round you out and give you all the skills of mental toughness, resiliency, emotional control, the softer side. And then I make sure that the physical is going to be sustainable for the year-long training that you’re going to be in.

And what I mean by that is most guys come to me and they’re just, what they lack is not, they’re great runners, they’re great, you know, in all around great shape, but they lack the durability to punish their body the way the SEALs will punish it every single day.

And so that durability is kind of a mixture of like physical stability, usually in your joints, and your spine, as well as the ability to hold your mind on the task over a long period of time, which brings in the concept of yin and yang, or hard and soft.

And so we train them. So I had to train Shane to basically get out of his own way and stop just pushing like everything was a competition. So we call it co-opetition. Everything was a competition in the sense you wanted to compete with yourself and put your best effort in. But if that best effort was going to lead to an injury or degradation of the team, the team’s capacity, then that was flawed thinking.

And so what I taught Shane was that, even in the course of a single evolution and also in a day, like we consider each day like a major evolution, like it was a performance sport just to get through the day. Because when we train for a special operation, you’re training like eight hours a day or longer just to get ready for it. And then when you go through training, you’re training for 12 to 16 hours a day.

So we would do hard things during that, but we would also spend time sitting and just doing what I call box breathing, just breathing for arousal control. And we would spend time meditating and concentration practice to deepen our attention control and our concentration. And I had them doing yoga.

In fact, at first, back in 2006, when I was doing these, teaching these skills, I learned very quickly that I shouldn’t call it yoga because the guys would cross their eyes and some guys are like, “Well, my religion forbids me from doing this.” I’m like, “What?” So I changed it to functional mobility, integrated development, those types of terms I used. And you see those throughout Unbeatable Mind.

But if someone who’s ever really approached development the way from a different perspective, you could say, “Well, that Unbeatable Mind is actually kind of a compendium or a combination or integration of Eastern practices, such as yoga and mindfulness and breath work, with Western practices of peak performance, sports psychology, Western therapeutic depth psychology, and a little bit of just Navy SEAL kickassery.”

So I brought all that together and I had to, like, simplify it and present it in a way that an 18-year-old kid would be like, “Yeah, this is awesome and it really works.” So I taught Shane and these other SEALs how to not just be hard, but to balance that out with these practices that really created a total warrior, right, a warrior that could be calmly sitting in a meditative posture or visualizing their mission, but they’re simultaneously just absolutely alert, and the explosive power that they have is like a coiled spring, right, but it’s locked and loaded. It’s not going to it’s not going to release until absolutely ready, right?

And those are the skills that I think are super valuable for everyone these days. We have a saying that, in the military, we prepared for VUCA – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. And back in my day, that was episodic. Like, you go to war and you’re going to VUCA, or, if you’re going to do a specific operation, maybe a clandestine op, the VUCA is basically time on target, or if something goes wrong.

But nowadays, they’re using that term pretty frequently in the business world because everything is changing so fast, and it’s so volatile, and so uncertain, and so complex and ambiguous that the entire business world now is VUCA and it’s persistent, it’s not episodic.

So the skills that I taught the SEALs and I taught through Unbeatable Mind are now looking more more useful, if not imperative, for business leaders and everyday leaders for that matter. This idea that you have to be calm and clear and focused and, basically, be able to declutter all the crap, discern what’s really important, what’s really true to be in control of your thoughts and your emotions at all times so you don’t get triggered into reactivity.

And to be an exceptional teammate because your ego has been honed, refined, polished, set aside, whatever term you want. And you really are recognizing that what’s in your interest is usually what’s in the team’s interest. So you put your eye on the team and help the team succeed. And through the team’s success, you find success and also more purpose and meaning.

So the transformation is multi-dimensional, in other words. We’re transforming an individual to be more capable from a skill perspective, but also more competent, confident, and conscious from kind of the internal awareness and sense of self and perspective lens.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. Well, let’s talk about some of the secret sauce, the means by which one pulls off some of these cool things. So holding your mind onto a task for a long time is something you highlight. And that’s something that I hear from listeners that it’s hard in terms of there’s a lot of, you know, pings, beeps, distractions, emails, whatever, or there’s just a task that’s boring, it’s not interesting to them, or it just keeps going and going and going. What are some approaches that we could use to pull that off well?

Mark Divine
It’s a great question. And there’s a lot of simple tactical things, and then there’s the stuff, the training your mind. The tactical things are to really just commit to doing less things and doing them better. So stop multitasking. Multitasking degrades your output by about 40%. So you think you’re getting more done, but you’re actually getting 40% less done and you’re doing a worse job at it.

And multitasking trains distractibility. And people say, “Well, I only do one task at a time,” but if you’ve got your phone near you, and you’re prone to looking at the alerts when they pop in, because you think, “Oh, there’s an important text,” or, “There’s an important phone call,” that’s multitasking.

And that’s training distractibility. So you’re bleeding off your attention, bleeding off your ability, your energy, actually, right, which is going to lead to low-grade motivation, you know, like piercing a balloon and it’s just bleeding out. So things like that. Starting to turn off, like I have no alerts on my phone whatsoever.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, me, too.

Mark Divine
And that was fairly up, finally had to be like, “Get this thing out of my…” I wanted to throw my phone in the frickin ocean one day. I’m like, “I’m tired of this thing.” So I took off all the alerts. And take a vacation from the phone. Every day, you should have that phone out of your sight for a couple hours or longer. And, certainly, when you sleep.

But you also should take a vacation from it like once a week for the whole day, or most of the day. So I think it’s kind of like intermittent fasting with your digital device is a really smart thing because you’re getting your attention back and you’re rebuilding energy that was bled off through that device.

I don’t watch any news or any like network TV. Like, network TV, it’s built today for high-speed mind that is a very distracted mind. Even I heard Netflix, like, I can’t watch Netflix because most Netflix shows and movies are designed for split screeners.

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve heard that, yeah, that’s why they keep repeating things now.

Mark Divine
Yeah, there’s no depth whatsoever. They basically expect that the viewer is not paying attention. And that’s why they’re skin deep and they skip all over the place, and they don’t leave any of the plot for you to figure out anymore, you know?

So if you think you need that playing in the background while you’re doing work, my son does that, and it’s because his mind is trained that it needs that kind of distraction. And it’s unfortunate because it’s bleeding off your attention.

And the other thing is, like, with those shows and also with commercials, they move so fast that they’re training your brain to have that kind of fast twitch reactivity, which is very challenging then when you try to shift focus and do any deep work. Your brain needs to actually slow down and you need to learn how to slow your brain down in order to do the deep work. So I recommend not even watching TV.

Forget about how negative this stuff is and the reality that even through the TV shows and the movies, not just the commercials, but your mind is being trained and conditioned to accept a reality that might not be true. Let’s not even talk about the news, right? That’s just pure mental conditioning and propaganda.

I have a saying that I like to say a lot, but if you’re not training your mind, then someone else is training it for you. Because, essentially, your mind is the sum total of all that you’ve consumed mentally through your experiences, through your reading, through your screens, and through the interactions that you have.

So if you want to change your mind, then you’ve got to change the input, and you’ve got to basically deconstruct all the false ideas and beliefs and ways that your brain works, such as being extremely distractible and operating at like a gamma level when you should be operating at a high alpha, low beta level. So those are the tactical things.

The training aspect of this piece, Pete, is like radically simple in its form but difficult in that it requires a lot of discipline to do. And it’s simply, like I use the box breathing, which I referenced earlier, as a container for a series of mental discipline practices that bring you that calm, focused, clarity and ability to really, really get shit done at a high level without the distractions.

So let me explain real briefly how that works. So box breathing, it’s a practice that I coined back in 2006 when I was training. Remember I said I couldn’t use like yoga terms and, you know? I had learned breath practices through my Zen training when I was 21.

And then later on, I really did get into, like, the traditional eight limbs Ashtanga yoga, which is mostly about meditation, concentration, self-awareness, introspection, and the stretchy bendy physical part is the least of it. It’s a process of transformation. And so I learned breath practices through there, and I knew it was called pranayama.

And pranayama means controlling the life force because breath is life. It’s not just oxygen. It’s life. It’s prana. It’s chi. It’s energy. So when you do breath practices, what you’re doing is taking control of the life force and you’re consciously using that life force to purify your mind, open your heart, and to train your mind to tap into greater powers that every human being has the capacity for.

So instead of calling it pranayama, because I tried to do that for a couple of my classes, and they’re like rolling their eyes and thinking I’m gone off the deep end. So I just said, “Okay, we’re to do a simple practice.” I called it box breathing.

And that is to all the principles that we now know to be so important for breath work, were kind of unknown back in the mid 2000s. But I knew what worked for me and I’ve been practicing and training and seeing the benefits on myself for years. And that is deep diaphragmatic nostril breathing, right?

Nostril breathing, mouth closed, eyes closed if you are in a practice setting. Eyes open if you’re like standing in line, or at the bank or something, you can do this practice. And that deep nostril breathing, we did it in a pattern of five count inhale, five count hold, five count exhale, and five count hold. So it had a pattern of a box or a square, hence, the box breathing.

So if each count is roughly one second, you’re talking about a 20-second interval for one full box breathing cycle, and that’s three breaths per minute. And, over time, when you practice it, if you turn this into a daily practice, and my recommendation or my prescription is 20 minutes in the morning when you first wake up, and 20 minutes in the late afternoon, over time, this has an extraordinary effect just on your physiology.

And here’s what it does. Number one, because you’re breathing through your nose in that slow, controlled, deep, diaphragmatic way, you’re massaging your vagus nerve, and that’s stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest.

That’s the yin function I was talking about. That’s the receptivity, the calming, the relaxation, which is getting your body and your brain into homeostatic balance. So you’re bleeding off all the excess stress that you built up over your lifetime until you get into this perfect state of homeostatic balance.

And the other thing that happens is, because you’re breathing in slowly, five count in, five count out, and holding for five count, when you’re operating throughout the day and you’re not doing box breathing, which you’re not going to be doing that most of the day, you’re going to be doing regular breathing, but your breathing, then, naturally begins to reshape itself into that form of five count in and five count out through the nose.

And we now teach that and we call it tactical breathing as a practice, but it becomes something you quite naturally do. And so that’s six breaths per minute, right? Five seconds in, five seconds out, that’s 10 seconds, times 60 seconds, that’s six breaths per minute.

Pete Mockaitis
So no holds in the other word, in that way. Okay.

Mark Divine
Yeah, right. So during the day, the practice will lead you to this natural nostril breathing, six breaths per minute, which, astoundingly, research has come in on this in the recent last two or three years, that that is the ideal breathing pattern for health and longevity. And we just kind of stumbled on this and we’ve been teaching it since the early 2000s. So what an incredible benefit.

And, again, we’re just talking about physiological at this point. The term we use is arousal control. You’re controlling your arousal response. And your out arousal response is simply your left hemisphere brain is wired to detect threats. And it’s five times as negative as it is positive as a result of that.

So you’ve got this mechanism built for survival that is through the amygdala, constantly sniffing everything that’s happening in your environment, every stimulus, external and internal, and saying, “Is this safe or is this unsafe?” And at least five times more than positive, it’s saying, “It’s not safe. It’s negative.” And when that happens, it activates your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight or freeze.

And that’s dumping adrenaline and epinephrine and cortisol into your system to get your body ready to fight. Well, the problem is 99% of the time, it’s really not a threat, right? It’s really not a threat, right? So that alert comes in, you think it’s your boss, the phone rings and you see that it’s a creditor, you know, you’re in traffic and someone cuts you off, then that could be a threat, but most of the time it’s not.

But you’re reacting negatively and it’s jacking you up into this sympathetic arousal response. And the problem is that, when your sympathetic nervous system keeps getting triggered like that, then your parasympathetic response atrophies. It quite, literally, goes offline because it says, “Well, you don’t need me.” It’s not getting, you’re just like other channels in your brain. If you don’t use it, you lose it.

So what I found is, even with these young guys that I work with, and every one of the older clients I work with, they’re stuck in hyper arousal. So this simple practice of box breathing will reset their nervous system so that the parasympathetic nervous system comes back online. And then it slowly and, with certainty, bleeds off all that excess stress, and brings the hormones back into balance, and then you’re sleeping better, you’re feeling better, you got more energy, so you’re exercising better everything comes back into balance.

And people, just through this practice, have literally lost excess weight they were carrying just by breathing effectively. It’s pretty extraordinary. So that arousal control has a pronounced and profound physiological and physical effect to bring your body back into balance.

And guess what? Your brain also, because it’s part of your body, comes back into balance as well, and your brain starts to operate more effectively instead of that high gamma distracted state, which is reinforced by your environment, in this culture that we live in, with this fast pace and constant distractions.

It begins to actually function at a slower level, in a mid-beta range, and even when you’re doing the box breathing practices, it’ll drop into a high alpha or mid-range alpha. This has extraordinary benefits now in the mental realm because the subjective experience of that is of more calmness and more clarity because your mind isn’t racing. You get less of the monkey mind popping around, popcorn mind.

So, already, it’s having an effect on training the quality of your mental experience. So the physiology then spills over into the psychology. Well, the second part of this, Pete, is that I asked the students to focus keenly on that box pattern like they’re Inspector Clouseau, and they’re watching every little nuance of it, every little nuance of the inhale with internal eyes like they’re watching it and they’re experiencing it with their internal senses.

You have five external senses and a number of, I’ve read, five internal senses. I mean, internal sight, internal auditory, internal sensations. And so you turn those directly toward the breathing pattern itself.

And we say, “You watch it closely. You can even visualize it if you want.” We have an app called Unbeatable Mind Box Breathing where we it shows a box being filled in as you do the breath, so you can watch that for a while and then visualize it.

Now what that is doing is holding your attention on one thing and one thing only, and that’s this box pattern. So this is like classic Zen training. All Zen training starts out with concentration. In fact, Zen is primarily a concentration path. It’s one of the two primary paths of meditation, are concentration or mindfulness.

What most people don’t realize is that concentration is a prerequisite for mindfulness. And this is why people jump into mindfulness and they fail, because they just simply can’t do it, because they can’t control their mind. They can’t control their attention.

So by holding your attention on the box pattern, what you’re not doing is paying attention to all the other thoughts that come. They’ll still come and go. You’re not like, you can’t not have those other thoughts, because thoughts happen to you.

And you can generate thoughts, but most thoughts, you know, the default mode is thoughts happen to you, 60,000 thoughts a day and 59,500 are the same thoughts that came to you yesterday. They just happen to you. And when you think you’re thinking, it’s when you’re taking a thought that happens to you and you’re grabbing onto it. And then you’re generating secondary-level thought, like rumination or pondering or like planning, that type of thing.

So when you’re doing the box breathing practice, you’re holding your attention simply on the box pattern. You’re ignoring the rest of the default mode network thoughts. But what will happen is your mind, because it’s especially in the early stages, will kind of wander over there and start ruminating or start grabbing on because it gets bored. And so then the practice is to notice that and to bring it back to the box.

And so you’re training now three things. Arousal control, which we already talked about, that’s the physiological. Now we’re getting into the mind, attention control, which is to hold my attention on just one thing. All I’m asking you to do is this one thing, just hold your attention on that box pattern.

But notice when your attention either gets split and you’re focusing on the box pattern and thinking about something, or if you’ve completely wandered off the reservation, notice that and notice it earlier and earlier and come back to the box pattern and hold your attention on the pattern for longer and longer. And we’re shooting for 50% of a 20-minute session.

If you can hold your attention on the box pattern for 10 minutes, you’re actually doing really well. And you’re deepening your powers of concentration. It’s like gathering up all your mental energy, which was being thrown out there like a floodlight, and you’re focusing it like a laser beam, and you get really, really sharp and penetrating mind. That’s extremely valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Mark, when you say 50%, now you’ve got my optimizing, point-scoring, loving self going. I’m curious because, I mean, I’ve done a number of mindfulness-y things. I even have the Muse headband. And so it’ll give you some numbers about how much I was relaxed or whatever. But I’m curious, since I do find that quite motivating, is there a means by which you can see, “Oh, I was 41% last week, and now I’m 43%”? Or  is that unknowable?

Mark Divine
If you want to collaborate on creating a wearable that can track that, I’d be all ears. No, it’s clearly subjective. I’ll give you an example of why, or the reason why I know this to be true. I mentioned that this second part is very similar to Zen training. And I spent four years training Zen, before I went into the SEALs, under the watchful eye of a guy named Tadashi Nakamura, who’s still alive. He’s in his eighties in New York.

He’s a very famous grandmaster martial artist, runs a martial art program that he created called Seido, which means the way of sincerity, and headquartered in Manhattan. So I was in Manhattan after college for four years, got my MBA at Stern School of Business, NYU, and, believe it or not, became a certified public accountant in New York.

But during that time, probably the most momentous thing that happened is I trained under this guy, starting as soon as I got to New York, I just stumbled into it. Since I was 21, I trained with him for four years. And, of course, did all the karate stuff, got my black belt.

But what really transformed me was he was a Zen teacher, had a Zen class every Thursday night, which I joined with about 10 other black belts. And we would then go to the Zen Mountain Monastery up in Woodstock, New York several times a year for these long four- to five-day sits with the Zen monks.

And the basic practice, and he never deviated from this, and you’re sitting on your bench, was simply eyes closed, inhale, exhale through the nose, and count one, but don’t think of anything else. Inhale, exhale, count two. Don’t think of anything else.

And the goal was to get to 10. And, of course, the first few times I did it, I got to 10 no problem, but when I was honest with myself, I was thinking the whole time, and I realize, “Oh, shoot, now this is really serious.” If you think, you have to go back to zero.

So inhale, exhale, “I’m doing great. Oh, shoot, I just had a thought. Back to zero. Inhale, exhale, one. Inhale, exhale, two. How am I doing? Oh, I’m doing good. Oh, I’m thinking. Back to zero.” Or, if you start thinking, your mind is just wandering off the reservation, which is going to do until you train it.

So it, literally, took me, Pete, about a year before I could, with integrity, say that I got to five without any thought, without any other competing thought in my head. And I once asked him about it, and he said that that actually is really good, for students of Zen to be able to have that.

Now we’re talking about roughly a five-count inhale, five count. Back then he didn’t specify. That was my add later on. But we’re roughly talking about just one minute. You know what I mean? Five rounds is only about a minute. Wow, that’s how busy your mind is.

So if you can sit and still your mind for a minute and have no thoughts whatsoever, that is profound. You know, the Buddha said once that you could find enlightenment in a single breath if you’re paying close enough attention.

So I think that’s really, it’s a great mark or target to shoot for. And anyone listening who tries it or has tried this will agree with that, it’s not easy. It’s really not easy because, again, the brain has just not been trained this way. I think there will be a time in the future where we teach these skills to young kids, kind of like they would do for the Panchen Lama or the Tibetan monks for the kids, they start them young.

It’s extraordinarily valuable to do this type of training at a younger age when your brain is still developing. In fact, one of the reasons I think I had such extraordinary benefit with my meditation practice is because I was 21 when I started. And now the male brain doesn’t fully develop until it’s mid to late 20s.

And so, neuroplastically, my brain was just on fire developing all these new pathways, all these new skills through my meditation practice in my early 20s. And it’s completely changed my life. So it’s a valuable, I think, that’s just, you know, I use that 50% just partly to motivate people, but also to help them understand that, you know, just be easy on yourself. This is not easy work. So be kind to yourself, in other words.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And so we talked about being able to persist, hold our mind onto a task. I’d also like your take on how to start something. If we’re dragging our feet, we’re procrastinating, we’re, “Ugh, I don’t feel like it,” have some avoidance, do you have any pro tips there?

Mark Divine
Well, probably the biggest pro tip is, whatever you’re going to do, whatever you want to do, make sure that you should do it. And so you say, “What do you mean, Mark?” Well, remember earlier I said we should all be doing less things better. And then the question is, “Okay, good, I agree with that. But what things should I be doing that go in that bucket of less things? What makes it through that wicker?”

Well, it’s the things that you should be doing. And the things that you should be doing are always going to be related to who you are, not what other people think you should be, or should be doing, or what society thinks you should be doing, or what your parents think you should be doing.

And so the most effective way to develop extreme motivation and personal accountability is to get clear on who you are and why you’re on this planet and what you’re going to do about it, your mission. So this is like one of the most fundamental things I teach. In fact, it also is probably the ultimate secret to resiliency and mental toughness is when you’re doing what you know you’re supposed to be doing, there is no quit.

No matter what also comes up to you, you just navigate it with grace because you know it’s there to help you learn, and it’s just something you have to go through. It’s going to make you stronger. It’s going to help you fulfill that mission.

Now my feeling is, unless you’re blessed with this insight at a young age, is that the best way to really get clear about who you are and why you’re here, and then what you can do about it, is through a practice of stillness. Well, guess what box breathing is? It’s a practice of stillness. So we can build that into the practice.

I mentioned earlier, box breathing is a stacked practice. We’ve already talked about arousal control, attention control, concentration. It naturally opens up to mindfulness. And as I mentioned earlier, concentration is a prerequisite of mindfulness.

The part of you that is focusing on the box pattern and that notices, the part of you that notices that your mind has wandered becomes your primary seat of awareness. In other words, instead of identifying with the thoughts, you become identified with the witness of those thoughts, which is the ultimate aim of mindfulness, is to see yourself in the perspective of the witnessing, non reactive, aware human being that is seeing thoughts and emotions happening to you and through you, but you’re not caught up in them. You’re just watching them as if you’re watching a play.

So when you develop that skill, then you’re in a state of receptivity. Every other skill that I’ve talked about is the yang, it’s an active process. But when you get into that witnessing awareness, then you shift it into your contextual mind, your right brain, which is beyond space and time. It doesn’t have the same construct. It doesn’t create sense of separation in space and time. That’s all the function of your left hemisphere, your left brain.

So you’re in your right brain and you’re in that witnessing awareness, and in that space, you become connected to the rest of your mind, your heart, and your gut. And we now know that the heart and the gut are brains. They have neurons, neurological processing, neurochemicals, neurons itself. And so in that receptive space, the right hemisphere is what connects to your heart, mind, and your biome, your gut mind, and your entire enteric nervous system, your entire body becomes a mind and an antenna.

And so in that very calm and receptive state, witnessing state, you begin to get messages from your heart. I mentioned earlier, my meditation led me into the SEALs. I knew nothing about the SEALs when I went down to New York. I was planning on being a CPA and making a lot of money and going into investment banking.

But the longer I sat on that meditation bench, now two years or three years into it, I started to get messages that I was meant to be a warrior and that I was misaligned, that I was heading down the wrong path fast. And it really kind of created like this existential crisis in me.

Like, I thought I had a midlife crisis at 23 years old because I’m like, “Well, how is it that I’m sitting here in a suit and tie and racing toward this MBA, CPA, and to make a lot of money? How is it that I’m supposed to be a warrior? Why am I getting all these signals that I’m 100% misaligned and going down the wrong path, and I’m going to live that life of quiet desperation that Henry David Thoreau talked about?”

Well, it’s because my heart was telling me that I’m a warrior, I’m meant to be a warrior. And so I started to take it seriously. And I started to ask better questions, “Well, if I’m meant to be a warrior, then how? How am I supposed to serve as a warrior?”

And that’s when the world, you when you start getting close to your own truth, then synchronicity happens. So, for me, the synchronicity showed up in the fact that I walked home one night, kind of pondering this existential crisis I was having, and I walked right by a Navy recruiting office, and there was this poster there, and it didn’t say SEALs on it.

It said, “Be someone special,” and it had pictures of Navy SEALs doing what I thought was pretty cool shit, like jumping out of airplanes. And I was like, “That’s how. That’s it. Thank you, universe. That’s how I’m supposed to be a warrior.”

So back to your question. If you lack motivation, it’s probably because what you’re doing is not the right thing and you’re misaligned. Now that, you know, what do you do then is another, you know, that’s a whole different discussion.

Because if you’re misaligned, it’s not going to go away. It’s just going to keep getting worse and worse. Your motivation is going to keep declining. You’re going to get more and more burned out. You’re going to feel more and more disconnected.

And I think a lot of people in our culture suffer from that because they’ve been taught that, “You know, I’m supposed to be a lawyer,” or, “I’m supposed to be a doctor,” or something. And it may be completely off from what they really are meant to be doing in this life. And when I say meant to be doing it, it’s not a job or a career. It’s who you are. But it can be encapsulated in a career.

Like, being a Navy SEAL was a job, but it certainly sparked and allowed me to express the warrior in me. But I always said that my purpose was to be a warrior, not a Navy SEAL Admiral. Because if I had said, “I’m going to be a Navy SEAL Admiral. Well, that’s my purpose,” we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. I’d be still in the Navy probably.

But, no, my purpose was to be a warrior, and that transcends the structure of what you do. It’s really about who you are, what your beingness is. So if you’re doing something that isn’t in alignment with your beingness, then you will experience a little bit of crisis. And crisis literally means opportunity for transformation. That’s what crisis means. So it’s an opportunity for you.

So to face that opportunity and say, “Okay, I hear what Mark is saying and I think I’m in that boat. The reason I’m burning out, lacking motivation, it’s not because I just have a shitty job, it’s because I’m misaligned. So what I need to do is go learn to sit in silence and to open up my mind so that I can hear my heart’s calling, and get a greater understanding and some clarity about who I really am and why I am on this planet at this time so that I can align with that.”

And aligning with that might not be leaving your job. Like, if you’ve invested 20 years or you’re waiting for a pension or something like that and you got a family to feed and a mortgage to pay, I’m not suggesting you just blow it all up, but you could find meaning through some service.

Maybe it’s like you were meant to really work with the earth. You just love it, and so you start a garden or you go develop a community garden somewhere. And it’s going to be different for every single person. And some people, I’ve worked with tons of clients who, like, literally have left their jobs to start their own business.

Or, I think there’s probably like 15 or 20 clients I’ve worked with who have gone off and written books because they really had that urge, they felt that need to really say something, put something out in the world, creatively like that.

So that’s the fastest path to motivation, really, is to discover who you are and what you’re meant to do about it, but that’s a slow path. It can be a slow path. It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes contemplation.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Mark, we’re having fun here. It’s time to hear about a few of your favorite things. Can you kick us off with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Mark Divine
What a man can think and believe, he can achieve. That was Napoleon Hill. The first book I read that ever really kind of touched on a greater human potential than what most of us are taught. So Think and Grow Rich. If you haven’t read Think and Grow Rich, that’s a must read. I think I’ve read it about 10 times.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you mentioned Think and Grow Rich, do you have any other favorite books?

Mark Divine
One of the books that really blew my mind and got me down the rabbit hole of what’s possible for human beings, and it’s the only book that Steve Jobs carried on his iPad, by the way. It’s called the Autobiography of a Yogi by a guy named Paramahansa Yogananda. That’s doozy. I highly recommend that one.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Mark Divine
Box breathing.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people, they quote it back to you often?

Mark Divine
If you want to move fast and break things and do great things in the world, then you’ve got to slow down and spend time in silence every day, spend time cultivating these qualities that we’ve talked about in the show, and get really clear around who you are and why you do what you do, so then you can go out and bring it to the world.

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

Mark Divine
MarkDivine.com, and Divine is spelled D-I-V-I-N-E, that’s my personal website. Pretty much anything you need is there, or would find interesting. UnbeatableMind.com is my training program, and so we’ve got great programs, great courses, and a community, and even a mental toughness certification that teaches all these principles, and you can go teach it to others or help others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Mark Divine
Yeah, I would challenge you, you, Pete and your listeners, to take up a practice of box breathing and try it out for 30 days. If you don’t think you can afford 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in afternoon, just do 10 minutes and 10 minutes, or just do 10 minutes in the morning. But do it every day for 30 days. And prove that I’m right. Don’t take my word for it. Be that study of N equals one. Prove that I’m right. Even 30 days of daily practice can be utterly transformative. So do that. I challenge you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Mark, thank you.

Mark Divine
Yeah, hooyah! It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate you, Pete.

Mar 12
0

1136: How to Reshape Your Beliefs to Unlock Hidden Capabilities with Nir Eyal

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Nir Eyal provides research-proven strategies for tackling the biggest restraint in our lives: our beliefs.

You’ll Learn

  1. Striking examples of the power of our beliefs
  2. How to make the most of placebos
  3. Three tools for challenging your limiting beliefs

About Nir

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the international bestsellers Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products andIndistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, which have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages. Indistractable received critical acclaim, winning the Outstanding Works of Literature Award and being named among the best business and personal development books of the year by Amazon, Audible, and The Globe and Mail. His third book, Beyond Belief, reveals how to identify and replace the hidden beliefs that define our limits. As an active angel investor, Nir has backed multi-billion-dollar companies that implement his methodologies, including Canva, Kahoot!, and others. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, his writing has been featured in The New York Times and Harvard Business Review, and he is a regular contributor to Psychology Today.

Resources Mentioned

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Nir Eyal Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Nir, welcome back.

Nir Eyal
Thanks, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat about your book, Beyond Belief. Beliefs, boy, I have found them to be powerful and I’ve heard them to be powerful, and I’m excited to have you sort out the myth from the fact and the science and bring some inspiration.

So could you maybe share with us, as you were doing your research for this book, any super surprising or fascinating discoveries, any maybe counterintuitive bits that you came across when it comes to us humans and belief?

Nir Eyal
Okay, let me take you back into the time machine of psychology history, back to the year 1950.

And Curt Richter, this researcher, takes a wild rat, and he wants to determine how long a wild rat can swim for. Fascinating stuff. It turns out, a wild rat in a cylinder of water will keep swimming for about 15 minutes before it gives up and drowns.

Nir Eyal
Then he decides to do a follow-up study. The follow-up study, he takes a wild rat, puts it in the same cylinder of water, and this time knowing that the rats will last an average 15 minutes, right before the 15-minute mark, he reaches in, takes out the wild rat, dries it off, lets it catch its breath, and plunk back into the cylinder it goes. And he does this a few times to condition the rat.

The question is, now that the rats have been conditioned, that salvation might be possible, that that magic hand might reach in and save the rat, how much longer did the rat swim for? Now we know it started 15 minutes, how much longer did the rat persist?

Pete Mockaitis
Nineteen minutes.

Nir Eyal
Nineteen minutes, not even close. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Thirty minutes.

Nir Eyal
That would be amazing, double the perseverance. Would that be amazing if you could double? No, not even close. Keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Sixty minutes.

Nir Eyal
Four times longer, can you imagine if you had an intervention that could help you run four times the marathon, persist on a big exam four times longer, stick with a hard task at work four times longer? That would be insane. That would be a miracle.

The rats didn’t swim for four times longer. They didn’t swim for 60 minutes. They swam, are you ready for this? They swam from 15 minutes, with that intervention, they now swam for 60 hours.

Pete Mockaitis
Sixty hours straight?

Nir Eyal
Sixty hours straight.

Pete Mockaitis
You got to eat! You got to drink!

Nir Eyal
Yeah, they became 240 times more persistent, okay? Why? What happened? We can’t ask the rats what they thought, but if we know their bodies didn’t change, the intervention happened, same rats, same bodies, and they didn’t become physically stronger, nothing changed with their environment, same cylinder of water.

The only variable left is that something changed in their brains. That, in fact, that 240 times more persistence, that 60 hours of swimming was always in them. They physically could always do it. It’s that something was unlocked in their brain that made that now possible.

And so that leads us to, what I’ve been working on the past six years, beliefs. That we can push beyond our limiting beliefs. That the rats that originally gave up when they didn’t know there was any other option, they just kind of gave up at 15 minutes, didn’t know that within them all along was 60 hours of perseverance.

And, of course, what’s the metaphor here? We are just like those rats. We have all these capabilities. We have no clue we are able to accomplish all these things we can do, but we limit ourselves because of our beliefs, because we think, “There’s nothing more to be done,” “I’m not good enough,” “I had this condition,” “I do this,” “I can’t do that,” “I’m too old,” “I’m too young,” “And there’s no time,” “The world sucks,” “Exercise is terrible,” whatever.

All these limiting beliefs we have that aren’t real. They’re not true. They just limit us. And so that was the study that I saw that I said, “Wow, I have to tell the world about this. It’s totally remarkable and that was incredibly surprising.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s wild. That’s wild and very intriguing and enticing. But, Nir, you know, I’ve had my heart broken before by rodent studies, they promised much that didn’t translate. So can you lay on us the most compelling human random control trial you’re aware of in this domain?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, I’ll give you another one. A group of athletes were told that there was a breakthrough steroid that is going to help them put on muscle with no side effects. And this study has been replicated many, many times. It was done back in the 1970s.

So a group of athletic men told, “Here’s a breakthrough steroid, unbelievably effective, go work out.” They gave another group – nothing. The control group, these men who were given the steroid put on significantly more muscle mass, like actually, they had more muscle, like they weighed more in terms of their muscle. They also became quite a bit stronger. They could lift more weight. They could do more pushups there. They got overall way, way more, way stronger.

It turns out that this magical steroid was nothing. It was a placebo, an inert substance. So placebos can help you put on muscle mass, it turns out. Now, is it through some magical intervention? Are your beliefs becoming your biology as some studies that we know about suggest? In this case, that was true, but not the way most people think.

When people think of placebos, they think there’s some kind of magical property to it. There’s some kind of pharmacy in your brain that just makes you live longer, etc. It’s not how it works. It is true that your beliefs can become your biology. But the path through that goes through behavior.

It turns out, when they tracked how much more effort did these men put into their workouts when they were taking the placebo steroid, they pushed a little bit harder, they did one more rep, they tacked on a little bit more weight, because they believed, “Hey, I’m on this steroid, I should be stronger,” and they, therefore, became stronger because of it.

So this is super important. There isn’t some magical power to placebos. It’s, in fact, a technique we can use on ourselves to help us accomplish the things that we didn’t know we could do, but it’s not magic, it’s behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s intriguing. And I want to have all kinds of techniques, but maybe let’s zoom out and give us what’s the main big idea or thesis of your book here, Beyond Belief?

Nir Eyal
That beliefs are tools, not truths, and we can use them just like a tool, that when we have the right tools, we can build amazing things. So let’s differentiate between what is a belief, what is a fact, what is faith. Fact is an objective truth, it’s something that is true whether you believe it or not. The world is more like a sphere than it is flat. It is what it is.

Then you have faith. Faith are matters, these are convictions that do not require evidence, “What happens after you die?” “God rewards the righteous.” These are matters of faith. These things do not require evidence. Then there are things in the middle that we call beliefs.

Beliefs are convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence. And most of our big decisions in life are not based on fact because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We have to have our best guess, “What job should I take?” “Who should I marry?” “What city should I live in?”

These questions, they’re not based on fact or faith. They’re based on belief, convictions that are open to revision based on new evidence. But here’s the kicker. Even though most of our decisions in life are based on beliefs, most of us believe really stupid stuff.

We have these convictions that, to us, feel like facts and we can’t see for ourselves that they are actually hidden, limiting beliefs. It’s almost like your face, that we all carry around a face, but you can’t see your own face. You can see other people’s faces.

Just like if I said, “Hey, think of someone you know very well, someone you’re close to, what’s their limiting belief?” “Oh, in a second, I can tell you what that person’s limiting belief is if I know them pretty well.” But when it comes to ourselves, uh-uh, we don’t know what our limiting beliefs are because we think they’re facts, they’re hidden to us by design. Because the brain has what’s called an immunity to change.

We hate changing our beliefs because the brain wants to default into passivity. Another very surprising result. You’ve heard of learned helplessness?

That, over time, if you can’t do something, it started with animal studies where they did terrible things to dogs and figured this out. But they say now with humans as well that you learn helplessness. You learn to give up. If you can’t, can’t, can’t, you eventually don’t even try.

This was gospel in the psychology community until the very authors who ran those studies and came up with the term learned helplessness, just a few years ago, decided that their conclusion was completely wrong. In fact, it was the opposite. That we don’t learn helplessness. Helplessness is our default state.

That we always want to retreat into safety. We always wanted to retreat into our previous beliefs. We always want to go back to what we currently know and think we know, because that’s what kept us safe in the past, and so that’s what’s going to keep us safe in the future. That’s our default state. We don’t learn helplessness, we are all helpless.

Think about a little baby when they’re first born, they’re completely helpless. They’re dependent on others. We’re always, by default, helpless. What we have to learn is agency. We have to learn hope. And that’s exactly what those rats learned.

Originally, in that Richter study, they were helpless. They gave up after 15 minutes. They weren’t exhausted, they just gave up. But when they had learned that something might save them, salvation might be possible, they persisted. And so that’s something that I think is incredibly important to realize, that we have far more agency than we think because we can actually shape our beliefs.

We don’t have to accept our beliefs as default. It’s almost like a carpenter doesn’t say, “Oh, you know, one time, I used a hammer and it was very effective. So hammers, hammers are the one and only true tool forevermore.” No, a carpenter says, “Hey, sometimes I use a hammer, sometimes I use a saw, sometimes I use a screwdriver.” They find the right tool for the job.

So most of our problems in life, personal problems, interpersonal relationship problems at work, and even geopolitical problems come from the fact that far too many people don’t realize that the things that they think are facts are nothing more than beliefs.

And so if we realize that, we can actually shape our beliefs to live better, to make the world a better place, to reduce our suffering.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you maybe give us the top five hidden limiting beliefs that show up all over the place in all kinds of people and cause all kinds of limitation?

Nir Eyal
Sure, I’d be happy to. Just curious, can you think of any that you have? Anything come to mind?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that I have.

Nir Eyal
I’ll give you the number one. I’ll give you the number one. What do think it is, by the way? What do think the number one limiting belief that I hear is?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think, in terms of the destruction, I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m unlovable,” or, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m not worthy.”

Nir Eyal
That’s too serious. Those are all limiting beliefs. Those are really hidden. Very few people will say, “Oh, I’m not lovable,” but, yeah, they can act as if that’s true. Number one, “I don’t have enough time.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Nir Eyal
Right? Everybody thinks that, “Well, of course, I don’t have enough time. We’re busy, busy, busy, busy.” What are you talking about? Not enough time for what? The human race is 200,000 years old. The earth is billions of years old. Zoom out. You got time.

It’s just that your priorities are different, that you have a limiting belief that, “I have to be stressed.” It’s a limiting belief that I have to accomplish more than I am. Because all these limiting beliefs, they create suffering. Well, I didn’t define it. What is the difference between a limiting belief and a liberating belief?

A limiting belief decreases motivation and increases suffering. A liberating belief is a belief that increases motivation and decreases suffering. And it turns out, once we evaluate these limiting versus liberating beliefs, we can choose, we can take them out for size.

So these limiting beliefs come from the fact that we expect things to be different. We expect to accomplish all this stuff and we can’t or we don’t and so, therefore, we suffer. But that’s a limiting belief. It’s just a perception problem.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So “I don’t have time” is a big one. Give us a couple more.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, “She always acts that way,” or, “That’s so like him,” right? You see that one a lot with interpersonal relationships, especially, in the workplace, when it comes to people we work with, “That’s just who they are.” It turns out, we don’t see reality clearly. This is a really, really important point.

So let me explain the three powers of belief so we could dive deeper into how to get rid of these limiting beliefs. There’s three powers of our beliefs. Beliefs shape what we see. We call this the power of attention, beliefs shape what we feel, We call this the power of anticipation. And beliefs shape what we do. We call this the power of agency.

And so, it turns out that the reason beliefs are, why do we even have these beliefs? How do they shape what we see, feel and do so dramatically? It’s because, fundamentally, the brain cannot process reality. None of us see reality clearly.

That’s probably the biggest limiting belief, is that you think you know what happened. You think you see reality clearly. You don’t see reality clearly. You don’t feel reality clearly. None of that. Why? Because the brain is processing for every second, 11 million bits of information.

Eleven million bits of information, to put that in perspective, that’s like reading War and Peace every second, twice. It’s a tremendous amount of information. The light entering your retinas, the sound of my voice in your ears, the ambient temperature of the room, your brain is collecting all this data. However, your conscious perception is only processing 50 bits of information, 50 versus 11 million.

So that means that you are aware of 0.000045% of what’s actually happening in reality. And you think you can take someone else’s perspective and think you know what they’re thinking and feeling? No, you have no clue. You’re barely processing your own version of reality.

So what this means is that, based on this keyhole of attention that we’re all looking through, the brain has to create a simulation because it can’t process what’s happening. So it’s creating a simulation of what it expects to…?

Pete Mockaitis
Happen.

Nir Eyal
Perfect. How did you know I was going to say that? Because of your priors, your prior experiences, what happened in your childhood, what happened yesterday, what happened in the past. That is what decides what you will perceive in the future. Those are called our priors.

What are priors? They are based on our beliefs. So we see reality, feel reality, and act in reality based on what we believe. That’s our perceptual filter that we can look through. But the problem is, of course, we keep using the same perceptual filters, whether or not they serve us because in the past they did.

And so that’s why it’s so important to be aware of, “Hey, can I swap the bad beliefs, the ones that don’t serve me, that limit me for the ones that liberate me?”

Pete Mockaitis
I see. And that’s why we’re able to finish each other’s…

Nir Eyal
Sandwiches, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Sandwiches. Oh, wow, Nir, I didn’t think…Oh, that was magical.

Nir Eyal
I have a daughter, too. I’ve seen “Frozen” 110 times.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a joke, but I think it also illustrates the notion that if you have had those experiences of watching the “Frozen” movie or wherever they employ that joke, finish each other’s sandwiches, then you’ll say sandwiches. But if you haven’t, it’s just like, “Sentences,” that’s what gets finished.

Nir Eyal
It’s a beautiful illustration. That’s exactly right. That the brain perceives what it expects.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to dig into how we can reshape these, but maybe could you tell us really what’s possible, in terms of an inspiring story of a person who noticed some of these things that you highlighted and they said, “Uh-oh, I got to take some action,” and they reshaped it and what happened?

Nir Eyal
Sure, I’ll give you an example of a famous person who was duped into being better and how did this happen. So this is a story of Serena Williams, and this really happened, at Wimbledon one year. And she was having a really tough go at it that year, that she was not performing at her best, and she started to psych herself out. She was capable of more.

And her coach, Patrick, knew this, and so he saw that she was not performing well because, principally, she was not rushing the net. And in tennis, if you hesitate for even a microsecond, you’re going to lose the point. And he saw that this was happening to Serena because she was doubting herself, and so he wanted to break that belief.

So what did he do? He goes up to her, and he says, “I have some amazing news. I was just looking at the statistics and I saw that, when you rush the net, you score 80% of the points.” And she said, “What are you crazy? I thought I was sucking at the net. I thought I was doing terrible with the net.”

He says, “Well, you know what, the statistics are with the statistics are. That’s what it says. So, you know, this is the best news of the day, 80% of the points, just rush the net. You’re doing great.” It turns out this was a complete lie. A total lie. But it was a productive deception.

Now that she has that new belief, even though it was false, it wasn’t true, it was useful. Beliefs are tools, not truths. And so now she began to behave differently about what she would do in the future. Maybe in the past, that was a fact, but the future is not a fact. It hasn’t happened yet. So she used her beliefs as tools, not truths, and turns out, she wins Wimbledon that year.

Now, I’m not saying go lie to people and that’s going to make them better. What her coach was doing was he knew her potential. He knew what was in there already. So if you go tell somebody, “You’re really good at something,” that they’re just not good at, it’s not going to work.

But when someone is actually good at something, just like those rats who had those 60 hours in them before the experiment, they just needed them unlocked, that’s what this productive deception actually did. And so we can actually do this in our own lives.

When you think about how people use totems or placebos or potions, whether they work or not, maybe it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are effective. So sometimes these productive deceptions can be very, very useful.

I mean, think about branding. What the heck is branding? It’s just a productive deception. And you think, “Oh, but that’s like marketing, you know, BS.” No, in fact, there was a wonderful study where they took people and put them in an fMRI machine. An fMRI machine tracks blood flow in the brain so we can see what areas of the brain are most active.

They put them in this machine and they give them a little tube in their mouth. And in that tube, they send a squirt of wine and they say, “Okay, we want to see how you like this wine. Here is a cheap bottle of wine, maybe it’s $5 or so. What do you think of this wine?”

And people in the fMRI machine who were tasting the wine said, “Oh, you know what, this wine is okay, it’s a little flat, nothing special. Eh, it’s okay.” Then they said, “Okay, now we’re going to give you a very expensive bottle of wine, Chateau des…” something, something, “Here you go, try this wine.” “Oh,” they reported, “this is a very tasty wine. I taste hints of oak and berry and…” all kinds of the things that the wine snobs say.

You know, there’s a trick coming. The trick is it’s the same wine. But their perception of the price changed not only what they said they experienced, it’s not that they were lying, they actually, in their brain, we could see that blood flow was measuring more intensely in the pleasure centers of their brain. They were actually perceiving that wine that was more expensive as better because of this expectation, because of their belief that expensive wine should be better.

So marketing, in many cases, we’ve misunderstood. We think that advertising is about telling people about your product. That’s the simple definition, actually. That’s the simple version. Really, what advertising does is that it informs how you will experience the product itself. It shapes an expectation. It incepts an expectation so that you actually experience the product as more superior.

Take headphones, for example. I know you’re an audiophile. You’ve got all kinds of headphones. Studies have found that between $100 headphones and $1,000 headphones, people can’t tell the difference, not at that quality level when we do random studies. And yet, when they know the price of the headphones, they rate the qualities better, right? Even if it’s not.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. You know, Nir, you’re making so many connections for me. One with wine and marketing, and Seth Godin’s book, All Marketers Are Liars, he talks about the Riedel glasses, which is a fancy wine glass. And so they tell a story about how, with its properties of scents and geometry, it enhances the wine flavor, dah, dah, dah. And likewise, in sort of blind tests, it does not.

But when people believe that it does, it does. And I’ve had that experience. I’ve used those glasses. They feel very nice. And I think, “Ooh, yeah, this really is enhancing the experience.” And so it’s intriguing in that there’s nothing intrinsic about the glass that is doing that. And Seth’s point is it’s not that the marketers are really shady, terrible people. They are giving us a better experience because they’re telling us the story and we are enriched from it.

And with regard to audio, I kid you not, one time I was working with a super duper audio engineer trying to get my sound dialed in. And he said, “You really need this device.” It was this clunky thousand-dollar cast iron thing. I was like, “I mean, okay, dude, I’ll give it a shot.” And so I was like, “But it’s going right back. I’m not spending that money if no one could tell the difference.”

And so I did an elaborate blind listening test, including with the super audio engineer, Conan O’Brien stole him from me. No big deal. This audio engineer, I had him and some other folks listen to all these samples with the fancy piece and then the normal piece, and they really were indistinguishable, despite all the ooing and aahing, and he was like, “Oh, it gives your voice this just thick, heavy, rich, solid sound.”

I was like, “Well, apparently you couldn’t hear it when I obscured the names of the things.” So it really does show up in all kinds of places.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, and the natural gut reaction is, “Oh, it’s deception.” But actually, what’s the point? The point of this stuff is to enjoy it more, right? So maybe spending a few extra bucks, if that’s the goal, right? Here’s another good example, that when golfers were told that a putter was used by a famous celebrity golfer, right, like, “This putter was used by Tiger Woods,” or something, I don’t know who they used, they golf better. They actually performed better in their golf game, right?

So it can actually have some kind of actual effect on your performance as well. So maybe we should give a chance to these placebos. Maybe they’re far more powerful than we think. Again, no magic here, but if that’s what we’re paying for, if we’re paying for perception, if we’re paying for performance, maybe it’s worth it. And the nice thing is that placebos don’t have to just come in terms of products.

We know that we can have similar effects by changing our beliefs. So, for example, there’s an amazing study that was done at Yale a few years ago, where they found that people who have positive views about aging, okay, what is a positive view about aging? Something like, “Growth is possible at any age,” versus a negative view of aging, someone who says, “Aging involves inevitable decline.”

Now, which one is true? They’re both true, right? But someone who’s first to mind reaction is, “Oh, I’m having a senior moment. Those aches and pains is because I’m getting old,” what are they more likely to do? How are they more likely to live? They’re more likely to limit themselves and do fewer healthy behaviors.

And so, when we talk about what affects lifespan, smoking, what you eat, exercise, beliefs blow all of those out of the water. That people in this study, people who have positive views about aging at age 30, lived seven and a half years longer. Seven and a half years longer is off the charts. That is more than the effect of smoking, more than the effect of exercise, more than the effect of what you eat. But we never hear about that.

We think about blue zones and you have to eat this, olive oil, that, matcha, this, all these fancy, fancy things that you’re supposed to do. It turns out, having a positive view of aging is the best thing you can do to increase your lifespan. Again, it’s not that your beliefs become your biology, it’s that your beliefs create behaviors that then change your biology.

So these are very simple things that any of us can do. Stop telling yourself these limiting beliefs. Stop telling yourself, “I’m not a morning person.” Because, you know what, when you tell yourself you’re not a morning person, guess what, you’re not.

Stop telling yourself that you’re limited by your labels. Don’t say them out loud. Don’t say them to others. There’s no purpose for it, even if you think it’s true, even if there is some kind of basis. For example, I was tested for ADHD.

Pete Mockaitis
Me, too.

Nir Eyal
And for years I would say to myself, “Oh, there’s my ADHD, there it goes again.” Now, what was I doing while I was thinking about my stupid ADHD? I was not thinking about the thing that I was supposed to be thinking about.

So it became this trap that I had built for myself, versus a much more positive belief is that, “Hey, this is a new skill I’m learning. You know, maybe it wasn’t my ADHD.” Now it doesn’t mean ADHD isn’t real. It might be real, but we’re not arguing about the facts here. We’re not arguing about truth. We’re arguing about belief. What was causing me to get distracted in that moment?

It could also be that I just haven’t learned a skill to stay focused. Okay, maybe I’m starting a bit behind other people, but I don’t want to think to myself that I’m limited in this way. It’s not helpful. So I can do away with that limiting belief and instead adopt a much healthier liberating belief.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, and then you can have your beliefs associated with the supplements or the medications therein, which would likewise have impact. So I’m curious, if we have spotted a belief like, “I don’t have time. I don’t have enough time,” and we really do believe it, just like, “Nir, I mean, straight up, just take a look at this list and take a look at this calendar, like, straight up, there just is not enough time,” what does one do to rejigger that?

Nir Eyal
So the first thing we do is we take out that belief, and we recognize that the last thing our brain wants to do is to prove it false. We hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it, okay? So acknowledging that, we thank our brain and say, “Thanks, brain. I’m going to put that on pause for a minute and I’m going to explore an alternative perspective to collect a portfolio of perspectives,” right?

You don’t have to change your mind. You don’t have to believe something different. You don’t have to tell yourself myths. You just want to create other perspectives and explore whether they also might be true. So for example, let’s take, is this a limiting belief of yours, by the way, that there’s not enough time? What’s a real limiting belief you have?

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, it comes up semi often.

Nir Eyal
Okay, let’s take this one then, okay, “There’s not enough time.” Now what we want to do, and this is a technique offered by Byron Katie that I admire quite a bit. And she actually channeled this technique. This is all the way back from Aristotle. And what she does is she asks us these four questions. So the first question is, “Is this belief true? Is it true, ‘I don’t have enough time’?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I mean, it can be neither true nor false. From a strict logic perspective, it can be neither true nor false, because we have not defined what does that even mean. Like you said earlier, enough for what?

Nir Eyal
Good point. Good point. Okay, so let’s go to question number two, which you’ve kind of started to answer  already, “Is it absolutely true? Can we find any definition, any situation, any scenario where ‘I don’t have enough time’ is not true?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly.

Nir Eyal
Certainly, of course. Okay, let’s go to the third question, “Who am I when I believe that? How do I feel? How do I act? What kind of person am I when I hold onto that belief that there is not enough time?”

Pete Mockaitis
Just kind of stressed and rushed and frazzled and error-prone.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, a great point, “I don’t do good work when I feel like I don’t have enough time.” Great point. Okay, final fourth question, we’re kind of rushing this here, but just for the sake of demonstration, “Who would I be without that belief?” If I had a magic wand, here’s my magic wand, I’m going to tap you on the head. You no longer have that belief. How do you feel?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I feel relieved and free, but also a little scared, like, “Uh-oh, I hope I don’t accidentally, like, way overdo something,” because I get in a groove or a flow and be like, “Oh, shoot, I got to pick up my kids, arghh,” you know, so I feel liberated and a little spooked.

Nir Eyal
Okay, great. So now we’re going to do the turnaround. So what did we just discover with those four questions? We discovered that that belief that felt really true a minute ago, maybe it’s not true, that holding onto the belief doesn’t feel very good, doesn’t make you enjoy your life. It seems like it increases suffering. And if we got rid of it, there might be some benefits, not a hundred percent, but maybe there are some benefits to getting rid of that belief and trying on a different belief.

So now we do the turnaround. We take that statement that we are absolutely sure is true, “Look at my calendar, there’s no time, clearly,” and we ask ourselves to consider the exact opposite, to do a turnaround. And this technique of a turnaround is way underutilized. It can be utilized in business, it can be utilized in relationships, it can be utilized to bring yourself greater peace and awareness, and just to see reality more clearly.

Again, we’re not changing our mind. We’re just collecting a portfolio of perspectives to choose from. So what’s the opposite of “I don’t have enough time”?

Pete Mockaitis
“I have ample time.”

Nir Eyal
“I have ample time.” Give me one way that might be true.

Pete Mockaitis
I sleep as much as my body allows me to.

Nir Eyal
Okay, great. Somebody else might say, “Actually, I watch TV. I scroll on social media. So if I really didn’t have time, would I be able to do those things? No, I actually have time.” Or another person might say, “You know what? I have time for the things I care about. You know, like I spend time with my kids. That’s non-negotiable.”

Or somebody else might say, “I spend a lot of time at work. That’s non-negotiable. So I do have time for the things I care about,” could be a possible way that’s true. Can you think of any others that might apply to you or any other turnarounds, any other way you could take, “I don’t have time,” and you could turn that around, like, “I do have time for…” blank?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I mean, I think I kind of already said it. It’s like, I do have time for the things that truly matter, necessary, worthwhile, leveraged, you know, life-giving. I mean, yeah, that just is what it is.

Nir Eyal
Yeah. How does that feel when you try that on for size that, “I do have time for the things I care about”? How does your body feel right now?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, it’s a better groove, you know. Kind of breathing a little easier, a little less tension in some belly and such.

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so that’s a very quick and dirty example of how you can collect that portfolio and see and try it on for size. Let me tell you where it changed my life. I had an interaction with my mom a few years ago. It was her 74th birthday, and I wanted to do something nice for her. So I wanted to get her some flowers. The problem was, I was in Singapore and she was in Central Florida where I grew up.

So that’s a bit of a challenge, but I called a bunch of florists. I made sure the delivery went out on time. I wanted to make sure that they, you know, didn’t burn in the Florida heat. And I stayed up till 1:00 a.m. and I patted myself on the back and I said, “Oh, Nir, you’re a good son. You did something nice for your mom.”

I went to bed, slept well, called her the next morning and said, “Hey, mom, happy birthday. Did you get my flowers?” To which she said, “I did. Thank you very much. But just so you know, I got them and they’re half dead. So don’t use that florist anymore.” To which I reacted and said something to the effect of, “Well, that’s the last time I ever buy you flowers,” which I later regretted, and that went over about as well as you’d expect.

Now, after the call, my wife turned to me and she said, “Do you want to do a turnaround on this?” To which I said, “No, I do not want to do any of your hocus pocus, touchy feely nonsense. I need to vent,” because that’s what we’re all told. You’re supposed to vent, you’re supposed to get your feelings out, you’re supposed to tell people how you really feel.

But I knew enough at that point, doing this research, that venting does not work, that venting does nothing but solidify this patina that we have around people, this effigy that we build about people, because we don’t see people as they are. We see people as we are. We see them through our beliefs, which is why we treat our family members very differently from how we treat strangers.

So I did not want to vent, because I knew it, I held myself back, I should say, from venting, because I knew that was not going to be helpful. And I did this exact exercise, I asked these four questions.

I wrote down the belief, “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” obviously, right? Question number one is a stupid question, “Is it true?” Yeah, obviously. Go to question two, “Is it true? Is it absolutely true that she’s too judgmental and hard to please?” Well, maybe. I mean, there might be possibly a 1% chance that that didn’t happen the way I saw it. Maybe there’s another perspective. Fine.

Question number three, “Who am I when I hold onto this belief?” I’m not really myself, right? I’m short tempered. I regret what I later said, right? So that wasn’t really serving me. And then, finally, the fourth question, “Who would I be without that belief?” If I could do away with that belief that my mother is too judgmental and hard to please, I’d be nicer. I’d be more patient. I’d be more myself.

So, A, that belief that I was absolutely sure was true, it turns out maybe it’s not true. It doesn’t really serve me and I’d be much better off without it. Now I could do my own turnaround. Okay, my turnaround number one, “My mother is not too judgmental and hard to please.”

How could that possibly be true? Is there even one way that could be true? Well, she did thank me, so maybe she was just trying to help me by making sure that I don’t get scammed by this florist. It could be. Now, is that true? Is it not true? I don’t know. It’s okay. It’s another perspective.

Here’s another turnaround, “I am too judgmental and hard to please.” Could that be true? Not “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” I am too judgmental and hard to please. That could also be true, right, because I had scripted this exact response of effusive praise that I was expecting from my mother, and when it didn’t come, I lost it. So who was being judgmental? Me, because I didn’t get the thanks I needed.

Now there’s a fourth, another turn around, a fourth belief, “I am too judgmental and hard to please towards myself.” Yeesh, that’s no fun. What does that mean? Well, the more I thought about it, when something didn’t happen the way I expected it to happen, I thought it was a statement on myself that I was not competent for not buying the right flowers, and so I was judging myself very harshly.

And because of that, there’s what’s called a misattribution of emotion. That when we feel crummy, we look for the first face in front of us and that’s the face we’re going to punch, verbally or physically. And that’s what I did. So now which one of those four beliefs is right? We started with “My mother is too judgmental and hard to please,” we came up with three other perspectives, three other beliefs. Which one is right? Which one is wrong? Which one is true? Which one is false? Who cares?

I tell you what, that first belief gave me only one way to happiness, only one way to peace. She had to apologize so I could feel better. She had to change her behavior so I could change how I felt inside. That ain’t going to happen, right? Stop expecting people to change. It’s not going to happen. The other three perspectives I could do something with.

So in any interpersonal conflict, whether it’s in the home with our families or in the workplace, taking on that portfolio of perspectives, you don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to change your mind about anything, but you can collect that portfolio of perspectives about any of your limiting beliefs and try them on for size, just like glasses, right?

You try on somebody else’s glasses and things are blurry, they don’t look right. You try on the right prescription, “Oh, things look better. Things look more clear.” And so the idea here is that by trying on those different perspectives, you can pick the ones that serve you best, that help reduce suffering, that bring you closer together to people and improve your life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. Thank you. And so this rigorous question, consideration, turnaround approach is powerful. I’m curious if there are any other power tools in your toolkit for working with these beliefs?

Nir Eyal
When it comes to rumination, you know, we get into this cycle of when we mess up and we do something that we later regret. “Oh, why did I do that? Why did I say it that way? What did he mean when he said that?” You know, we ruminate again and again and again.

It turns out, one of the best things you can do is to make time in your schedule to worry, that the solution to rumination is actually scheduling worry time. So when I get in that loop of, “Oh, what if this doesn’t work out? Maybe I said this wrong or whatever,” saying, “Okay, I write down that thing I’m worried about, that thing that I’m ruminating on, and then I have time in my schedule, like literally worry time scheduled where I will get back to it.”

Now why is this so powerful? The reason the brain keeps ruminating about a thought is because it doesn’t know when it’s going to have another time to solve it. It keeps thinking and thinking, it becomes an intrusive thought because if not now, then when? But, amazingly, when you give the brain time to worry later, it can relax. It’s like, “Okay, I wrote this down. I will schedule time with myself to worry about it.”

Now here’s where the magic happens. Number one, you stop ruminating. Two, when that time comes to worry about it, nine times out of 10, “What was I worrying about again? Why did that matter so much? What’s the big deal?” And so you benefit twice.

Another technique is called illeism. Illeism is when you talk to yourself in the third person. It’s not about cheesy affirmations. Affirmations don’t really work because they tend to affirm things that are not true. So just telling yourself it’s true doesn’t really work. But, Ilism, talking to yourself in the third person, has been shown to be very, very effective.

So instead of saying, “I’m terrible at this,” or, “I’m no good at public speaking,” or, “I’m not a morning person,” or, “I’m this or that.” Rather, if you can actually insert your name, so, “Pete is working on his public speaking,” “Pete is getting better at this task,” “Pete is challenged by this.” It’s amazing.

When you can talk to yourself in the third person, what it allows you to do is to give yourself advice as if you were in the third person. So by giving yourself what’s called self-compassion, it turns out that self-compassion, studies have found, is a defining trait of people who are more likely to meet their long-term goals.

So if you can talk to yourself the way you can talk to a good friend, it’s amazing, when a friend comes to you and says, “Hey, I have this problem.” “Oh, I’m full of good advice. Let me tell you exactly what you should do.” But when it comes to our own problems, we’re really challenged by this because we can’t see past our beliefs.

And so using this third-person technique, talking to yourself as if you were your own friend, which you should be, can actually uncover and unlock a lot of these hidden truths.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. Well, now let’s hear about some of your favorite things. Could you kick us off with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nir Eyal
This actually comes from the Talmud, which is that, “You don’t see things as they are. You see things as you are.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Nir Eyal
I really enjoyed Rory Sutherland’s book Alchemy. I thought that was a fantastic read.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that audiences really eat up, they retweet, they Kindle book highlight, they say, “Wow, Nir, this was awesome”?

Nir Eyal
What I would want people to recognize and re-share is that beliefs are tools, not truths.

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

Nir Eyal
Yeah, so my website is NirAndFar.com. Nir spelled like my first name, that’s N-I-R , AndFar.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nir Eyal
Yeah, I think the best thing we can do is to recognize that we don’t see reality clearly, we don’t feel reality as it is, and we are capable of doing so much more than we know.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Nir, thank you.

Nir Eyal
My pleasure. Thank you, Pete.