This Podcast Will Help You Flourish At Work

Each week, I grill thought-leaders and results-getters to discover specific, actionable insights that boost work performance.

Aug 13
0

1174: How to Reshape Your Beliefs and Break Free From Your Inner Propaganda with Owen Fitzpatrick

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Owen Fitzpatrick talks about how your inner propaganda shapes your beliefs, decisions, and behavior–and how you can stop it from sabotaging your success.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why to be wary of the “temptations of certainty”
  2. The three reasons people form/change their beliefs
  3. The four steps to rewiring your beliefs

About Owen

Owen Fitzpatrick is a social psychologist. Owen has traveled to more than 100 countries and studied propaganda firsthand in places such as North Korea, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. Also an award-winning filmmaker and former television presenter, he brings the craft of storytelling to his work. He has worked with leaders at Google, LinkedIn, Pfizer, and Coca-Cola, studied at Harvard Business School and MIT, and is the author of nine books translated into 20+ languages. His TEDx talk “Mind Control” has reached more than 1.4 million viewers. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, he now lives in New York City.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Owen Fitzpatrick Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Owen, welcome!

Owen Fitzpatrick
Thank you so much, Pete. Delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about Inner Propaganda. And, wow, I got to hand it to you for writing a heck of an introduction to this book. Introduction: “How to write a suicide note.” Can you take us into that story and share why you chose to open that way?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So when I was writing this book, this book is I think number 10 in terms of the books I’ve written so far, and it’s the most important one I’ve ever worked on because it’s all driven by an experience I had when I was 14.

So when I was 14, I was very depressed. I was suicidal. I didn’t have many friends. I struggled a lot with my mental health overall. And I had a moment where I was ready to end my life.

And so I started writing a suicide note. And the suicide note was to my parents just to apologize and to say, “I’m so sorry for doing this. I just can’t deal with it. I feel so alone, broken, etc.” And then as I was writing it down, I wrote a line to my parents saying, “I’m so, so sorry. I love you so, so much.”

And I can’t really put my finger on where it came from, but it’s almost like I found myself writing a question which is, “Is this how much you love them?” It was like a sort of sarcastic, edgy type of question back.

And it stopped me on my tracks at that moment. And then I started having a sort of internal war, but it kept coming back to that question. And every time I came across that question, something shifted in me. And by the end of that, I suppose, letter, I had stopped entirely the thought that that was what I was going to do.

And from that moment on, I never wrote another suicide note. I never considered suicide. Not that my life measurably improved the next day. I still struggled with the same situation outside and inside, but I knew that that was off the table. So my belief transformed in one moment.

And so I became, I suppose the cliche is, you know, you learn from your experiences as you get attracted to psychology. So as I started studying psychology, I was just everything I could about why we believe what we believe.

So I wanted to know about cults. I wanted to know about propaganda. I wanted to know about how did Nazi Germany influence so many people back then? How is it so powerful, this experience that I had? How come that changed everything for me? How do beliefs actually change? And why is it so difficult to change minds?

And then as I started working in corporations, working with thousands of people there, once more, the same things came about. Being right is not enough. You walk into a room, you’re trying to persuade your boss of something. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the data, it doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re still going to struggle to change that person’s mind if they’ve already cemented themselves in terms of certain belief.

So that’s kind of what drew me there. And the reason I started the book was that was the origin of the experience. And I want this book to arrest people and interrupt the pattern of thinking that they have and get them to go, “The stakes are higher than you might think. This isn’t just about influence. This is about something that can transform our lives.”

And so I felt that the gravity of the situation I went through is something that I needed to share. And, you know, pretending that everything is perfect, I think, sometimes is just an easy way out. I think we need to talk about real things, and that’s why I decided to start with that story.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, yes, and it is powerful. And thank God you’re here. We’re so glad that you’re with us, and that it is a powerful, powerful story that sets some things up. You say it’s not just influence. We had Bob Cialdini on the show. He’s an endorser of your book. Love him. He talks influence. You’re saying this is something kind of different. What do you mean?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So whenever we talk about influence, and again, Robert Cialdini is one of the most important mentors to me and whatnot, you’re talking about the ability you have to influence what another person believes or thinks or feels. And this is, I suppose, this book is also definitely about influence, but it’s also about mainly the influence that we have over ourselves.

So when I say inner propaganda, I’m talking about the fact that we convince ourselves of things all the time, and most persuasion happens within ourselves. So it’s not that other people automatically will persuade us if they use this tactic or this trick. It’s that they are creating the right conditions, whereby we convince ourselves.

And that matters because I think we walk around with this idea that we are seeing the world as it is. And if someone else doesn’t agree with us, well, that’s because they don’t get it, you know, like, “I see things correctly, Pete,” Well, you know what I mean. “He’s influenced by propaganda.” Like, there’s ways I can go inside my mind and convince myself. This is called naive realism where we see the world as we think we have it right and everyone else hasn’t.

And that matters not just from an influence standpoint, it matters from a decision-making standpoint in the corporate world, but it also matters from a polarization perspective, is in finding commonalities. If you’ve got to work on a team with someone that has a very different way of looking at the world, you have to try hard to be able to figure out, “How can I look at the world from their perspective such that we can understand each other better, such that we can work better and more effectively together?”

And so to me, while the book is largely about influence, it’s not the influence we kind of think of in terms of, you know, “Do this and this immediately will change for them.” That’s part of it, but a big part is, “How do we need to influence ourselves so that our mental health’s better, so we’re making smarter decisions?”

And then if we are going to influence someone, “What are the things that actually work as opposed to the myriad of things that we could do, the tried and tested tactics that we’ve applied before, but yet always seem to to fail to reach the mark?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, man, there’s about ten directions I want to go with this, Owen. Oh, so good. Well, for one, naive realism. Great term. I should have known that earlier, because I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot lately. And, great, there’s a name for it.

I would dare to guess, Owen, that just about all of us have this. We believe the way we see things is as they are and correct, and the way others see things is limited, incomplete, incorrect. I don’t know if you have any stats or research on this, but I think almost all of us have this in most contexts of our life.

Owen Fitzpatrick
I think one hundred percent agree with you. I think when it comes down to it, I mean, I think it’s common sense to know that. The problem is, is that, oftentimes, and there’s all sorts of different sort of quotes in time, the certainty is the poison of an intelligent mind, because whenever we are convinced about a particular perspective or point of view, that automatically means, unfortunately, sometimes the smartest people can have the dumbest takes.

Because just because you’re intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean you’re always seeing the world the way it is. And the smarter you are, often, the better you are at debating, the better you are at arguing. And so I can convince people who aren’t as sure as I am of what is true, even though necessarily it’s not.”

So the problem is that, oftentimes, we act as if we’ve got, what I call, the objective truth as opposed to, what I refer to, I think there’s five types of truth. I talk about desired truth, which is when we believe something is true because we want to; emotional truth, we believe something is true because we feel it is; past truth, we believe something is true because we remember it that way; or shared truth, we believe it’s true because me and Pete agree that it’s true.

And the reason I call those truths is because that’s how people describe it. It’s not like, you know, when we talk about all of these different forms, it’s not like, “Oh, I’m wishful thinking right now.” I’m saying it as if it’s an objective truth.

Everything is masquerading under this label objective truth. But objective truth is you’re there, you are able to test something and with prediction using, let’s say, in science or engineering, if you’re building a skyscraper or a plane, you need objective truth because if it doesn’t work, people die.

But in most other cases, in politics, in education, in business, there’s an awful lot of subjectivity to the truth or enough room for us to be able to get around it. And even if, for example, you have facts, there’s a difference between the facts and the truth, the facts are what data you have in front of you. The truth is the story you tell about what that data means.

And I think we need to start to get to grips with these ideas because, otherwise, we’re sabotaging ourselves, we’re sabotaging the decisions, and we’re failing to impact the very folks that we’re working with on an everyday basis.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s heavy and it sounds true. Say it again, certainty is the poison of…?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Of intelligence. The speed to your anger is the depth of your programming. In other words, the quicker you get angry whenever your beliefs are challenged, the more than likely you’re programmed in that, like there is zero movement on that.

And we’re all that way. I’m not turning around pretending that I’ve got zero beliefs and I look at everything objectively. I definitely don’t, right? I have a very different, a very extreme sort of bias towards the things that I love and care about and who I am as a person. So I’m definitely not saying that, but I am saying I’m recognizing that more and more.

And I think the first step in any of the work we need to do on ourselves, well, just like self-awareness is a business skill, is something that will help us to be more awesome at a job, we need to recognize we also need to understand we’re not always right. And getting to grips with that means letting go of this need for certainty, which we often have. And there’s other reasons for that from a brain science point of view.

But letting go of this need to be certain about everything all the time, to jump to hot takes to go, “Oh, this is the way it is.” We love to do that because it gives us a feeling of comfort. It’s like a warm blanket of certainty. It’s like, “Ah, I understand how things are.” And the world is far too complicated. It’s not that simple. And I think recognizing that is crucial, especially in an age where there’s so much chaos going on.

There’s a concept called the need for cognitive closure. And a lot of people have this tendency where they really need to get closure on particular ideas. They love when, especially when they’re in a state of uncertainty, they love to get to a place where they go, “Oh, this is it.” They don’t like living in any form of ambiguity.

And so we tend to create these things. Nassim Nicholas Taleb called it the narrative fallacy where we come up with stories to explain the world. And if we just understand the world like this, then everything is okay because, “It fits into my narrative.” But the problem is they’re not accurate. And as a result of that, they can often create more problems than they can solve.

Pete Mockaitis
Owen, this is powerful, beautiful stuff. That quote, “Certainty is the poison of intelligence,” I’ve got a variant of my own, and it’s a joke in one that goes, “Obviously, overconfidence is the most destructive force in the history of the universe.”

Owen Fitzpatrick
Love it. Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, I kind of believe it, and it’s kind of a joke at the same time. It’s like, you know, layers to it. But I’m right with you there. So the beliefs we have do make a tremendous impact for, I think about mental health and, boy, the placebo effect and the nocebo effect, and just the impact of visualization.

And Alia Crum with the milkshakes, and what your ghrelin is doing, if you believe it’s a caloric-rich milkshake versus like a low-cal milkshake, your body is changing. You just think about standing up. Your body is preparing itself with blood pressure and whatnot. And so it’s wild how the beliefs we hold have tremendous impact.

And I would love to hear, in terms of, fundamentally, how is it we come to believe things or not believe things?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So I would, first of all, say if I was to give that answer, we really could be on this for the rest of the year and longer because there are so many different factors, but I don’t want to give sort of just a “it depends” type answer.

So just to give you, I suppose, what my work and research showed is that in order for a belief to, let’s say, change, which is similar to a belief forming, it needs to, number one, feel right. Number two, it needs to fit in with our identity and who we are, and only then will we make it make sense.

The problem with most people, and this is not just in the business world, this is in everyday conversations you have with your partner, with your kids, with your friends, it’s that when you try to change minds, you go to the making sense piece first.

So you go, “Logically, this makes sense to me. Let me explain to you the logic, and then you’ll believe the same thing I do.” Now that will work if you feel open to it, if you’re really like me searching for what’s actually true.

But if you already have a point of view or perspective on something, let’s say, for example, we take AI, right? And we say, you’re trying to convince someone that you work with that AI is a good thing. And they believe that AI is the work of the devil, right?

If you turn around and you think, “Well, let me give you logical reasoning,” what Adam Grant would call logic bullying, “Let me give you all the logical reasons as to why AI is brilliant and why you’re wrong, that it’s dangerous and blah, blah, blah.”

Well, that’s going to fall flat in its face because, and typically the explanation there is, “Well, they’re going to kick in with some biases. They’re going to have confirmation bias where they’re going to look for evidence to prove that they’re right, and they’re going to dismiss evidence that contradicts them, etc.”

But to me, it all starts before that. It starts with, “How did they feel about this particular topic, about this argument?” There’s a concept in neuroscience called affective realism, which is that the way we see the world is filtered through our feelings.

So if, Pete, you’ve ever felt hangry, that’s angry when you’re hungry, or tangry, that’s angry because you haven’t got enough sleep, or tanxious, you’re spiraling a bit more than usual because you haven’t really gotten enough sleep or whatever.

If you’ve been in those states, you know what it’s like to physically feel a way that influences the way you perceive the world. And the problem is it doesn’t just start at the physical.

You could be, you know, doom-scrolling on your phone, you see a picture of your best friend in Greece and they’re swimming in the sea, and part of you is happy for them, but another part of you is really jealous. You’re going, “Oh, my goodness, that would be so nice there. Things are so heavy on me at the moment, work is so tough, my boss is annoyed with me,” and then you see your friend swimming and, therefore, you feel bad.

And then that feeling sticks in you a while. You put your phone down. And then whatever is going on in your life, you’re going to filter it through that feeling. So our feelings will influence how we interpret a situation.

Now, belief is a story that we not tell ourselves, but it’s a story we sell to ourselves. And so the stories we sell to ourselves become the beliefs we buy into. So how do we sell it to ourselves? Well, why do we buy anything, Pete? We buy it because, “I know if I buy this, this will make me feel good because it allows me to do what it is that I need to do.”

So you get a new gadget, for example, and you decide, “Right, if I only had that gadget, I would be able to use it in this situation, in that situation, the other situation.” And so it’s not just a logical purchase for most of the things we buy. It’s an emotional purchase.

The same is true of a belief. We feel a certain feeling as a direct result of whatever idea we have in there. And then that drives the decisions we make. And then the second piece is then it has to fit in with who we are. We tend to invest in things, but we also tend to invest in beliefs that align with either who we think we are or who we want to be.

And that’s why often groups can have an undue necessary influence. That’s why groupthink happens in organizations, why Siemens had a terrible experience with groupthink. You know, NASA, of course, in the experience of the Challenger space shuttle, the mistakes made because people didn’t want to be the person to be able to challenge back.

And I think that these are all examples of what it’s like to believe in something and almost the belief in something. It’s like the membership fee you pay to be part of the group, and that’s a problem. And so what I like to do is try to unpack, especially from my own limiting beliefs, “What are the feelings that are dictating what I’m believing right now, both the things I want to feel as well as the feelings that are associated with this idea?”

And then second of all, “What about my identity? How is this preserving my identity? What am I trying to protect here? And what’s going on?” And when I start to unpack that, that’s where change can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
So we talk about ‘fits in,’ that really connects strongly. I think about this documentary “Behind the Curve,” which is talking about Flat Earth folks. And at one point, he said, these hardcore Flat Earthers is like, “Boy, I’m so deep in flat earth now, I don’t know if I could leave it even if I didn’t believe it.” So I was like, “Whoa, like that’s very honest and it’s potent.”

And so the belief needs to kind of check these three boxes: feels right, fits in, makes sense. Could you maybe expand a little bit with some examples on how a belief could pass or fail, like how that might unfold as our brains are kind of trying something on or evaluating something?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So if we take the example I just started with, which is AI, so you’re trying to talk to your friend about AI and they’re, you know, they believe that it’s the work of the devil. When they talk about AI, the amount of data you put in front of them is not going to influence their decision one bit because it’s not a logical choice. It isn’t that they evaluated all the evidence and they’ve come to the conclusion.

The reason they don’t believe AI is a good thing is because it doesn’t feel like a good thing to them, first and foremost. And that might be because they’re terrified. They’re scared that AI is going to take their job. They’re scared that AI might take over the world. They’ve watched “Terminator 2” on repeat and they are genuinely looking at the future going, “We are in big trouble here.”

And so from that perspective, their feelings are the problem there. They are feeling this way about AI and, therefore, all the information or logic we give them is not going to change their feelings. Second of all, they have more than likely seen themselves as one of the defenders of humanity.

And I’m using a bit of hyperbole there. Obviously, it’s not exactly articulated like that by them, but they will see themselves as, “Look, I’m a human, I value human things, and we cannot let this artificial intelligence to overcome and take us and kick us out of our jobs. This is wrong. This is fueled by the billionaire class or whatever the narrative they are.”

And, by the way, I’m not saying that any of this is wrong. I’m just saying this is more than likely what a lot of people may well be thinking in terms of their identity. And so, as a result of that, all the information you give them, you’re already fighting a losing battle. You’re not actually arguing about the same thing. Because they have one reality in their world and they have their naive realism. You’ve a different reality in the world. You’ve your own naive realism.

And so what that means is that nothing that you say is going to penetrate their belief because anything you say feels wrong and doesn’t fit in with who they are. And so if you’re to have a shot at talking to them, the first step is to try to understand, “How do they feel about it?” and to be able to go, “I understand why AI is terrifying because of this, right, because of this.” And you let them know that, “I connect with exactly what you’re feeling right now.”

The second thing we do is, once we’ve demonstrated, “I get you, I understand the feeling,” is you go, “Here’s what I’m feeling as well.” And then you give stories, which are obviously one of the best ways to be able to… like the Trojan horse of messages. You use the stories to create the emotion of the kinds of reasons why you’re excited about some of the elements of AI. But, again, you keep bringing it back to, “But, of course, we have to be careful, we have to be mindful, we have to figure this out.”

And then when you talk about it from the identity perspective, you paint a picture, whereby, the way you see it is, “Yeah, I know that AI could take over my job.” Let’s say I’m a coder, right, “I went to university, I’m a master coder, I’m brilliant at doing this, and all of a sudden now you’re telling me that AI can code better than I can. What does that make me? I’ve lost my identity.”

And so if I’m trying to convince my friend that feels this way, I can share my vulnerability about my thoughts about it, but then I, again, tell them a different story. And the story that I would use for that would be, “Who could I be if I was able to be masterful at using AI?”

In other words, “If I adjusted so that I saw AI as an incredible tool that allows me to do the things that I can do to the best of my ability. And also because of my skills in coding, I have an an edge that nobody else has, or very few other people have, in terms of how I can use AI better than anyone else out there.”

And when I start to paint a picture of a desired potential identity for them to have, it, at least, gives me a shot at helping them to change their mind in that context. Because, again, they’re not making up their mind based on evidence. People don’t do that.

Instead, what they’re doing in that context is they’re holding on to their identity. So our goal is to be able to expand their identity so they’ve got more choices available to them. Just on this particular point, I’ll give you one sort of side example if that’s okay.

Years ago, I worked with a coach and it was at a coaching seminar. I was helping people to change habits. And this lady came up and she was a smoker. And she said, “Look, Owen, I know all the techniques. I know how to stop, but I will never stop.” And I said, “Why?” And she goes, “Because I’m just a smoker.”

And so I said to her, “How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?” She said, “About 20.” I said, “How long does it take you?” She said, “About three or four minutes.” I said, “So you spend about 80 minutes of your day smoking.” She said, “Yes.” I said, “How much time then do you spend not smoking?” She said, “About,” whatever, “22 hours and 40 minutes.” I said, “If you had two jobs, one of them you did for 22 hours and 40 minutes, and the other you did for 80 minutes a day, which one would you describe yourself of?”

And she said, “Well, the one I did 22 hours and 40 minutes.” I said, “So that would make you a non-smoker who smokes for 80 minutes a day.” And at that moment she sat back and she goes, “I never thought about it like that before.” But that opened up everything.

I saw her six years later at another conference. She came up to me and she said, since that day, she hadn’t touched a cigarette. And again, she had all the tools. But what made the difference for her in that context was opening her identity and realizing it doesn’t have to be this way.

We limit ourselves so much what’s possible at your job. One of the most important things, for example, this podcast does for so many people is it isn’t just about the skills that you give them, about presence or communication or relationship or productivity. It’s also the fact that they know, by listening to it, they hear the stories, the examples.

It opens up the possibilities and they go, “You know what? I think I could be more awesome at my job. I think I could communicate better.” You know, it’s the idea of this growth mindset that, “I think it is possible for me to be better.” And having your identity expanded like that gives you a real shot to be able to actually improve.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And it makes sense. It’s just about like the logical stuff. which you know there’s a lot of and, in a way, it’s almost straightforward in terms of like facts, data, supporting evidence, you know. there’s that.

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s table stakes. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s that. Okay. So, you also make the point that certainty can be manufactured. How does that happen? And what have we got to be on the lookout for?

Owen Fitzpatrick
So I’ll answer the question by, first of all, saying, “Why does it happen?” and then, “How does it happen?” So why does it happen is because we want to feel certain. We have a desire. So our brains are basically prediction machines. And our brains look around the world, it’s trying to make the best possible predictions to keep us alive.

So our brains are optimized for safety more than anything. They want to keep us safe. And that’s why we have a negativity bias, why we’ll be more likely to overthink on the negative things than the positives as a natural tendency.

But we also have a desire for stability. Our brains like things simple and stable. They like to use as little energy as possible. Our brain, typically, uses 20% to 25% of the calories we take in, even though it only represents 2% of our body mass. So it’s constantly using shortcuts.

Now, with those shortcuts comes not just biases or whatever, you know, cognitive biases that are occurring, like confirmation bias, but also comes this desire to make everything certain and clear, “I love to jump to conclusions because once I have a conclusion, I can rest. I know the way it is.” And the problem is we don’t like the level of uncertainty.

In a world of uncertainty, which is this world is constantly becoming more and more, I suppose challenging our levels of certainty, more unclear, more uncertain. In a world like this, our brains need certainty more than ever. Therefore, people are jumping to conclusions more than they ever have.

So that’s why, in terms of how we manufacture certainty, by, first of all, demonstrating the certainty we want. So whenever you demonstrate a sense of certainty in something, people are craving that. And that’s why, oftentimes, in uncertain times, they will crave a strong leader with a definite point of view and a sense of certainty. It doesn’t make it right, it just means that that tends to be what people gravitate towards whenever there’s a lot of chaos moving around.

We love clear instructions. But also, once you have the person with the level of certainty, you want a clear, simple message. You want to make it as easy as possible for the person to buy into. And then you want to make sure that they’re on the right side of it.

So the reason conspiracy theories work, for example, is largely because the conspiracy theory makes me feel smarter than everybody else and it fulfills that for me. I know, like, “Pete, you know, he doesn’t realize this is actually the way the world works. The world is flat, it’s a conspiracy. And they don’t, all these smart people don’t know it.”

So it makes me feel smart. It makes me feel like the hero of the story. And the people in the story, they’re the victims. All these being villainized by the powers that be that are convincing you that the world is round.

And I think once we understand the mechanisms of this, we have to start to make it, especially in the business world, we have to start to make a better effort at being better specifically with the way in which we take on information.

And so there’s a number of techniques you can use to ensure that you’re not jumping to conclusions as quickly and you’re not falling for this sort of temptation of certainty that, again, the powers that be know only too well will give you exactly what it is that you want.

Pete Mockaitis
The temptation of certainty. Owen, you got a way with words. Yeah, we do want it. And I think it’s funny, sometimes, we’ll pay a lot of money to get it when, honestly, many things are just unknowable.

And so I think that’s a dangerous risk factor, and I think I found that on both sides of the coin as a client and as in a client service business. We help launch people’s podcasts and produce their episodes. They’re like, “So what’s the answer to get a huge audience?” It’s like, “Well, I mean, you can make something great that people love and value and it’s distinctive from other things.”

It’s like, “Okay, so then how long should the episode be?” It’s like, “I mean, as long as it needs to be, about two, four…” and it’s very unsatisfying in terms of the desire for certainty, it’s like, “You’re supposed to have all the answers.”

It’s like, “We have many answers but other things are unknowable. And, hey, man, Disney and Netflix don’t know how to crank out hit shows. They do their best and have plenty of flubs and foibles and cancellations after one season, so that’s just sort of how it is.”

The future is unknowable and yet we crave it. So give us some pro tips on how we can be wise and inoculated against the temptation of certainty to our peril.

Owen Fitzpatrick
I think the first step is to recognize when someone is trying to influence or manipulate us in terms of, let’s say, the way they communicate. There’s a fascinating study that was done by an ecologist, Marten Scheffer, and his colleagues. They did this in 2021.

And what they did was they analyzed millions of pages or millions of books, actually, that were written between 1850, and some newspapers as well, between 1850 and 2019. And they looked at rational language and emotional language.

And they found between 1850 and 1980, words like judgment, conclusion, and rational type of words was on the increase and was continuously increasing until the 1980s. Around about the 1980s or so, it changed and emotional language started to take over and more and more emotional language was used up to 2007 when it just went even more, like it accelerated even faster than ever, right?

Now, when you look at that data and you look at the study that was done, and I presented this on one of my Instagram reels a few weeks ago and it did very well. But the response in the comments, there’s thousands of comments, and the comments were all about, “This is why. Let me tell you why. It’s because of this, it’s because of that, it’s because of this, these people.”

And they were demonstrating the very phenomenon because all of the descriptions they were using were full of all of this emotional language. And so when we’re in a situation where we’re reading or consuming information, and this isn’t just in the news, this is also in the business world.

If you’ve got a colleague that uses a lot of hyperbole, uses a lot of emotional jargon, recognize it and understand it. And it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong, it just means using that particular term is influencing you in a particular way.

And the flip side is if you want to be more impactful in communication, what are the choice of words that you can use that would influence people in a more impactful way? How do you generate more emotion or more feeling through the words or through the language that you use and recognizing the power of emotion as an influence tool?

And then the other important technique I would have would be around our own thinking is that instead of looking at beliefs as being, “I believe this,” or, “I don’t,” start to see it on a sort of a continuum. There’s a great book called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke about behavioral economics. It’s a wonderful book.

She talks about, if you are betting on your belief, how much money would you put that that belief is true? And as soon as people put money down, all of a sudden, they’re not quite as sure as they were beforehand.

And so I like the idea of asking the question, you know, “On a scale of zero to a hundred, how sure are you of this particular belief?” And there’s going to be certain things like, you know, “I believe I love my family.” Okay, that’s 100%. Great. But you’re not going to be challenging that anyway.

But for all of the other beliefs, especially in the business world, you start to evaluate and you go, “Okay, I’m 90.” And then you look at the evidence and you ask, “Whatever is going on, does that increase my percentage? Does it decrease?”

But the mere fact that you have it as a percentage, “I am 80% certain,” and we start to use that in the vocabulary, “I’m 80% certain that this is true. Or from my available evidence, I believe this with 80% certainty.”

The more we start to talk like this and think like this, the more we build flexibility into our beliefs, which means we’re less likely to fall into a trap where we have to defend with this level of certainty. Because as soon as you start to see it as, “My certainty can move,” now, all of a sudden, it’s not a case of a binary, “I believe,” versus “I don’t.” Now it’s, “Well, I have certain evidence that suggests this.”

And this is also based on something, I think, 300 years old, a guy called Thomas Bayes had what we call Bayesian reasoning, which is you walk in there with a prior, like a belief I have currently today. And then if information comes along or evidence comes along that challenges it, “Well, now I’m going to adjust it.”

And I think there’s a beautiful freedom we have when we stop playing the game of certainty versus, you know, chaos. We don’t always have to walk around certain about everything. We can focus on what we can control in the moment, but we can accept, “Look, this is how I’m feeling right now.” But a belief is an idea we feel certain about.

And so because the word feel is there, changing that feeling means not seeing it as this thing that’s stuck or this belief that it’s constructed or created by facts or logic, which often logic is the one that arrives last and takes all the credit, right? It’s just what our brains are good at using in order to be able to justify whatever it is that we believe.

And that’s also why it makes sense comes at the end, because you can find logic. I mean, there’s Flat Earthers believing in the flat earth. There’s people that believe all sorts of stuff. And when you listen to them talk, they sound convincing when they start to use all of their logical reasoning skills, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny, when I watched the Flat Earth documentary, and maybe I’m just so suggestible, but I was like, “You know, they’re making some pretty good points.” And then I was like, “How do I really, really know the Earth is round?” But then some of the very claims they made about flights never going in a certain direction, I was like…

Owen Fitzpatrick
Debunk it, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, “No, I see the flights going in that direction you say they never go right now. What? Okay.”

Owen Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And, again, these things are, it’s easy for us to see, but again, to your point, they can sound so compelling and convincing. And that’s why I say, you know, there’s an arrogance, oftentimes, we’ll have where we think, “Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe they fall for this.” We’re falling for stuff all the time. We’ve all got our inner propaganda going on.

And again, this work didn’t come out of me going, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve figured out the way people are and lucky I don’t have that.” I have to challenge my inner propaganda every single day. I’ve got beliefs that change regularly because I’m constantly aware that just because I feel it’s true doesn’t necessarily make it true.

And, again, I’m not trying to lull us into a sense of epistemological uncertainty or subjectivity where it’s like, “Well, it depends on what you mean, and it’s everything’s up for interpretation.” It’s not. But we need to stop this, I suppose, again, the temptation that we have to be able to succumb to an easy explanation because it’s easy. Sometimes things need nuance, and to me nuance is needed more now than it ever has been in terms of human history.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, tell us about that inner game, the inner struggle there. If we identify some beliefs that we’d prefer to not be there, or we want to adopt a belief that seems true-ish and would sure be beneficial if we claimed it and owned it and had it installed into our operating system, how do we shape, build up, adopt, positive internal beliefs, or usurp, break down negative internal beliefs?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. So, first of all, we have to cultivate what I call a belief growth mindset. So, obviously, Carol Dweck talked about the growth mindset. We have the ability to improve our ability or intelligence if we put in the effort, if we take feedback, if we challenge ourselves, right?

The belief growth mindset is simply an adaptation of that where my main message is we need to be more comfortable with changing our minds. We need to be more comfortable with changing our beliefs because currently we’re not.

Because if I change my mind, if I don’t buy in fully to this thing, people can catch me out. And I think we need to start to see the fact that I have changed my mind on something as a positive, as a benefit. It shows strength of character to be able to do that.

And the belief growth mindset is comfortably recognizing that you can update your priors as Bayesian theorists would say, you can update your beliefs, you can change your mind. Once we acknowledge that, once we sort of recognize that, then the next step is to be able to do what I call a belief audit.

And the belief audit has four steps. The first one is to identify what belief we have. Now, this is trickier than it sounds because, often, we will say, “Well, that’s not a belief, that’s a truth.” And so the reality is we don’t often distinguish between the two.

But the way in which you know it’s a belief is pretty much everything is a belief, and it’s only true if you’ve objectively witnessed it time and time again, and you can make accurate predictions 100% of the time. So we know gravity, for example, exists. That’s an example of an objective truth or a fact. Most other things are beliefs. And that doesn’t make them wrong. It just means they’re beliefs.

If it’s a belief that’s holding you back or causing you problems, that’s the one that we’re selecting. So if I believe that I’m useless at talking on camera or I’m no good in an interview and I have an interview coming up with Pete, that belief is not going to serve me well.

Now, what most people do then is they will go into the whole challenging for evidence, they’ll go, “How do you know you’re useless? Have you ever tried this before? What if you’re not useless? Are you useless every single time?” So these are all great questions that we would use in terms of a therapeutic setting to work on building and challenging the beliefs.

I go in a different direction because I think the big problem we have is that we’re looking at the belief as if it’s a truth that the person will change their mind based on evidence. And if it feels right to them or if they’re open to it or their identity is moving or changing as a result of a therapeutic endeavor, then that will help. But in most cases, that’s not the situation.

So in the moment, it’s not about whether it’s true, it’s about whether it’s useful, right? I can find evidence to prove I’m useless in lots of areas, but I can also find evidence of the opposite.

And so when I can find any evidence I like and I can make it fit like a Flat Earther, I can make it fit my argument. Then in this context, what I need to do is stop for a second and go, “Since I can pretty much prove anything, the question isn’t, ‘Is it true?’ The question, ‘Is it useful?’”

And so the first question is, “What is the belief that I’m holding?” And then let’s say I believe, “I’m not good enough as a speaker,” or let’s say, in terms of presentations, “I’m just not good with people, and that’s why I’ll never succeed in my job.” And then you go to the second question, which is, “What are you trying to achieve by believing this? Like, what is your goal in believing this?”

And, automatically, it’s like, “Well, I suppose it gives me a sense of certainty that this is who I am and it protects me from rejection and it protects me from trying and it protects me from putting myself out there.” Then you go, “How is that working for you? Like, is it successful?” “Well, it’s doing that, but it’s sabotaging my career and I’m not getting anywhere as a result of it. Like, it’s destroying my chances to be able to thrive in my career. And it means I’m missing out on so many opportunities.”

“Okay, so what’s a better belief that would help you, that would still protect you, but would help you to be able to get better and to do better?” “Well, I suppose if I believe that I could become really good at this, and even when I make mistakes or I don’t do a great job, that doesn’t mean I’m no good with people. It just means that I haven’t yet learned the skills and every negative experience I have could serve to be feedback to help me to become better and better and better, so I do become great eventually.”

Taleb talks about the concept of anti-fragility, things that gain from disorder. I like the idea of an anti-fragile identity, which is, instead of seeing yourself as how you want to be, you see yourself as the kind of person that, whatever happens to you also happens for you.

Whatever challenges you go through, whatever adversity, whatever uncertainty, whatever complexity, whatever mistakes you make, all of that can be transfused into lessons, learnings, feedback that helps you to get better next time.

And so, therefore, my belief about myself is, “I’m constantly updating my beliefs. I’m constantly getting better. And every time I make a mistake, it can just teach me a valuable lesson. But because I have that belief, nothing can get me down because whatever happens to me, again, can happen for me.”

And the more we start to see that as a potential new belief, that becomes a lot more useful than the old-school belief, which is, “You know, I’m useless with people,” which is just a narrative we’ve been spinning for years, just because we had two or three examples of it and it also is convenient. It means we don’t have to try. It means we can hide away from the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s a nice process there. It’s like, “Hey, let’s shift the focus dot from ‘Is it true?’ to ‘Is it useful?’ And then we kind of think through the implications of the different beliefs and where they go.”

I’m curious with regard to the ‘feels right’ and ‘fits in’ perspectives of that, I suppose, at the stage of what would be a more useful belief, there’s many to choose from. And so, perhaps, those that’ll be the most resonant will be the ones that best feel right and fit in. Can you speak to that?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so if we take the same example, and we look at the ‘feels right’ and ‘fits in.’ If I go, “I’m great with people and everybody loves me,” well, that’s a nice belief, but, ultimately, when it comes face to face with reality, you’re probably going to notice it gets knocked down.

Because if you haven’t been great with people or if you haven’t spent much time with people, you probably haven’t cultivated the skills yet. So just believing in something positive is not necessarily going to hold mustard in that context. It’s not going to keep you safe because you’re going to get rejected and you’re going to have negative experiences.

And that’s the thing about just blind positive thinking is you always have to deal with reality eventually. And so my way of thinking is something that’s useful is something that is great whenever things are going well. But even when things aren’t going well, it’s all part of the story.

And that’s why I look to make, because in order for something to feel right, the person has to go, “Yes, I can get behind this. This feels right.” And whenever they have a negative experience, it fits nicely into that story because, again, the belief is a story.

So if something goes wrong, “Well, I knew that this might happen, and all it means is this. I knew that this might occur, and all it means is this.” So it maintains this feeling of rightness. So people are more open to it because it’s something more plausible, but also, when it’s tested, it works.

And then in terms of identity, again, if you see yourself as the kind of person that constantly improves and gets better, well, it doesn’t really matter what happens because it’s not like, again, the problem or the mistake we might make is we go, “I’m an amazing communicator and people always listen to me, and that’s who I am as an identity.”

But the challenge is that when people don’t listen to you, then that again creates a cognitive dissonance, a tension in your mind, because now, all of a sudden, “I believe that I’m this person, but yet reality is saying I’m not. Maybe I’m wrong.”

And what I believe is much more useful is to go create a version of yourself where whatever happens, it serves to make you better.

And that’s something I think all of our identities can get behind because, “I’m not pretending something’s true when it’s not.” I’m simply saying when you start to look at the negatives as the potential lessons or learnings that can help you to thrive in the future, that’s way easier to get behind and your brain is a lot less likely to push back on that because, well, what’s it pushing back on, right? There’s no real way to prove it wrong.

And I think that’s the problem. The flip side is when people say, “I’m not good enough,” there’s no real way to prove it wrong because you’re not even telling me what you’re not good enough to do. Some people go, “I’m not good enough.” “Good enough at what?” “Well, at work.” “In what way?” “Well, in terms of my performance.” “What do you mean by your performance?” “Well, well…”

Like, the more we start to knuckle down, good enough is just one of those empty statements that’s very hard to disprove because it just feels bad, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And as a result of that, every time you’re in a bad state, it feels right to you, it goes, “Yeah, you know why this is? It’s because I’m useless, because I’m not good enough, right?” and that becomes part of your identity. And, therefore, you filter the world through it.

When you see yourself as constantly a work in progress, it changes the game because I think the reason people think of it in terms of, “I’m not good enough” is because they see this static identity. It’s like, “Do I have what it takes?” Well, you won’t know until you give what it takes. But that could be a long process.

But this speed that we have to get a sense of certainty as to whether or not I am this person, this isn’t the X factor. Life isn’t like that. You aren’t like, “I’m going to get the buzzer or I’m not.” This is real life. And real life means complexity and confusion and getting rejected when you should have been accepted, and getting accepted when you should have been rejected, and people not as good as you and doing better than you.

Like, this is life and we have to navigate this uncertain world the best we can. And to me, that means taking charge of the stories that we sell to ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that’s very handy in terms of there are many beliefs that are useful or unuseful to make sense of the reality in front of us and our experience of it and we really do get to choose what we’re going to grab and they’re going to be way stickier if it feels right, fits in, and makes sense.

Owen Fitzpatrick
Exactly. And I think we have to recognize we do have the ability to do that but, first, we have to acknowledge just because we believe it, it’s not necessarily true. And I think that’s the most important of all.

And the reason I call it the inner propaganda, and I talk about what I call the inner dictator, and I know there’s lots of terms, there’s like inner critic and there’s the different saboteurs, and I think all of that is great.

The reason I call it the inner dictator is because whenever I was depressed and whenever I struggle with my mental health, it didn’t feel like it was a negative thought. It wasn’t like a voice telling me negative and then I would push back with positive and we’d have a nice little debate. It felt like the truth. It felt like the reality. And so the dictator was organizing my attention and convincing me, “This is the way it is. There is no other reality. This is a fact,” and it’s me experiencing that.

And when I went to North Korea and I walked around there and learned what it was like to be inside a regime, completely blatant propaganda everywhere, I recognized what was going on inside my head because I was like, “The same thing that I’m doing inside my head is what’s happening out here. I’m being convinced by this voice that everything is wrong.” My inner state media showing me, only what maintains this negative feeling I feel.

And recognizing that and understanding this is propaganda, that was the saving piece. Because now I knew, whenever I was in this dark mode and I believed that this is what needed to happen, I’ve now learned that whenever I’m in that mode now, I’m recognizing I’m going, “I’m not in a good place to deal with this.”

Like, a few weeks ago, I had a big sort of setback. And immediately, my brain was like, “Why did you do this? This is the worse.” Like, it was just telling me all these things. But because of the work that I’ve done, I knew, “Okay, this is propaganda.” And it didn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt, but it meant I knew I was not in a place then and there to make any decisions, right?

Whatever I would decide there was going to be dictated to by this absolute convincing vibe that I had inside my head that was like, “Owen, you are wrong or you are bad or the future is hopeless.” Knowing that, as soon as you spot the propaganda, and you recognize you’re experiencing it, that’s the freedom.

When I realized that, it stopped me from making stupid decisions in those states, but also gave me a distinction that I needed, which is just because you believe it doesn’t make it so. And in order for me to be able to make smarter decisions, to be able to perform better, to be able to be happier, I need to recognize when the propaganda is trying to sabotage myself and my life.

It’s like a double agent. It pretends it’s always working for you and it does amazing things. But it also sells you a reality that you don’t always have to buy.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m intrigued. So Kim Jong Un, North Korea, so we know what he’s trying to achieve via the propaganda. What’s our brain up to when it gives us this nonsense propaganda?

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s up to those two things. It’s up to feeling safe and it’s up to feeling certain, right? It wants to keep things stable and it wants to make sure it has nice, easy ways of seeing the world. And whenever we feel bad, we don’t always attribute that bad feeling to what it belongs.

So you could have a problem or crisis in one area of your life and then you take it out in another area. So you’re struggling with your job and you take it out on your partner, and then you start to create problems in your relationship, or vice versa. You have problem in your relationships, you start to take it out in terms of your job.

So we aren’t always aware as to why something feels wrong in the moment. But our feelings aren’t categorized like that. We don’t just switch into different human beings in different parts of our life. And that also happens through time as well.

So as we grow up, we develop certain habits or certain patterns, and they affect us later on in our relationships. So you’re cheated on by one person. That doesn’t just affect you with that person or create a negative feeling. It changes the way you think about that type of person, right, a partner. And, therefore, the next partner you meet, the same feelings are dictating what your attention is putting on. So it’s harder for you to trust that person in that situation or scenario.

In the business world as well, you’ve had a boss that’s treated you really badly. The next boss that you have, almost anything that they say, you might look into or overanalyze or worry more about because your brain is focusing on what could go wrong as well as going, “Okay, what’s the story here? I need a sense of certainty. I need to know why this boss is treating me this way.”

And so we will grab onto any story that fits. And that’s the problem. We make up our minds too quickly. I believe we need to doubt ourselves more in order to believe in ourselves more.

Pete Mockaitis
So much good stuff. Owen, let’s hear in rapid fire about a few of your favorite things. Can we hear a favorite quote?

Owen Fitzpatrick
Sure. Favorite quote is actually by Rainer Maria Rilke, which is, “The purpose in life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” And to me, it’s kind of like the epitome of this anti-fragile sort of identity. It’s like whatever hell hits me, it’s just going to help me get even better as a result.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
My favorite research, I mentioned earlier, Martin Schaefer, and that study. I absolutely love it. I found it fascinating. There’s also some really cool AI studies that have been coming out in the last couple of years about the impact of, I think, they had 900 people arguing against ChatGPT 4.0. And ChatGPT 4.0 was like 60% more persuasive, but it was more persuasive for two main reasons.

Number one, it knew how to pick the right kind of ethos so it knew what character to pretend itself to be. So it gave itself the right qualities to make it as persuasive as possible. And, number two, it was able to analyze the actual profiles of the person they were arguing against in real time. And they were able to use their moral framing and use their language against them.

So when that was taken away from them and they’re just using logic, there was no discernible differences between the humans and the AI. So I found that was really fascinating, stuff like that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Owen Fitzpatrick
There’s obviously Influence with Cialdini, there’s Think Again, which is Adam Grant. But my favorite over the last few years has been a fictional book called Address Unknown, and it’s set in the 1930s. I think it’s Kathrine, I think it’s Kessler, I think. But it’s just a fascinating book. It’s a short enough book, but it blew my mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s going to seem nerdy, but whenever I have a new thing I want to learn about, what I’ll do is I’ll do deep research on Claude and ChatGPT. I’ll put the two deep researches together, then I’ll have an argument with, you know, both, get all of that, and then I’ll put it into Notebook LM and have a podcast created for it, and then I’ll listen to it on my runs.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
It’s the stories that we sell to ourselves become the beliefs we buy into is the thing I hear the most.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
OwenFitzpatrick.com. I’m also on LinkedIn, Instagram and whatnot. And InnerPropaganda.com is its own website, but OwenFitzpatrick.com is the best place to learn more.

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

Owen Fitzpatrick
Think about the beliefs that you hold and evaluate the level of the percentage of certainty, like we said, and start trying to be more flexible with your beliefs because the more flexibility you build into it, the better your thinking, the better your decision-making, the better your relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Owen, thank you.

Owen Fitzpatrick
Thank you very much, Pete. A pleasure.

Aug 10
0

1173: The Tools for Greater Mental Strength with Amy Morin

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Amy Morin shares practical tools to stay calm, confident, and resilient under pressure.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to quickly shift your mood and energy
  2. How to defuse dread and make your workday easier
  3. The simple tool to keep worry from taking over your day

About Amy

Amy Morin, LCSW is a psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, internationally bestselling author, and the award-winning host of the Mentally Stronger With Therapist Amy Morin podcast. Her books on mental strength, including 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do, have sold more than 1 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. 

She’s practiced therapy for over 20 years, and she’s a sought-after speaker whose TEDx talk, “The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong,” is one of the most viewed talks of all time with more than 25 million views. Her new book is The Mental Strength Playbook: 50 Tools to Cope with Stress, Thrive Under Pressure, and Gain a Competitive Edge in the Workplace. Amy lives on a sailboat in the Florida Keys.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Amy Morin Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Amy, welcome back!

Amy Morin
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get mentally strong with you here today. You’ve got 50 whole tools for us at The Mental Strength Playbook. We’re probably not going to talk about all 50, I’m guessing. But give us the big picture in terms of a big discovery that you had when putting this all together.

Amy Morin
Well, you know, I’ve been writing books about mental strength for years, but most of them are about what not to do. And the biggest thing I realized was the skills and tools that work at home don’t always work in the office.

I can’t put off something that I’m anxious about at work. If I want to keep my job, I might have to figure out how to work through my anxiety, or if I’m bored, I can’t just be like, “I know, I’m going to wait till that report is feeling a little more fun.” But we can do those things at home.

So I wanted to write a book that was about what do you do when you’re sitting at your desk at 2:00 p.m. and you’re struggling with something, and the tools and skills that you might use at your house aren’t available to you.

And also when you’re struggling maybe with something in your personal life, how do you keep showing up at work? For me it was when my mother died, my husband died, like my 20s were like a bad country song. Everything that could have gone wrong did, and I was a therapist and I had to keep going to work.

And there was no playbook back then for, “How do you keep showing up when your own life is in shambles and how do you get through the day?” And one of the big pieces of this was like, if you’re going through grief or you’re going through stress or a hard time, you don’t want to push it down.

We know that suppressing things tends to make it pop up even worse. But at the same time, you probably can’t cry in the middle of a business meeting. You have to figure out, “How do I put it on the shelf and save it until later?”

And that’s really what I wanted this book to be about is, “How do you get through tough times, difficult emotions, maybe just temporary anxiety, maybe get anxiety from sales calls? But what are some tricks you can have up your sleeve so that you can still think, feel, and do your best, despite whatever your boss throws your way?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s super handy, and, yes, I want to talk through a few of those. For starters, though, could you share with us a cool story about someone who made use of some of these tools and saw some great results?

Amy Morin
Well, I will share my own story because, I will say, I used all 50 of these strategies in my and they’re what has gotten me through some of my toughest times. But when I first wrote my first book, I was a social worker in rural Maine.

I wrote an article that went viral, got invited to get on a big stage and I accepted without even really knowing what I was walking into. It was like this huge conference where pretty much everybody else on the stage was a household name.

So the day I got there, I’m watching Gary Vee up on this giant stage, and I’m thinking, “Oh, good, and I, like, have to give a presentation tomorrow. I literally have no idea what I’m doing.” So I had, like, 24 hours, and I thought, “What do I do? Do I go cram my notes? Do I call in sick tomorrow? How am I going to get through this?” because I knew I just really didn’t have, like, the skills and expertise to be there.

But I decided my best strategy at that moment was to act as if. I’m going to act as if I feel confident. So I watched other people that day to figure out like, “What do you do? Where do you step on stage? What do you do when you come out? How do you stand there? How do you look at the audience when you have this massive audience in front of you?”

And that’s what I spent the evening doing is saying, “If I stepped out on stage feeling completely confident, what would that look like, as opposed to the sheer terror that I knew that I was actually going to feel when I stepped out there?” But got it all down, okay, “If I were really confident, I’d step out there like this, I’d hold my head like this, I’d look at the audience this way.”

And I knew if I just did those things, then somehow my brain would be like, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe we are confident.” And I could at least get through it that day. And it worked. I felt like, “Okay, it’s not quite the same as like fake it till you make it, where people think you’re just going to get out there and act like somebody you’re not.”

That wasn’t my goal, but it was like, “How do I step into this as the most confident version of myself, even though I don’t feel confident?” And that strategy got me through it that day and, fortunately, they invited me back to speak and I still get to speak now, but I feel much better about it because I’ve had a lot more practice.

But sometimes, that’s the best strategy you can have is when you get on a sales call and you’re nervous or you’re filled with self-doubt, just ask yourself, “If I felt completely confident, what would I look like and how would I pull it off?” And then try to step into that persona even when you don’t feel it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what’s on the other side of those questions? Like, what would it look like in terms of, are you talking about, specifically, how you’re holding your body, how you’re talking to yourself? What are some of the bullet points that come as the answers to that question?

Amy Morin
So if I had stepped out there and allowed myself to just act like I felt, which would have been terrified, scared that I was going to bomb, worried that I was going to stumble over my words, I probably would have done all of those things, right? And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So when I watched the other speakers, I was like, “All right, they stepped out into the middle of that stage like they own the place. So how do I do that?” Or, when I saw, like, how they made eye contact and interacted with the audience, like, “Okay, how do I do that to make sure that when I get up there, I literally make sure that I’m standing up straight, I’m making eye contact, I’m trying to take up space while I’m up there?”

As opposed to what I felt like, which would have been like stand in the very back corner of the stage, speak as fast as you can to get out of there and try to exit before something horrible happens.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And then I’m curious about some of the other acts as if that have been transformational for you.

Amy Morin
Well, you know, as a therapist, it’s a play that I’ve run with lots of clients over the years. So, for example, I had a woman who said, “I need you to give me some confidence. I really want to go back to college, but I’m not sure I can do it later in life. I wasn’t the best student before, and now I’ve taken all these years off. How do I make sure that I feel like I’m confident?”

Well, the answer was, “Let’s act as if you feel confident now. Like, call the college, sign up for a class, and it’s really about the experience so that you can finally feel confident, but you have to take the action first.”

“So what would happen if you felt confident in yourself, what might that first phone call look like when you call the school? You might be asking for information, you might be really clear on, ‘This is what I’d like to do. How do I sign up?’ as opposed to giving them your whole spiel of, ‘I don’t know if I can get through school. I’m not really sure I’m meant to be there.’ If you do all of that, you’re less likely to get what you want.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. All right. Well, let’s maybe zoom out and talk about mental strength, generally. First, what is it and is it learnable, build-able, doable for all of us, as opposed to like a trait like, “Oh, they’ve just got it”?

Amy Morin
Right. So, yeah, mental strength has got three parts to it: the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you behave. And the thinking part is your brain lies to you a lot. It will tell you that you can’t do something. It will overestimate how bad something is going to be, underestimates your ability to cope with it, and it will try to keep you safe.

So it will talk you out of doing anything where you might embarrass yourself or where things might not turn out well. So part of being mentally strong is knowing you don’t have to believe everything you think, and you can be in charge of talking back to the thoughts that aren’t helpful.

And then the other part is your feelings, and again knowing that whatever you feel is okay, but there’s times when your feelings don’t serve you well. If I’m incredibly sad, the last thing I want to do is ask for a raise, because research shows, if I try to negotiate when I’m sad, I’ll take a pretty bad deal and I won’t offer a counteroffer or anything because I’ll be like, “Ugh, my self-esteem can’t handle it.”

So just knowing, “How do I feel today? How might that affect my decisions? And what can I do about it? Maybe I woke up sad, but I don’t have to stay sad. I could choose to do something to boost my mood.” And then the third part is about the action that we take. It’s one thing to say, “Okay, I think positive,” but what are you going to do about it?

And at work, we don’t get paid for thinking positively. Most people get paid for what you produce or what you do. So how do you get through a day when you just don’t feel like doing anything? Or how do you take the positive action when it’s scary?

And I do believe everybody has the ability to build mental strength. Just like you could choose to go to the gym and build bigger biceps, you can certainly choose to build your mental muscle. It’s all about the little choices that you make every single day. And we always have opportunities to build strength when we want to. And I think no matter how strong people are, there’s always room for improvement.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so how you think, how you feel, and what you do, those three components. What’s intriguing about how you feel is it seems like, also maybe it’s just my own experience, the amount of influence/control I have over how I feel seems to be quite variable.

In that some days, it’s like, “Oh, I’m not motivated. Well, I’ll just do this, and now I’m motivated. That was easy.” And other days, it’s just like, “I’m not motivated.” And I do the things like I remain unmotivated.

And so help us with that. If we’re mentally strong in the dimension of how we feel, just what’s possible for humanity with regard to how much influence we could wield over our feelings?

Amy Morin
Yeah, so I think the first question is to ask, “Is what I’m feeling right now helpful or hurtful?” Or some people say, “Is it a friend or an enemy?” Because we talk so much about emotions as if they’re positive or negative, people will be like, “Well, anger is a negative emotion.” But it’s not.

Like, anger can really help you. Like, it gives you the courage sometimes to speak up for yourself or somebody else. Or, people might think sadness is a negative emotion, but sadness helps you honor something that you’ve lost. So you don’t want to get rid of it.

But again, at the same time, if you’re about to walk into your boss’s office, or you’re about to lead a team meeting and you’re so sad that you have no energy, like, by all means, it’s important to pull yourself out of it so you can do your best.

And we have choices of how we respond to our feelings. Sometimes it makes sense to just sit in them. If I’m sitting on my couch at home on a Friday night and I’m sad, maybe I just allow myself to be sad. But if I’m about to walk into my boss’s office and ask an important question, maybe I need to boost my mood.

And there’s two ways that we can do that. It’s about the way you think or about the actions that you take. So if I’m thinking about all the sad things that have happened in my life, I’ll probably feel sad. So maybe I do something like visit my smile file.

That’s a play from the book, where you just have some like positive pictures, maybe some pictures of what you did last fall, some pictures of your kids, your latest vacation, any pictures that bring a little smile to your face can give you a boost in your mood.

So then it would be my job to know, “Hey, I’m about to lead this team meeting, feeling really low energy and sad. Let me just pull this out for a minute.” I pull out a funny photo of my dog and I start to laugh for a minute, my mood gets a little bit better. We’re not going from a zero to a 10, but maybe I go from like a 2 to at least a 4. So then I feel a little bit better before I walk into that meeting.

And then it’s about what we do as well. So I could spend my lunch break being stressed out about something, staring at my computer and not doing anything, or I could say, “You know what? I’m going to take 15 minutes to go for a walk around the block because I know being in nature and moving my body helps. So that’s what I’m going to do to try to shift my energy before I come back for the rest of the afternoon.”

And I think when we decide that, when an emotion isn’t helpful, we can either change what we think, change what we do, or sometimes a combination of both to make it so that we take a little more charge of our feelings.

And you won’t get rid of those emotions altogether. If you’re anxious about something going on at home, or you’re waiting for a call back from your doctor about some test results and you’re pretty anxious about it, you probably aren’t going to make it disappear, but you might bring it down to a level where you can say, “Okay, I can concentrate on this task right in front of me right now.”

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay, well, we got 50 tools here. Can you share with us what are some faves to shift how we feel? We got the ‘act as if,’ we got the ‘smile file.’ Any other just wildly effective ones that your clients just love?

Amy Morin
So another one is to visit your ‘victory vault.’ We know that when we get rejected for something, it stings. And the problem is, suddenly, your brain will bring up all the other times that you felt that emotion. So maybe I apply for a promotion and I don’t get it.

Suddenly I’m like, “Oh, gosh, I also didn’t get picked for the basketball team in the seventh grade. Three years ago, I applied for a different job. I didn’t get that.” Like, it’ll just bring up all the rejection in your life. And before you know it, you might feel like a loser because you’re remembering every single time in your life you’ve been turned down or passed over or rejected.

So the strategy then is to have a list of some of the biggest victories you have in life. And they don’t even have to be just be professional ones. They can be the personal ones, too. Maybe you advocated for your mom at a doctor’s appointment once and got her the medication that she needed. Like, that is a huge victory in life.

And then you say, “Well, what did you learn from that? Well, I learned I could speak up when it’s important.” Great. That’s a wonderful victory to put in your victory vault list. Or, think of the time when maybe the odds were stacked against you.

Maybe in college, there was a test that you didn’t think you could pass, and maybe nobody else thought you could, too, but you stayed up all night cramming, and, lo and behold, you passed the class, and you learned not to give up.

Or, maybe there was a job that you went for at some point and you knew it was a long shot, but because you showed and you nailed the interview, you got the job. Like, these are all amazing things. But we don’t remember those. We tend to kind of tuck those away and forget about them.

So I think we should all have a written list. It might be a written list on a piece of paper, maybe you keep it on your phone, that you can visit when you’re feeling down, when you’re filled with self-doubt, or when you’ve been rejected, just pull out that list and read it. And there’s something really powerful about seeing this list of, “Here’s the things I’ve actually done in life.”

And it’s written in my own words, because it’s one thing when you have a friend who says, “Oh, no, you can do anything. You’ll get the next job.” This doesn’t quite sit the same as if I look at this list of things that I’ve created and reminded myself, “There’s been times when the odds were against me, or times when the chips were down, times when I really wasn’t expected to rise to the occasion, and look what I did.” Just reminding yourself of that in some of your lowest moments can give you a huge boost.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I also want to hear, you’ve got some specific tools in the universe of dread. Walk us through some of these.

Amy Morin
So dread is one of those things, right? Like, you dread the meeting on Thursday, and it’s only Tuesday and you’re already thinking about it, and it’s already ruining your Tuesday afternoon because you’re like, “Ugh, it’s going to be terrible, horrible, and awful.”

Or, maybe you dread working with a particular coworker and you spend six hours dreading the meeting, and it’s only a 30-minute meeting. So I think we all need some dread diffusers to make sure that that emotion doesn’t take over the whole day.

Pete Mockaitis
Give us some.

Amy Morin
So sometimes we’ll take, like, the 10-minute rule. That’s one of my favorites. So let’s say I have a report I have to write and it’s really boring. And I don’t want to do it because I know it’s going to be boring. And so in my head I’m like, “Ugh, I have to write that report.” Maybe I put it off for two more days and I’m procrastinating because it just seems like it’s going to be too boring and painful to do.

Use the 10-minute rule, which means I’m going to tell myself, “I’m going to spend the next 10 minutes writing this report. If at the end of 10 minutes, I don’t feel like doing it anymore, I’ll give myself permission to quit.”

And, like, 99% of the time, once you do something for 10 minutes, you’ll be like, “Oh, I’ll keep going now,” because getting started is the hardest part. And we realize it’s not as bad as we thought it was. And we start to build some momentum. And once you start to build some momentum, it’s easy enough to keep going.

And this works with stuff outside the office, too. Maybe you’re like, “Ugh, I should work out today, but I don’t feel like it.” Just decide you’re going to do it for 10 minutes. And then if you get to 10 minutes and it’s really as bad as you expect, quit. But I don’t think you’ll find that very often. Most of the time you’ll say, “I could do it with this for another 10 minutes,” and you keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I want to hear more of them. You’ve got ‘create the mood,’ ‘behavior bingo,’ ‘curiosity quest.’ Can we hear about them?

Amy Morin
Yeah, well, I’m going to give you one of my other favorites, which is ‘text to motivation buddy.’ This one is, again, for like a task that you’re struggling to do. Maybe you’re procrastinating or you’re just staring at the blank page. You send a message to somebody that you know will hold you accountable.

So maybe you have a friend who will understand or a coworker, or maybe it’s your grandmother. It really doesn’t matter, but you just send a text message and say, “Hey, I’m working on my slide deck. Check in with me in an hour and ask me how it’s going.”

And as soon as you send that message and somebody says, “Hey, I got you,” all of a sudden, you’ve just created a deadline for yourself and some social pressure, but some positive social pressure, because you’re like, “Okay, I really want to have some progress to report back in an hour.”

You will probably get more done in that hour than maybe you did all week because, suddenly, you’re motivated to get to work. And then if the person checks in with you in an hour, you might be like, “Hey, I’m half done,” or, “I got three-quarters of the way through this. I’m going to finish it up.”

It is an amazing strategy that works a lot better than just this vague idea of, “Well, I have an accountability buddy, and we check in every Friday.” That doesn’t work. Most of us need a really short-term objective of, “I have one hour, 60 minutes. The clock is ticking.” You can get way more done in that hour than you probably expect that you can.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And having that ticking clock, I really do think is transformational because I’ve had accountability groups and people and experiences and it’s been swell and, you know, meeting weekly or whatnot, and we had these spreadsheets of all these things we were going to do, and say, “Hey, so what happened with your sheet?” But, yeah, zooming way in on one hour amplifies that a whole lot.

Amy Morin
It does. I use this. I’ve used it when I’m writing on the days where I’m like, “Oh, gosh, I got a lot of words to write. Here we are. It’s already 11:00 a.m. and I pretty much haven’t written anything.” I swear if I text somebody, my friend who’s also a writer, and say, ‘Check in with me in an hour,’” suddenly, that next hour, I will get so much more done. It’s amazing what that does to us.

And when it’s somebody that we like to, it’s not like your boss looking over your shoulder to ask what you got done, it’s like, “Hey, I want my friend to be proud of me,” or, “I want this person to congratulate me.” So it’s a different kind of pressure and it can be a really positive way to say, “Yeah, I’m going to get some work done.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And what’s the ‘curiosity quest’?

Amy Morin
So that one is just really when we’re doing something boring, maybe I’m working on a spreadsheet, maybe I’ve done these spreadsheets every week and it’s just one of those things that I hate doing. We know that curiosity is the antidote to dread.

If I decide, “All right, even though I’ve done eight million of these spreadsheets before, and I don’t really learn much when I do it, but what could I learn? Maybe I just learn something about myself. Like, maybe every three minutes, I actually just pick up my phone.”

But I didn’t know that until I got curious to be like, “Well, what do I do? What am I feeling while I’m writing this spreadsheet? How do I handle that emotion? Maybe while I’m doing the spreadsheet, it’s that every 20 minutes, I get up and I take a break and I don’t come back for an hour.”

Sometimes when we get curious about, “What is it I’m doing?” that we then see these patterns that start to break out. Or, you can give yourself a challenge to get curious, too, like, “All right, if it weren’t an option to use my computer, how would I get a spreadsheet like this done?”

You don’t really have to do it on paper, but just in thinking about it, sometimes that opens up new neural pathways and, suddenly, you’re like, “Oh, you know what? I actually found a shortcut or a way that would make this better, or something I hadn’t even thought about.”

Because when we have repetitive tasks, we tend to just do them the same way today as I did yesterday and the day before that, without really looking at any other opportunities or ways to make it easier or even more fun. But if you start asking yourself some questions that help you to get curious, you might find it opens up some new strategies you hadn’t thought of before.

I think any way that we can add curiosity to our lives is going to help us to be more patient and help us to see things just a little bit different than we did before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, on to the action side of things, can you tell us about ‘calibrating your state’?

Amy Morin
Yeah, when we are going to do something at a certain task, knowing what state you do it best in is important, but often we have no idea. So we’re talking about our energy level. So if I’m going to lead a team meeting, I kind of want to have some energy for that.

But if I’m going to sit down and, say, edit a boring report, I probably need to be in a bit of a calmer state. Otherwise, if I have tons of energy, I’m just not going to sit still and concentrate. So this one is all about knowing, “What state do I need to be in to do something?”

So we’ll take public speaking. Some people I know like to calm themselves down. They’re backstage meditating and listening to really calming music so that they step out on stage and they feel like they can be present.

But other people, myself included, I’m going to do better if I pump myself up. If I walk out there feeling all calm and zen, one of two things is going to happen. I’m either just going to kind of mumble through my speech.

Or, if I were to get anxiety, then I’m like, “Ah, my anxiety doesn’t quite match that meditation I was just doing. This is terrible, horrible, and awful.” So I do better when I pump myself up. So I’m going to listen to more upbeat music, or I might be the person who’s moving around behind the stage. I’m not going to sit still and meditate.

But if I were to sit down and do a spreadsheet, that’s when I want to say, “Okay, how do I calm my brain and my body a bit so I can focus?” And any task we face, I think we should know like, “What’s the best energy state to be in?” You’re about to make a sales call, like, “What’s the best state? And then how do I get myself in that?”

So for some people, it’s, you know, “I do a couple laps around the office before I make an important sales call.” Or somebody else might say, “You know, I listen to some calming music before I get on a sales call, so I can just really feel like I’m present.” But you don’t know these things until you do some trial and error. But when you do, you figure out what state you perform best in for each task.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and as you describe state, I’m hearing mostly sort of a level of energy or arousal that’s ideal. But now in my mind’s eye, I’m seeing the How We Feel app with those like 144 beautiful bubbles. It’s totally free. I recommend it, How We Feel app, so good.

So are you thinking about a state primarily in terms of just like energy level low, medium, high, or more precise in terms of, “I want to be curious. I want to be enthusiastic. I want to be thoughtful”?

Amy Morin
For this one, I’m thinking more about your energy state, and so the state of mind. So again, sometimes, clients will be like, “You know, if I do three laps around the building before I make a call, that, like, gets out a little bit of energy, but also makes sure that I’m still, the blood’s still flowing and I’m in a good state for that phone call.”

Somebody else might be like, “You know, I’m actually better off to, like, I water my plants, kind of take a few minutes to myself to get my thoughts together. And then I walk into that meeting and I feel like, ‘Okay, I can be present right now because my desk is cleaned off and I’ve taken care of a few things.’” So it’s really about, I guess, the mental state that you’re in and your energy and arousal level.

Pete Mockaitis
Okie-dokie. And what is a power phrase and how do we activate one?

Amy Morin
So a lot of us have negative thoughts before we walk into a situation. So it might be like, “Ugh, here we go again,” or, “Another performance review, it’s not going to go well.” But if you just have some short power phrase that you give yourself and you put it on repeat in your head, not only does it drown out the negative thoughts, but it can remind you, “It’s okay. Like, I’ve got this.”

And making it in the present is important. So let’s say I’m going to walk into a performance review. I don’t feel all that hopeful. I assume my boss is going to point out lots of transgressions and things that I don’t want to hear. Maybe they’re mean during performance reviews, and I’m thinking, “The last five years have gone terrible, this is going to go bad, too.”

But the more I keep dwelling on that, the worse I feel. The worse I feel, the less likely I am to walk into that performance review and objectively point out, “Here’s the value I’ve added.” So I might be better off to have a power phrase that says something like, “I’ve done amazing things for the company. I can continue to do hard things.” Some sort of a phrase that really empowers me. And I just keep repeating it in my head before I walk into the room.

And then if I’m in the room, my boss is like, “Hey, Amy, we need to talk about these 72 things you did wrong last week,” and I’m about to come out swinging in terms of, like, getting defensive or I’m going to start crying or doing something that’s not helpful in the moment, I just go back to that power phrase, repeat it to myself, remind myself like, “Hey, you’ve got this. It’s okay.” Drown out the negativity and give myself a little boost right when I need it.

Pete Mockaitis
So I’m hearing you say you’ve got this. What are some choice power phrases that have come up for a lot of people?

Amy Morin
So for some people, it’ll be like “I can be brave.” So for people who say, “Ugh, I can’t really ask my boss for a raise,” just telling themselves, “I can be brave,” repeating that over and over as you walk in the room can give them the courage to do it.

Or, for people who are on a sales call and their anxiety is going through the roof, just saying to themselves, “I have value. Things I’m going to say are helpful to them.” Maybe you repeat a phrase like that just as a reminder of, “I’m not a bother. I’m not trying to convince them to do something they don’t want to do, but I’m offering a valuable product,” can remind somebody, “Okay, stay in the present and do your best.”

Pete Mockaitis
And I imagine you want to believe the phrase, like it to be true as opposed to, “I’m a money magnet. Wealth flows to me effortlessly,” style affirmations.

Amy Morin
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. If I, like, wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and I’m like, “Oh, you’re the greatest human being on the planet,” we know from the research that doing that, like coming up with something that seems really far fetched, actually backfires.

It makes us feel worse because repeating something like that over and over feels like a lie, and then I’m like, “Ugh, I don’t really measure up. I’m not actually the best human on the planet.” So you don’t want to do that. You want to come up with something that feels more believable, something actionable and something doable that you can buy into.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, it’s funny, this phrase is so believable and tame. I don’t even know if I can call it a power phrase, and yet, it has been quite powerful for me. Lately, especially when you sort of have a series of losses, you can start to think or believe, like, “Eh, why bother? What’s the point?” in terms of like, “This will just be another thing that doesn’t work out, you know?” which is not a great place to be. My power phrase was, “Sometimes things work out better than you think.”

Amy Morin
Ooh, I like that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I actually wrote down a lot of occasions, like, “Hey, remember when you bought this thing, you didn’t know, you thought maybe I’m going to return it, and you’re like, and you used it almost every day?”

Or, “Hey, remember when you emailed this guy totally out of the blue, and then that turned into, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars of business over the course of years? So, hey, sometimes things work out better than you think. And it’s just true, and look at all that evidence.” It’s like, “All right. Well, I guess we’ll try this, too. Maybe this will be one of those things.”

And when I’m not fired up. I don’t have high hopes, and yet sometimes things work out better than you think.

Amy Morin
I like that because it’s realistic, right? And then you have the evidence that shows, “Yeah, a lot of times, things I think about aren’t necessarily going to happen or they do work out better.” And I’ve used one for a while, too, which is just like, “I can make it happen.”

And the reason is, like, if I want to complain about something, well, like, “Gee, Amy, do you want to do something about that or do you just want to complain about it?” Or, when I see a problem, like, “Ooh, boy, I don’t think I could do that.” Like, “No, I could make it happen.”

Like, there’s things I could do. Sometimes I choose not to, but just reminds me like, “No, like, there’s action you could take if you wanted to make this better. Maybe it’s not worth it, but if you do want to make it better, make it happen.”

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve been trying to run some judo, if you will, mentally, on dread, resistance, not feeling like it, kinds of things. And I was chatting with AI while watching my children’s karate class because they had a long, very long mission statement about building determination, like, “How does one build determination, Gemini?” So we’re pondering this.

We talked about the anterior mid-singular cortex as a portion of the brain. And when this is stimulated, if people tend to have a feeling, like there’s a growing storm that they’re going to rise to it. And so then I think about your David Goggins-type characters of the world who kind of sort of lean in and embrace the adversity, suffering, unpleasantness of a thing, as a benefit unto itself. Like they are being strengthened by the engaging in the very thing they can’t stand.

And so sometimes, I try to hype myself up with the power phrase in that zone, but it’s more of a power paragraph and it’s clunky. Do you have any advice or experience in this kind of a judo move of, “Yes, you hate that, and that’s why it’s great. So let’s go do it”?

Amy Morin
So there’s another play in the book about give yourself a pep talk. So, whereas, a power phrase is just going to be one sentence, sometimes you need the pep talk, right? And we know from the research that a coach’s halftime speech makes a big difference in how players do in the second half of a game.

If their pep talk is motivational and aspirational, they’re going to do much better than if the coach were to point out all of the mistakes that they made in the first half, they tend to come out and they do worse.

And so we can create our own pep talk and it’s kind of like it doesn’t have to be worthy of, say, a TED Talk, but maybe you do have a longer speech that you give yourself. And I’m not a huge fan of the ones that put you down, like, “Hey, loser, you did it again. Quit messing up,” because I don’t think in the long term that the speeches like that tend to help us.

And I think when that happens, when people say no, like, “A lot of the negativity motivates me,” sometimes it’s more of a deeper rooted self-worth issue. But for most of us, I think, “Yeah, if I just asked myself, like, what would my coach say right now? If I had the world’s best coach sitting next to me, they were to give me a motivational speech, what would they remind me of?”

And if you just give to yourself those same words, that same speech of like, “Okay, this is, you have two hours left to get this report done and you’re four pages shy of where you need to be,” are you going to do it? Like, what would this coach say to you?

And if you really do best with a coach that’s going to, like, yell and scream and motivate, like great. But some of us do better with a coach that would be a little more positive. But to know, “What kind of a coach would motivate me the most?” and then you just give yourself that speech. It can do wonders in how you’re going to perform in the next short-term period.

Pete Mockaitis
Have you seen the Chris Hemsworth video “You Need,” which is like a one-minute of him just saying, “Hey, you’re beautiful, you’ve got this, you’re amazing,” just unabashedly bringing it. It’s a treat. We’ll link it in the show notes.

Amy Morin
Okay, because I haven’t seen it, but I’ll have to check it out, too.

Pete Mockaitis
And, yeah, it’s a fun one. But, you’re right, when it’s coming from you to you, like in a reality way with your own words, it’s not silly. It’s not, you know, Disney Sports Movie magic. It’s like, “Hey, you know what, yeah, that kind of, yeah, kind of you’re making some sense here, Pete, yeah.

Amy Morin
And there’s some research, too, if you were to write it down. So let’s say I’m just going to, like, write a kind letter to myself. I could do this exercise today. So for the next time I’m feeling kind of low in life, I just write maybe a paragraph that’s all, “Okay, Amy, chips have been down before, but you’ve been able to rise to the occasion. You’ve been through hard times. It’s okay, you’ll get through this, too.”

And this paragraph, I write it down on a piece of paper, maybe I just tuck it in my purse or I put it in my pocket, put it in my desk drawer. I’m training my brain, “Hey, this way of thinking actually matters and it’s important to me. Like, the self-compassion or the kind words that I’m giving myself, those matter and they’re important to me.”

And then I’m more likely to think in a more self-compassionate and kind way. Because there’s another play in the book that’s the opposite of it, which is ‘take out the mental trash.’ So in a day when I’m like, “Ah, I am such a loser. I can never do anything right. Things are going horribly,” all of those thoughts are going to drag me down. But to tell myself, “Well, just don’t think about that,” actually doesn’t help.

But if you get it out of your head and you write it down on a piece of paper, and then you literally throw the piece of paper away, or if you’re in an open office, maybe you just cross it out with a Sharpie, and instead of crumpling it up, but you throw it away, you’re teaching your brain, “I actually don’t value this way of thinking,” and you’re less likely to continue to have those same negative and unhelpful thoughts.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, Amy, tell us, is there any tool which is just too good to not mention?

Amy Morin
If I were to bring up one more, I would say, if you are a worrier, one of the most important things you could do to reduce your worrying is to actually schedule time to worry. And it sounds so far-fetched, but there’s research behind it that if you set aside 20 minutes a day to worry, and you actually put it in your calendar, so maybe I worry during my lunch break, 12:00 to 12:20, or maybe I worry from 7:00 to 7:20 in the evening.

And whenever I worry outside of that window, I’m going to tell myself, “It’s not time to worry about that yet. I’ll worry about that later.” And at first, your brain is going to keep pinging you about these things, “No, no, worry, worry, worry.”

But the more that it does that, that’s just more proof that this is a great play for you, “I’m going to worry about that later.” And then when your worry time comes around, you sit down, maybe you write down your worries, maybe you just sit and think. But the goal is to worry as much as you can for 20 minutes. And then you get up and you go do something else. Distract yourself to get your mind off of it.

The therapy clients I do this with will often look like the weight of the world has literally been lifted off of their shoulders within about two weeks. And they’ll say, “You know, gosh, I used to worry like 24/7. Or, even when I was working on a task, I had these worries that were always in the background, kind of nagging at my attention or pinging me all the time.”

“And now my brain trusts me, like, ‘Hey, I’m going to worry about it, I just can’t do it right now.’ And it stopped like trying to get my attention all the time, because before I was trying to push those worries down or I was entertaining them constantly, thinking if I worried enough that I’d make it go away.”

So for anybody that worries a lot, and maybe it’s about something specific, maybe you have something in your life, and maybe it’s a real problem, maybe your spouse has a health issue and you find yourself worrying about it all the time. Or maybe you just worry, in general, about everything, the economy, your kids, the family, whatever else is going on.

Either way, this strategy can work and it can work wonders. It’ll take a little while. The first couple of days you’re going to think, “This doesn’t work” but that probably means it is working. If you stick with it, you can literally contain your worrying to 15 or 20 minutes a day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so cool, and I’ve heard this advice before, and I’m making a connection here. I’m thinking about David Allen, a guest of the show, awesome dude, of “Getting Things Done.” He mentions that when we’ve got a lot of stuff to do, our brain keeps popping that, pinging us with that in terms of, “Oh, you got to do thing.” It’s like, “Yeah, I can’t do anything about that right now.”

And yet when you have a trusted external system where you’ve listed your projects, your next action that’s out there, it’s up to date, you trust it, and you review it regularly, there’s this tremendous peace that comes like that’s just handled.

And so, in a way, this seems like a similar phenomenon, specifically in the zone of worries. And I guess maybe “How am I going to get all my things done?” isn’t one large category of worries, if you will. So that’s intriguing.

And I’d like to know, during this scheduled worry time, because many of us have never actually proactively worried, it just sort of pops up, it’s like, “Okay, now is my worry time. I’m sitting down. All right.” What do I do when I’m proactively worrying?

Amy Morin
So for some people, they’ll have a journal, and they’ll just jot everything down, “I’m worried about the economy. I’m worried about whether I have enough money. I’m worried about my mother,” and that helps them.

Other people just want to like sit and be like, “Let me just put my head in my hands and just think.” And people that do that, it’s often about one thing. Like, maybe you’ve got an adult child with a substance abuse problem and you want to worry about it, “I can’t fix it, but let’s just worry about it for 20 minutes.”

And they might find that they worry about the same things every single evening. That’s fine. Other people say, “You know, my brain kind of drifts. Maybe I’m worried about that, but then I start to worry about money or my own health or something like that, too.” So I think you can either write it down or just sit and worry.

Occasionally, I have somebody who says that they have somebody in their life that they’ll just speak their worries to out loud, but they’ll make a deal, like, with the other person, “I don’t want you to fix it. I don’t want you to validate it. I don’t even want you to say anything. I just want you to sit there for 15 minutes, and I’m going to basically spill all my worries on you, and then we’re going to move on.” And I’ve had people that will say that works, too.

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

Amy Morin
I would say one of my favorites is probably from my women’s book is, “Be the kind of woman who fixes another woman’s crown without ever telling the world that it was crooked.”

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

Amy Morin
So I really like the research study that shows – it’s probably because I’m becoming middle aged myself – the research that showed that when they took people who were aging, older men, and they put them in a house together and they kind of reset time, like they rewound the clock to make all the decorations and everything to like the ‘50s, and they had them just talking, like, news stories and everything like they were back years ago, all of a sudden, their physical health improved.

People didn’t need canes. They were like tossing a football around and, like, life changed all because they no longer started treating themselves like they were older. And for some reason, I just love that study. That a lot of, I think, our aging and our thoughts about what happens to us as we age has a lot to do with our state of mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Amy Morin
I just read the book Platonic and I absolutely loved it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. She was on the show. She’s great.

Amy Morin
Yeah, I love her.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool? We’ve been through a lot of them.

Amy Morin
Yeah, if I were to pick, say, just one more tool from the book, I’m going to say ‘go for the gold.’ You know, when you walk into a room, you can either think, “Ugh, I hope I don’t embarrass myself,” or you walk in and say, “I hope I crush this.” So if I were to pick a tool, I’d say, ‘go for the gold.’ Walk in the room and say, “I’m going to crush this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a favorite habit?

Amy Morin
So I run almost every day, but I don’t run, like, long distance. I run a timed mile as fast as I can, and then my goal is to do it even faster tomorrow.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Do you warm up first?

Amy Morin
You know, I don’t. I just go from walking outside to a dead sprint. Probably not recommended, but here we are.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so fun. Well, when it comes to exercise, I don’t know. I don’t want to, you know, shame or advise anyone on anything because, for me, it’s like, “Oh, I finally found a groove. Don’t touch it. Don’t. This is working. Don’t do a thing different. I’ve been doing exactly this because it’s working. And a lot of things have not worked.” A lot of gym memberships, not made good use of financially, etc. So do the thing.

Amy Morin
The best exercise is the one you will stick with.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And is there a key nugget you share that people really dig, they retweet at conferences and such?

Amy Morin
So there’s, I guess, from my first book, I said that we make our best decisions when our emotions and our logic are in check. And that one seemed to resonate with people that, yeah, you can either reduce your emotional intensity, you can raise your logic, but to make sure that they’re in some kind of balance if you want to make a good choice.

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

Amy Morin
My website, which is called AmyMorinLCSW, as in Licensed Clinical Social Worker, dot com. And on it, you’ll find info on all seven of my books, my TEDx Talk, and my podcast, which is called Mentally Stronger with therapist Amy Morin.

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

Amy Morin
You know, I think, at the end of the day, there’s a lot of things you can’t control about your job, about what your boss did, about the economy, but the one thing you can control is if you grew mentally stronger.

So if we just asked ourselves, at the end of the day, “What did I do today to grow mentally stronger?” you’ll be able to pinpoint something that you did, and it will give you hope for tomorrow and remind you of what you do have control over.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Amy, thank you.

Amy Morin
Ah, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Aug 03
0

1172: How to Train Your Brain for More Peaceful Conflict Resolutions with Jeremy Pollack

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jeremy Pollack explains the critical role our nervous system plays in conflict resolution.

You’ll Learn

  1. The neurobiological underpinnings of conflict
  2. The 60-second hack to regain your composure
  3. How to deal with a conflict that’s going nowhere

About Jeremy

Jeremy Pollack, Ph.D. is a social-organizational psychologist and a leader in the field of workplace conflict resolution and peacebuilding. He is the Founder of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, an international conflict resolution consulting firm. He is also co-founder and chairman of the Peaceful Leadership Institute, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to promoting the model and theory of Peaceful Leadership. Jeremy is a coach, trainer, mediator, and author. He coaches and trains executives and employees at a variety of levels and industries, from Fortune 100 companies to major non-profits.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Jeremy Pollack Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jeremy, welcome back!

Jeremy Pollack
Hey, Pete, how are you?

Pete Mockaitis
I’m doing well. Doing well. Excited to talk some neuroscience here.

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, yeah, let’s get into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell me, I mean, I am continuously fascinated by the surprises in store as we go exploring what’s in the human body and brain and mind stuff. So can you tell us, as you were putting together Wired for Peace, anything you found super duper surprising and interesting?

Jeremy Pollack
I’m not even sure if it was super surprising only because I kind of figured it, but just the sort of neurobiology behind cooperation and conflict really stands out to me as, “Hey, we are, indeed, kind of wired for peace.”

I just started thinking about the way humans interact a little bit differently. I had this feeling that, like, “Well, you know, we seem to be in conflict so much of the time. We seem to be angry with each other. There’s a lot of fighting and war and this kind of thing and a lot of intergroup conflict.”

But the truth of it is, if you follow the story of neurobiology, you can kind of see what makes us feel good, the sort of neurochemicals and hormones that are released, really make us feel good are a result of when we’re cooperating and collaborating.

And the things that are released in us and the way that we feel when we are in conflict and when we’re in stressful conflict, they really don’t make us feel good. And they’re only really meant to be there sometimes when we’re in survival mode. And then we’re supposed to go back to baseline, back to cooperation or peace.

And so when we find ourselves constantly stressed or constantly in conflict, or what I would call chronic conflict, we’re not really supposed to be there a lot of the time. And I think our neurobiology tells us this interesting story that, “Hey, we are meant to be at peace with each other. That’s where we’re meant to be.”

We just happen to sometimes get into defense and get into these cycles of conflict that, you know, if we just cleared away those cobwebs, we could kind of get back to our natural peaceful states, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s beautiful, in a way, in terms of the humanity and our design and what’s just right and natural for us. So when you mentioned these cobwebs, tell us what are some of the top things that get all messed up in our brains?

Jeremy Pollack
I would say, on a very basic level, we’re kind of wired for survival. Our brains are looking for ways to both defend against threats and also to find opportunities. A lot of that has to do with being in cooperation, especially with our group members.

But, of course, we do have our neural architecture that seeks out threats and it pays attention to those threats. And part of that is paying attention to narrative and reputation, what’s happening in our groups, in our tribes.

Our brains are sort of evolved or set up to track what’s happening in a group of 100, 150 people. But now we’re operating in this sphere where we’re now paying attention to things that are happening 3,000 miles away to people we don’t even know, or groups that we maybe slightly identify with or don’t identify with, but our brains are still reacting in the same ways.

So, unfortunately, when we start paying attention to all kinds of things that are perceived as threats, a lot of interesting things happen in our psychology and in our neurobiology. We start becoming hypervigilant. We start noticing threats in places that there may not be any, or we may exacerbate threats worse than they are. Our stress response becomes a little bit more chronic, like chronic stress, and that affects our bodies and minds in all kinds of negative ways.

So a lot of this stuff happens if we’re paying attention to and focused on conflict a lot of the times. And this is something where people are doom-scrolling or rage-bait or click-bait and that kind of stuff. Or we’re just paying attention to all these things that enrage us or anger us or make us afraid. And it really messes with our brains.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’ve gone so far as to say that conflict may not be so much a communication problem, but a nervous system problem. Can you expand on that?

Jeremy Pollack
Essentially, all conflict that causes a stress response, which I would call escalated conflict, you know, like baseline conflicts, regular conflicts, or just, you know, there’s some challenge in front of me or some challenge in front of us and we have to solve it.

But what we talk about when we say conflict, usually, what we’re talking about is escalated conflict, which is conflict, interpersonal or intergroup conflict, that causes a stress response in the human body. And so these are, essentially, nervous system issues.

Our brains are responding to a threat. It’s usually saying, “Hey, there’s a deep threat here, a meaningful threat, and I need to respond in a way that activates my physiology.” And that’s sympathetic up-regulation or sympathetic arousal, which is a particular area of our nervous system, which is meant for fight or flight.

And that’s what’s happening a lot of times when we’re in interpersonal conflict. We are seeing this as a threat. Our brains don’t really know the difference between a physical threat and a non-physical threat. A lot of the same brain regions are active, and because of that, we’re responding in ways that probably aren’t very effective for the conflict to resolve it, and also aren’t very manageable for our own physiologies.

Pete Mockaitis
Bummer! Well, that sounds like a whole lot of no-fun, Jeremy.

Jeremy Pollack
It’s not fun. It’s not fun to be in conflict with someone when we’re all stressed out about it, you know? So how do we get out of this kind of thing? How do we start looking at conflict differently or even responding to conflict differently?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, if this is a neurological situation with regard to our nervous system, I suppose the fun flipside of that is that would suggest we may have a whole host of potential solutions, tools, interventions to utilize here.

So we’re talking to someone, we’re in an escalated conflict, we’re feeling stressed and, boy, I could even see it on my Garmin watch in terms of someone says something, “Ooh, I don’t like that. And we’re getting into something here.” I could just look at that heart rate, go up, up, up, up.

And then it’s just like, “Oh, you know, before I was chilling at a nice little 67. Well, now we’re at an 84. Huh? That was quick.”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, for sure. I mean, listen, what we’re talking about, essentially, is self-regulation, and there’s a number of techniques or strategies you can use for self-regulation. Before you even self-regulate, though, there’s a few important elements.

Number one, you have to be motivated to interrupt a pattern. So if you’re noticing that you have conflict that causes you to be stressed out with a person, with a group, on a chat board, whatever, you’ve got to first have a motivation that says, “You know what? I don’t think this is healthy for me, I want to change this. I want to change the dynamic. I want to either solve it or manage it or not interact with this, but now I want to change it.” That’s number one.

Number two is you have to be aware of the stress response. You have to feel like, “Oh, wow, I’m noticing my heart rate go up. I’m noticing I’m feeling a little tense, a little shaky, and this doesn’t feel good.” And so those two things together, awareness and motivation, are really important to start. And then you can implement some actual techniques and say like, “I’m going to change this dynamic.”

One of the important things to do when you’re trying to change a stress response, meaning there’s a stimulus and then you have a stress response to that stimulus, whether it’s a person or a group or an idea, is to do exposure with self-regulation, exposing yourself to the stimulus.

Don’t run away from it, but engage with it. And try to respond in a new way so that you give your nervous system a new experience, which then you can build new predictions, new memories around and you can operate in a different way.

So, for instance, if I’m interacting with a person who usually stresses me out, I’m going to do my best to take some techniques like I’m going to do long-exhale breathing when I’m interacting with them. And I’m going to start to, really consciously, lower my shoulders and relax my face and just notice how my body feels and the tension in my body, and just notice if I can relax my body and breathe long exhales.

So long-exhale breathing actually engages the vagus nerve, which engages the sympathetic nervous system and calms us down a little bit. So just a couple of physiological techniques. I can also take psychological techniques, too. I think those are both important because it’s a physiological and psychological state.

Something like I’m going to tell myself messages of safety. In my own head, I’m going to say, “This is okay. I can handle this. I’m safe. I’m okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m in control here.” Whatever the messages that I need to hear, I’m going to tell myself that to remind myself, remind my brain, “Hey, I’m safe. It’s okay to slow down and relax.”

So different types of self-regulation techniques while exposed to the stimulus is going to give you a new experience of that stimulus.

Pete Mockaitis
So just thinking the thought that I’m safe does something to us, huh?

Jeremy Pollack
It can. It depends on exactly what sort of, I would call, a psychological need or needs are being triggered by that particular conflict. But, in general, something like, “I’m safe. I’m okay. I can handle this.” Something like that, whatever the message is that feels like it calms you down with that particular stimulus response relationship, that’s important to kind of keep in mind as, like, a mantra.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Jeremy, I’ll share something in terms of my experience, in terms of psychological needs and threats. I found, for myself, I’m just a gosh-darn independent fella, you know, starting my own businesses and doing my things.

And yet, of course, in the real world, which involve taxes and accountants and lawyers and clients and other people of collaboration, you know, it’s a reality that I can’t always just do things my way. And when I feel that my autonomy or sovereignty is being threatened, trampled upon, I sure don’t like it.

So that is not a unique experience. I feel like I might have it in a greater intensity just because I’m so into it. Part of why I left consulting was to eat lunch whenever I wanted to. And that’s genuinely true, not waiting around at the conference room for someone to finish up their email or their slide or their whatever. It’s like, “No, right now. Right now is when I care to eat lunch.”

And, by golly, now I do, Jeremy, eat lunch when I darn well please. And it’s wonderful. So that’s a particular flavor of a need that I am perceiving a threat to. And, of course, I know, logically, I’m not about to be imprisoned, you know? And yet, I’m experiencing a threat. How do I respond perhaps psychologically to that need being threatened?

Jeremy Pollack
So just to be clear, you’re saying when you have a responsibility that, like, the IRS sends you something, you don’t want to do it, but you know that, because it feels like, “I’m being controlled because they’re telling me to do something that I have to do.” Is that what you’re talking about?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, or any number of things or someone requests that I follow a super duper specific process to submit an invoice.

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, annoying.

Pete Mockaitis
Or, there’s, “Hey, we have a new system, and here’s the protocol. And then you’ll need to set up a login on this new platform.” It’s just like, “Aargh,” you know?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, tedious.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in anything where it’s like, okay, there’s a now your choice and how you care to roll with this thing is usurped in terms of like the choice of timing, or the choice of approach, or the choice of teammate or tool, whatever, and I am feeling a form of threat.

And I think anyone, well, maybe before we go deep on this, perhaps, could you give us the menu of psychological needs in terms of, like, safety is one?

Jeremy Pollack
Safety is one, yep.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m thinking autonomy is hitting home for me. What are some others that we can perceive a threat to?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, so I use the acronym SAPIEN, which is six basic psychological needs. So safety or security is number one. Affiliation or connection or belonging is another one. Positive self-concept, which is also identity or status or esteem, all wrapped into that.

Also independence, which is autonomy, choice, agency, that sort of thing. The fifth is enabling or engaging activities, so things that stimulate you and feel like they’re keeping your attention in a positive way. And then the last is noble pursuits, which is meaning or purpose.

And so you’re talking about your independence need, that agency need getting hit. And I would say like, you could dive into it a little bit. On one hand, is there something about not being able to handle it, it’s like overwhelming, “I have too much to do. I can’t do all this tedious stuff”?

Or, can we give you some agency? Can we, instead of you feeling controlled by it, can we put you in the driver’s seat and you say, “I’m choosing to do this?” Because it gets you something. It’s important for your business or for you.

And you putting yourself into power, and instead of feeling like, “Oh, I got to do this,” it’s, “I’m choosing this. I’m choosing this route, I’m choosing this business. I’m choosing this life.” So you are consciously putting yourself into empower.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I like that a lot. And for me, I don’t know, maybe if I really sat with it and really did some deep introspection, I could come up with something. But at the knee-jerk physiological level, it just feels like I really don’t like that.

Like, if someone, like if I were to walk around with my socks and step into a little puddle of water, like, “Ugh, well, now my socks and feet are all wet, and I just don’t like that.” Like, physiologically, that’s the vibe. And so maybe under the surface, under the hood, that’s what’s beneath it. But that’s how I experience it as, “Ugh!”

Jeremy Pollack
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
“This thing has appeared and I just really don’t like it.”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, and I think that it’s interesting because you can also, I would say that in this kind of case, knowing that, doing a little self analysis, you could probably come up with some strategies to feel less controlled by it.

So one of the things that I think pings people or sort of brings up a threat to control is when something comes at them anytime. So, for instance, if you’re like, “Oh, that thing I got to do, which I really don’t want to do, and it’s like tedious or whatever, it’s not slotted into a very certain area of my week, then it’s like just on the books or on the to-do list and maybe to do tomorrow or the next day or whatever.”

Then it might feel like, “Oh, well, it’s kind of hanging over me on some level. It’s like controlling.” But if you were to slot it and say, “You know, I do the tedious stuff I don’t like to do on Thursdays at, you know, 1:00 p.m. for two hours and that’s it.”

Or, “I hire some person to do those things with me, or for me, and I oversee it for two hours on this, you know.” So you, really, create a very specific time so that you are in control of when you have to do it rather than feeling controlled by, like, “Oh, it’s just on my thing and I’ve got to do it at some point.” So you take more control over the process itself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, ooh, Jeremy, I’m digging this a lot. And if we could, could you give us a little bit of that recipe book here in terms of, in the case of independence, you gave us a little bit of an internal mantra, “I’m choosing this” as well as a practical systems level strategy?

It’s like, “Oh, I do the things I hate doing at a particular time and place. All right, that’s where they live. Cool. That’s covered.” Likewise, with safety, you gave us a nice little mantra, “I’m safe. I’m safe. I got this. We’re going to be okay.”

Jeremy Pollack
“I can handle this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Can you, likewise, share with us the internal mantra and the systems-level approach to help us be in a groove of peace more often as we’re just navigating all the people-y things in our world?

Jeremy Pollack
So something that’s interesting, when I work with clients on a long-term basis, what I notice and what I’ve noticed over the years of working with hundreds of different clients in a coaching capacity, people come out of childhood with kind of one of two major stories, sometimes both major stories.

One is, “I’m not good enough,” and the other one is, “I’m too much,” and for whatever reason, from their either just kind of interacting with their parents or their earlier social groups. And so what these two stories tell us, “I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m too much,” it tells us something about myself, “I am not okay the way I am.”

And there’s a deep belief in a lot of people that says, “I’m not okay the way I am. I either have to perform and do more, or I have to perform and do less, like tamper myself down so that I’m not so much for people.” But either way, it’s, “I’m not okay as I am.”

And so that’s one of the major things that I’ve found, one of the major fears even that I’ve found in people is this fear of being ashamed in some way, not being able to be themselves because there’s something shameful about them.

And this is one of the big things that I would work on with people is that pings a lot of stress, especially in conflict, interpersonal relationships, where they feel like they have to perform to be more, or they have to perform to be less because they’re not okay the way they are.

And so helping people figure out how to be just okay with who they are and really loving who they are and accepting who they are really starts to be transformative for people. And that happens in a variety of different ways.

I tend to like do kind of inner child work or internal family systems work where we’re helping people father or mother themselves in a way, and give them things that their real parents never gave them, give them messages of safety and love and acceptance, and do that repetitively over and over for a long time so they start to change the core internal stories.

When you start to feel really okay in yourself, and at peace with yourself, and gentle and loving with yourself, it becomes much more difficult to get into interpersonal conflicts because you’re at a state of internal peace.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really rings true because you could imagine that a person who had done this work and gotten to a great spot of interior piece with himself, even if someone were to give them a flagrant insult, like, “Jeremy, you’re an idiot and your work is so off base, it’s harming people,” I mean, I imagine your response is not like, “Oh, dear, oh no, I’m so bad,” but rather like, “Whoa! There’s a surprising piece of feedback. Like, tell me more about that. What do you mean? How? Why?”

Jeremy Pollack
Exactly, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s just like, “Huh? I’m surprised. I’m curious. It’s kind of weird, but I’m not, like, feeling, you know, cut to the core.”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, exactly. If hearing feedback is going to risk my very self-concept or my very self-acceptance or love or something like that, then I’m going to be very afraid of getting feedback and I might have a very serious stress response in response to feedback.

But if I have an internal core story that feels accepted and loved and lovable, then, yeah, hearing feedback is going to be just like that, maybe from a curious mindset, not a stress response. If you’re in a stress response, you really can’t be curious because you go into self-preservation mode, it shuts down curiosity.

But if I could stay curious in feedback, then I could say, “Wow, that’s interesting. I never heard that before. Or, can you give me an example? And can you show me exactly how? And maybe there’s something I can alter or modify.”

So I think, absolutely, a state of internal peace is really important. Peace starts with each of us. If we are in a state of internal conflict, it’s much more likely we get into interpersonal conflict.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s a jumbo principle right there. Thank you, Jeremy. And you’ve laid out a number of powerful principles in your book. Can you share some more of those with us here?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, I think one of the important kind of frameworks is what I call the five Cs of conflict resolution. And all of these are affected by escalated states. So if we are in a stress response, all of these capacities are suppressed. And so it’s really important that we deescalate first or self-regulate first so that we can engage some of our more conflict-solving capacities.

These would be to stay curious, which we already mentioned. Also, really important to be able to communicate well. And communication happens on all kinds of levels, not just what we say, but how we say it in our tone, expression, body language, etc.

Also, care is a really important piece for conflict resolution. People have to know that we care about their needs or their concerns or their goals so that we can get to a place of resolution. The fourth C is what I call collaboration. Collaboration basically means, “I need to bring people into the solution, collaborate with them, get their buy-in. I can’t impose solutions on people if I want them to last and stick.”

And the fifth one is being creative. Creativity is key for resolving complex conflicts, things that we haven’t looked at before, getting to underlying needs, looking outside of our conceptual structures around conflicts. How do we solve this in a new way that we haven’t thought about before?

So these are five really important capacities that are all inhibited by a stress response, which is why sort of self-regulation is important as a priority.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so we’ve talked about the slow breathing, the “I’m safe.” You also have, specifically, a 60-second brain hack to regain composure. What’s this one?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, so I call this the 60-second or the quick brain hack. So, basically, we’re taking five different very core techniques around self-regulation and pairing them with a cue that makes them very easy to remember.

We already talked about three of them. So long exhale breathing, meaning when I breathe in, I take a slow exhale. As I’m doing that, I relax the face and the shoulders. That’s number two. As I’m doing that, I’m giving myself messages of safety. It could be a very simple mantra like, “I’m safe. I’m okay. I can handle this,” whatever that is.

The next two are behavioral. So I want to make sure that both my vocal tone stays in range, meaning I don’t want to go too loud. People tend to get loud when they get stress response, so I want to keep it low if I can.

And I also want to slow down my speech to a normal level. I don’t want to go too slow where it feels condescending, but I want to make sure that I’m not speeding up. People tend to speed up when they’re in a stress response.

So if I take a physiological, meaning relaxing my body and breathing, I take a psychological, giving myself measures of safety, and I take a behavioral, slowing down my speech, lowering my tone, all of these elements start to tell my brain, “Hey, it’s okay to turn off the stress response. We’re not in danger right now.”

These five are sometimes hard to remember in the moment. So what I like to do is I like to pair them with a cue and practice that so that when I engage the cue, all five come online. One thing that I do, for instance, is I would take my thumb and my middle finger on both sides, and I press them together. And I do that in a way no one really sees it happening, just me knowing it.

But I do that and I practice all five together. And I do that regularly so that I get this stimulus response relationship. And the only thing now that’s up to me is the next time I feel stress in interpersonal conflict, I have to engage the cue. Because the cue will automatically tell my brain what to do if I repeat it enough times. So that’s my little hack.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah, this reminds me of some Tony Robbins stuff, anchoring some things and stimulus response. Nifty. So that’s quite handy, too, and, boy, what a nice feeling of safety, security, “I can handle this” to carry with you wherever you go. It’s like, “Well, I’ve got the magic button. Thumb to middle finger. Boom!” That’s super.

Tell me, are there any finer points with regard to relaxing the face or the shoulders? I mean, I think I know what that means, but are there some particulars or nuance to doing that well?

Jeremy Pollack
Well, I think most of us, a lot of times, if we notice where our shoulders and face are at, we can probably relax them. It’s just a normal thing to kind of tense them up. So I would just do some practice around this. And you can also focus on other areas of your body that you notice are tense.

Some people, their stomachs get tense, their hips get tense, their chest gets tense. Notice what else gets tense in you, maybe your jaw or something, and just start to relax those areas. If we can sort of lower our baseline sympathetic nervous system activity on a regular basis so that we’re more regulated more regularly, I think that’s very helpful for just a setup for keeping the peace in your life.

But I would just notice, like, “Where do you hold tension? Can you relax that area? Can you breathe into the area?” Let the tension go and do that regularly and start to practice that so you know where to go to when you start feeling a stress response.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, Jeremy, we’ve addressed our internal needs. We’ve gotten to a nice peaceful groove. Tell us, in the actual conflict or conversation itself, are there some key dos and don’ts within that moment?

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, so now we’re ready to, hopefully, communicate. We’ve regulated, we’re ready to communicate and, actually, maybe solve something.

One of the things when we’re telling someone that something bothers us about what they did or what they said or something like that, we want to make sure that we’re not framing this in a way where they feel personally attacked or their character is attacked.

Again, we don’t want them to feel like their needs for affiliation or safety or something. We don’t want them to feel like we’re abandoning them or rejecting them or humiliating them or something like that. So what’s really important is to, when you’re communicating about something that’s bothering you, is to be really, really clear about the behavior, and to be really, really clear about the interpretation, your interpretation of that behavior and to separate those two things out.

So when I’m talking to someone, I’m not going to say, “Hey, yesterday, you were really rude to me.” Instead, I’m going to say, “Hey, yesterday, when you started talking before I was finished talking, the thing that I felt, or the way that I interpreted that, or the story that I told myself was that you weren’t really interested in what I had to say.”

“And to me, that, I felt a little sad, I felt a little dismissed, a little disrespected. I’m not saying that you meant to do that. I’m just saying that’s how it landed with me. Could you tell me what was going on for you? What was your experience?”

So my goal here is behavior separate, don’t put my interpretation on them, and then open up the conversation and ask them what they were experiencing. Did they mean that? Did they intend that? If not, what was going on for them so that I can understand where they were at?

And then, that way, we’re both communicating in a way where it tells each other, “Hey, when you do something, or when I hear something, or when I experience something, here’s how it’s landing with me. Here’s how it’s landing with you. We’re understanding each other better. Let’s come up with maybe a better way to go forward.”

“The next time we’re talking, do you mind just letting me finish my thoughts? And if I notice you doing it again, is it okay for me to kind of just say, ‘Hey, you’re doing it again?’ Or, what would be the right way to do that so that you don’t, I don’t want to feel like I’m jumping all over you or you’re walking on eggshell?”

“So tell me how I should go about that the next time this happens, you know, so we’re going to have some solutions, hopefully, that we both buy into and we can talk about.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Jeremy, I dig that a lot, and it kind of reminds me of Dr. Becky when she’s using her scripts. It’s like, “Oh, man, the way you say that just sounds so right. I have a hard time imagining anyone taking that in a negative way.” And yet, sometimes, you know, maybe we’re not the masters of executing that just right, or maybe we do.

And yet, our counterpart, our interlocutor’s like, “Yeah, well, Jeremy, things move pretty fast around here. And so it’s just going to happen. You’re going to have to deal with it.” What do you think is the ideal response internally and externally to when we get more or less a dismissal, like, “You know what? I’m going to do me. So, you know, you’re just going to have to accept that”?

Jeremy Pollack
Well, there’s different ways to go about this. So, number one, I would ask someone, what’s the relationship worth? Are you motivated to change the dynamic and stay in the relationship? Because if someone say, “Well, I don’t want to. If he’s not going to change and not work on it, I’m not going to deal with that.”

Well, okay, so maybe, if that’s possible to separate peacefully from that person, because they’re not willing to do anything different and it’s causing a stress response in you, that’s up to you. Like, what would that take?

Now, if you do want to stay in the relationship or you feel like you have no choice, like, “I work with a guy and I don’t want to quit my job,” or, “It’s a co-parent, it’s my ex I’m co-parenting with, and I have no choice but to communicate with him,” and they’re not willing to do anything, then, A, can you learn to self-regulate when exposed to that stimulus, that person? Can you learn to do that?

If not, B, and/or B, can you put some other boundaries around that relationship that feels like they are empowering you and you’re self-protecting on some level? So it’s important to keep some boundaries there. And that may be like, “Well, then I’m only going to interact with them once a week or around these particular subjects or whatever that is.”

The third thing, also, is to stop expecting something from someone who has told you they’re not going to give it to you. That expectation is going to feel disappointing. You’re going to feel resentful, etc. Stop expecting it.

Just say, “Hey, you had the conversation, they’re not willing to do anything, they’ve dismissed it, that’s who they are, and that’s what this is, and I’m going to accept them for who they are and do what I need to do to set boundaries for myself.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. And so having the expectation continually unrealized, it doesn’t do us any favors. It’s not like they’ll just rise to our level of expectations because we have them. It’s like, “Well, if they told you they’re not going to, well, then they’re not going to.”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah. And, you know, hey, who knows? They might do something different because you’re acting differently and you’re not constantly resenting them and telling them what they’re doing wrong. And so they might start doing something differently, but we can’t control that. We have no control of that.

And they’re apparently not willing to participate in a growth process with us. So that’s fine. I’m going to stop expecting what I wanted to get out of them. I’m not going to get it. So I’m just going to stop wanting it and expecting it. And I’m going to choose what’s right for me and set some boundaries that make sense for this relationship.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And by abandoning that expectation, we increase our own peace, I would suppose, because we no longer feel repeatedly wronged, disappointed.

Jeremy Pollack
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Because it’s like, “Okay, well, they didn’t deliver, but I didn’t expect them to, so now I no longer feel the sense of, ‘They should have.’”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, if we’re going to hold people accountable for anything, they need to understand our expectations of them, and they need to agree to them. If they haven’t understood or agreed to our expectations, how are we supposed to hold them accountable?

And if they explicitly disagree and say, “I’m not going to do that,” then there’s no accountability. Like, you can’t hold them accountable for it because they’ve already told you they’re not going to do it. So stop expecting it. Stop wanting it.

At some point in the future, maybe the relationship changes, maybe the dynamic changes, maybe you can do something over time to build some more trust or build some more care with each other. And at that point, maybe there’s another conversation to be had and say, “Hey, I’m really interested in having a better or more meaningful or more productive relationship with you. Are you interested in that? Does that make sense to you at all?”

And if they say, “Well, no, it’s fine the way it is. It’s fine,” “Okay, okay. I’m just wondering, you know?” But if they said, “Yeah, I am,” then you could say, “Okay, cool. Well, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure that out.”

So, again, every change process, whether it’s a change towards peace or a change towards something else, it has to start with motivation. People involved in that change have to be motivated to change. So if someone’s not motivated, they don’t see a problem with it, or they just don’t care or whatever, and they’re not going to change, stop expecting it, stop being disappointed, stop being resentful about it. Accept things as they are and do your best, you know?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a theme that occurs in this conversation and elsewhere is that maintaining curiosity is super handy. And yet, often curiosity is quick to go, you know, when we feel wronged, threatened, insulted, offended, etc. Any pro tips for triggering curiosity, staying in curiosity, reclaiming curiosity when it seems to go out the window all too quickly?

Jeremy Pollack
Curiosity takes a couple of important traits. Number one is humility. So humility meaning, “I am going to accept the fact that I may not know the whole truth or everything that’s right, or I’m not the most moral or ethical one in the world or in this world, whatever. So I’m going to open space for someone else’s perspective because I want to learn a little bit.” So humility is really important to practice.

The other practice is confidence. So you have to have both humility and confidence because with too much confidence and no humility, you get arrogance, and too much humility, you get kind of meekness. So confidence is important, and the confidence is just, “I can handle it. Whatever their perspective is, I’m going to ask about it, I’m going to try to learn, whatever their perspective, their experience, etc., I’m not going to dismiss it and shut it down. I’m going to give space to it because I can handle that.”

People don’t give space because they’re like, “It’s wrong. It’s incorrect. I can’t handle what they’re saying. It’s too dangerous,” or whatever. “I can handle it. Whatever comes of it, I can handle it.” Have that confidence. So those two traits are important.

The third thing, sort of a tactical strategy that you can try as an experiment, if you want, is what I sometimes call like a new mind, or I think Buddhists call beginner’s mind. And so what I would say is, like, a little practice is, if you want to be curious, try your best, just as an experiment, to erase your brain from this, about what this is actually, what has happened in the past with this.

Erase your mind, erase the memories of what’s happened. Go into this with a totally fresh new mind and perspective. And in that state, if you knew nothing about the situation, knew nothing about the person really, knew nothing about this conflict, what questions would you ask to learn about that individual’s experience?

So if I came in, for instance, I know nothing about it, I’m coming in as an independent party, and I know nothing about this person or the experience, I have a certain set of questions that I want to ask just to get to know them, to learn about what’s going on for them. Can you put yourself in that sort of mindset as an experiment kind of thing, just to explore it?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Jeremy, lovely. Well, tell us, any key things you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Jeremy Pollack
I think one thing that we didn’t touch on too much, but what’s really important is the care piece. I tend to look at conflict resolution within really two main sections: care and solution. A lot of people jump straight to solution without caring first.

Care means, “I’m listening. I’m maybe repeating back what I’m hearing. I’m engaged. I’m showing someone I’m really seeing them. I’m hearing their perspective. I want them to know I care about their concerns and their goals before I try to solve them.” So I think that’s a really important piece that I think we skip a lot in conflict resolution.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that sounds great to care. And if we’re not feeling that care, any tips on getting there?

Jeremy Pollack
Well, here’s the interesting thing about care. Care is not like trust. Trust has to be built over long periods of time. You can’t force it. You can choose to care about anyone in any moment and turn it off at any moment. It’s not just an emotion, but it’s also a behavior.

So if you’re motivated to change the dynamic, you can choose to care more for even just a minute or two minutes. You can turn, I would just like, envision you have like a care dial. It goes from zero to 10. And if you’re at a zero, you can choose to turn it up to 10, even though you’re like, “Oh, I really don’t want to,” or you have some story in your mind why you shouldn’t or something like that.

But if you are motivated enough, you can choose to do that. It’s like walking into a hospital, you see a sick patient, you don’t even know the patient, it’s a total stranger. And yet, if they needed something, if they needed help, and you could help them, you would turn your care dial up in that moment because you’re a good person and you want to care for that person.

So you have the choice to care in every moment. And I would just say, if you’re motivated to do it, try your best to do it if you’re trying to resolve a conflict and trying to change a relational dynamic.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, I can think of all sorts of imaginative labels for the increments on this care dial, from, “I don’t give a…” fill in the blank, to, you know, “You are the most precious human I’ve ever encountered.”

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, “Yeah, you’re the most important thing in the world at this moment.” And it could be that for 30 seconds, and then you’re done. But you can make someone the most important thing to focus on for 30 seconds.

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

Jeremy Pollack
I’ll give you a favorite quote from a very important coach I had. And it was really a game-changer when he said it to me. It was a mantra that he gave me, and the mantra is, “What am I looking for from them that I need to give to myself?”

And every time that I started to feel resentful towards someone, especially someone that I couldn’t get what I wanted from them, I would ask that question, “What am I looking for from them that I could be giving to myself?”

And I said, I did it over and over and, eventually, I stopped looking to that person or those people for the thing they weren’t giving me. And I started trying to fill that need in my own self. And that was super helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
That is transformational. And I suppose it presupposes then that you are capable of giving yourself that thing. I’m thinking that, for me, often that answer is, “I want to feel like a winner, like, I’m doing a great job.” And, you know, a client or whomever, that sometimes isn’t giving you those vibes that I sure do want. How does one give them to one’s self?

Jeremy Pollack
You have to give it yourself. So think to yourself, “What is it that I would want to hear from that person?” That’s the thing to give to yourself. Because here’s the thing, not only does it presuppose you could give it. It presupposes, to me, it presupposes that you are the only one who can give it.

So people, their whole life, want things from their parents they never got. They want things from, potentially, their early childhood relationships or spouses or coworkers they never get. And it’s because, a lot of times, it’s not their job to give it to them.

Maybe, as early children, their parents, maybe they could have done a better job or something, but ultimately, when you’re an adult, it’s no one else’s job to give you the things you really need. It’s your job, and you are the only one who can constantly give you those things. You’re the only one who can.

It’s too much to ask for other people to give you those things on a regular basis. So, “Hey, I want this person to tell me I’m doing a great job.” Well, I think probably you need to tell yourself that. Like, if you’re needing that regularly, you’re probably not telling yourself that enough.

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

Jeremy Pollack
Well, there’s lots of interesting theories that I think are fascinating. One of them is called terror management theory, which is, when someone feels like they are under threat, like all kinds of different threats, but survival threat, essentially, their adherence to their in-group identity becomes stronger. So they start to identify more with their in-group and, potentially, identify less with and feel more prejudicial towards their out-groups when they feel under threat.

So there’s this very interesting link between feeling threatened and feeling like my group identity now sort of is more salient. And I’ve seen that a lot in our world, and I think it’s an important piece of literature to consider when trying to analyze like, “Why are people in these large group conflicts?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jeremy Pollack
I think it’s called the Little Book of Conflict Transformation. It was by John Paul Lederach, who’s a pioneer in our field of peace building. And it really opened my eyes to how to look at conflicts, especially large and complex conflicts differently.

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

Jeremy Pollack
Yeah, you can come to our website at PollackPeaceBuilding.com. You can get my books there, and also if you’re interested in our services or online communities, it’s all there.

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

Jeremy Pollack
Do your best to care for your coworkers, and it doesn’t mean that you have to be friends with them. You just have to care about their goals and concerns. Do your best to just be a caring coworker.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jeremy, thank you.

Jeremy Pollack
Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it.

Jul 30
0

1171: How to Get Better Results through Better Questions with Dr. Marilee Adams

By | Podcasts | One Comment

Dr. Marilee Adams shows you how to ask the questions that drive improvement and innovation.

You’ll Learn

  1. How your inner questions shape your decisions and behavior
  2. Why brainstorming often falls short–and what to do instead
  3. The hidden assumptions that limit your thinking and creativity

About Marilee

Marilee Adams, PhD, award-winning author, is a pioneer in inquiry-based coaching, leadership, and organizational culture. The originator of the Question Thinking methodologies, she is CEO and founder of the Inquiry Institute and a consultant for organizations large and small. 

Dr. Adams is an affiliate instructor for Weatherhead’s Executive Education Program at Case Western Reserve University and for ten years was an adjunct professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University.

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Marilee Adams Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dr. Adams, welcome!

Marilee Adams
I am so pleased to be here. Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited, too. We’re talking questions and, boy, you have spent your whole career or a huge amount of time inquiring into inquiry, questioning questions.

Marilee Adams
That’s a really great way to put it. It’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
So I’d love to hear, what’s something you know about questions that most of us don’t?

Marilee Adams
Most people think about questions, they think about interpersonal questions – I ask you, you ask me, we hear other people ask each other. And, of course, that’s incredibly important. In fact, questions and statements are what make up language, frankly.

And there is another entirely different layer that goes on in our thinking that most people are not aware of. And that’s why I call the theory that I’ve come up with, question-thinking, because, in fact, we all think with questions all the time.

And what we typically think is a thought, is actually an answer to a preceding question, which means that if we can make visible or audible the questions we’re asking ourselves, and we know how to assess them and change them if we want different experiences and results, then we have a methodology that we can use in any role and any function, basically, for the rest of our lives.

And I can unfold that as we go on, but that’s why my work is really about the nature of thinking. So it’s a re-conceptualization of the nature of thinking which provides so many access points for different kinds of interventions.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay, so re-conceptualizing thought itself. Okay, that’s potent and that’s a really intriguing notion that there’s an extra layer there behind questions, not just, “Hey, this is how humans talk to each other. It’s kind of half of the things we say, you know, questions, responses, statements.”

So what we think of as a thought is actually an answer to a preceding question. As I consider my own lifetime of experience with thinking, I’m thinking that is often certainly clearly the case. I ask myself a question and then I come up with some answers, and so there’s that.

Marilee Adams
Oh, good.

Pete Mockaitis
But you’re suggesting that, is it most, all, many of our thoughts are, in fact, answers to preceding questions?

Marilee Adams
Yeah, I’m actually suggesting that it’s systematic and invisible. And when you can see it, and I’m going to demonstrate it in a minute, and then you can do something with it, then it’s remarkable how it changes everything in a very efficient and effective way. So, shall I illustrate this?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, maybe in just a second. I mean, how do we know that this is the case, and an illustration can help? But, I mean, like in the human experience, what is the best evidence to suggest that this is, in fact, how we operate?

Marilee Adams
I’m going to make it even more challenging than what you just said because the implication is also that our behavior is internal question-driven.

I want to give you an example because I really want to make this concrete, and I like ordinary examples because they’re very relatable. So let’s imagine that you just woke up and you’re getting dressed for the day.

So you go to your closet or your drawers or, if you’re traveling, your suitcase. And then you would ask yourself a series of questions, “Where am I going? What are other people wearing? What would be comfortable?” maybe even, “What will be clean?”

And then you do something really interesting. After the question, you engage in a behavior. You reach forward and you pick up whatever it is you’ve chosen and you put it on. And you could say that you are wearing your answer. Does that make sense?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you can.

Marilee Adams
But what I’ve also done is given you an example of the question-driven nature of decision-making. Whether it’s something as simple as getting dressed in the morning or as complex as, “Should we do this initiative? Should I hire this person? How should I run this meeting? How should we create this project? And what questions do we want the project or the initiative or the product to answer?”

And you used the word direction earlier, which I thought was great, because the questions we ask kind of design the direction we go in.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And they can shut off directions in terms of, “Should we do this or this?” It’s, like, “Are those the only two options?” And then sometimes we don’t even stop to ask that question.

Marilee Adams
But that is a really great question. Just what you said is a great question, “Are there other options? What assumptions am I making? What biases are making me a little blind? Am I missing something?” And those are powerful questions, particularly if we want to be creative or we want to make well-based decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s very intriguing. And, certainly, I’ve witnessed that as well in terms of the new question really does open up things. And I guess I’m just sort of still fixated on this notion of the questions I’m not even aware of, that I have been asking. Like, I can reverse-engineer the implied question. So would asking a new question to override my prior implied question be just as transformational?

Marilee Adams
Yeah, and I love that you’re “fixated” on that because it is a very novel concept. And what’s so interesting is not only is it novel but it’s practical. And so I’m going to give you an assignment, should you choose to accept it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure.

Marilee Adams
And also, for all of your viewers or listeners, which is at any moment, at any time, stop, and ask yourself, “What questions am I asking right now?” and you get a readout. I ask people that all the time who don’t know anything about my theories. And because it’s just there, they go, “Huh? I’m asking myself dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” And I can tell you a story about that, that I did with the coaching client, if you would like.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Marilee Adams
So this is a client who was afraid she was going to get fired. And so I asked her some more about her job, and she said, “Well, I really love my job. But I hate my boss. I’m afraid he’s going to fire me. Help.” Okay?

So I said to her, just casually, “Well, what questions are you asking yourself about your boss?” And she immediately came up with, “What is he going to do wrong today? And how is it to make me look bad?” And, of course, I understood immediately that it was her questions that were getting her in trouble.

So I said, “May I suggest some different questions for you to ask yourself?” And, of course, she said yes. And I gave her, “What is there to understand and appreciate about my boss?” And then I gave her, “What can I do to make my boss look good?”

And this woman, she looked like I had hit her with the two-by-four, which, in a way, I had, because the questions I gave her did not fit naturally into the way she was thinking before. And the next time I saw her was not in a session but at a community event.

And when she saw me, she got very excited, came running over with her husband trailing behind, and she said, “Would you like to hear a miracle?” I said, “Sure, I love miracles.” And she said, “Here’s what’s happened since that session. I got a promotion, I got a raise. And the best thing is my boss and I are now getting along very well.”

And I said, “That’s great. Congratulations.” Of course, I knew it wasn’t a miracle. It was a method and it was the method of giving her new questions to think with. So her husband is standing there. And I turned to him and I said, “That’s really great. Don’t you think it’s great?”

He goes, “Yeah, it’s pretty good.” And I said, “What could be better?” And then he breaks out into a big grin, and he said, “She doesn’t complain about that man for an hour every night anymore.” So four results from just changing her question.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I love most about this story is when you said “whacked over the head with a two-by-four,” and when you try on those new questions, there’s an internal state. I don’t know, it’s almost like being flabbergasted, maybe, is the English word. It might be the closest I could come up with.

You ask those questions and it’s just like, “Wait, what? Like, no, but he’s bad. Like, arrgh?” It’s like, “I’m having a short circuit.”

Marilee Adams
Now let me take that a little bit further because I just demonstrated something that I didn’t call out before, and that is that the theory of question-thinking is really pretty married to our mindsets. And so there are two basic mindsets that I work with, and I call them judger mindset and learner mindset.

And you can see just even by the names that the questions that she was originally asking were all judger mindset questions. And the questions I gave her were learner mindset questions. So she took up the new questions without even realizing that she was literally changing her mindset.

And it was that change in mindset, along with the new question, that changed the direction of her thinking and behavior that led her to those four results.

Pete Mockaitis
Very cool. All right. So is this the questions-thinking framework of yours or are there some key elements to be unpacked there?

Marilee Adams
Both. So when you understand, when one understands, this nature of thinking that I’m calling out, which is we’re always asking ourselves questions and they impact how we think, feel, relate, behave, and the results we get, and you start playing with that and experimenting with it, and you start noticing that it literally changes the way you see the world, how you move in the world, how you relate to people.

And you can easily extrapolate this to leadership, to working with teams, to running meetings, to making decisions, all of that, which is why so many organizations bring us in to teach this actual material, and then we watch the response to it.

So if you put together the mindset material and the self-questioning methodology, then it becomes, really, a strong thing. And what is imperative in it is the willingness and ability to self-observe non-judgmentally and to discover what’s literally going on under the surface that one can actually change once you can see it.

Now I could illustrate this on a graphic that I have the choice map.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And this will also be in the show notes, listeners, for your visual reference. All right. Start. We can choose or we can react, which starts us down the path, choosing of the learner mindset, or reacting, the judger mindset. But then later on, we can do a switch. Okay.

Marilee Adams
So the switch is what I was just referring to. Once you can ask yourself non-judgmentally, “Am I in judger?” that liberates you to ask a switching question which will take you up to learner. And if you’ll know, I want to read what’s in the two signs there, because people probably can’t see them.

But judger says, “Automatic reactions, blame-focused, win-lose relating.” And then, of course, at the bottom, we have the famous judger pit. And I would claim easily that every one of us has gotten very muddy in that pit. I know I have. I mean, it’s impossible not to, actually, because the judger is also related to the amygdala, so there’s a fear based component to it.

Learner is it goes uphill, it’s a little bit more difficult, but it’s also very much rewarding. And so the sign says learner, “Thoughtful choices, solution-focused, win-win relating.” And you notice that the learner path goes off the page intentionally because it’s from learner mindset that we can create new futures, that we can literally be creative.

Whereas, if we’re in judger, we kind of recycle the same things over and over again. Now it’s very important to realize that we all have both mindsets and they’re both entirely normal. What’s really exciting about being able to see them is that once you can see that you’re in judger, you have the ability to switch.

So that’s why the switching lane is here. And there are some switching questions that are my favorites.

Pete Mockaitis
Lay them on us.

Marilee Adams
So, “Am I in judger?” is always the first one. And then, “Is this what I want to be thinking or doing? How else can I think about this?” And my favorite one is “Regardless of the circumstances, who do I choose to be in this moment?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what I love about that sequence, specifically, and I imagine you’ve given it a lot of thought, Marilee. What I love about that is, it’s like these questions really do feel like a bit of an exit ramp, you know, bit by bit.

Marilee Adams
That’s a great way to say it. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, not like, “I’m warming up to the really hard questions that I can’t even really wrap my brain around just yet.”

Marilee Adams
That’s right. And I’ll take it a little bit further. So you mentioned neuroscience, so judger is more the sympathetic nervous system. Learner is more the parasympathetic nervous system. So every time we switch, we’re really, I believe, making a little dent in our neuroplasticity so that learner becomes more and more normal and more resident for us.

And while I’m here, let me add also that this also illustrates emotional intelligence, in a way. And this I’ve tested and spoken with experts and authors in emotional intelligence. So emotional intelligence is four pillars: self-awareness, self-regulation, self-management, social awareness, social skills, basically, right?

So I think being able to see that, “I’m in judger” and name it nonjudgmentally is very advanced self-awareness. It really is. And then switching is self-regulation and self-management. So every time somebody recognizes they’re in judger, and switches to learner, they are strengthening the first two pillars of emotional intelligence.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s super handy. And there’s so many directions we can go with this. You talk about Q-Storming as a useful approach. What is that and how do we do it?

Marilee Adams
Well, Q-Storming is one of the favorite things I ever made up.

Pete Mockaitis
Glad I asked.

Marilee Adams
And I’ve done hundreds of them. And, basically, if we want to alter a behavior and a result, in terms of my theory, we have to alter the questions we’re asking ourselves. And we need to come up with new questions that can take us in different directions.

So there are three stages to it. The first stage is something that you would do, basically, at the beginning of any project, which is, “What are we going for? What’s our goal?”

Because you know well, if you don’t establish that robustly, then there’s no place for anything else to stand. So, “What is it? What’s our goal?” And, first, I get people to say a lot of goals, and then we bring it, we really work on the goal. And this is a format.

So then the next thing is, “What assumptions are we making?” And that is a critical, critical stage, because every assumption we’re making is going to block our creativity and possibilities. And so I push on that quite a lot. And it’s assumptions I make about myself, about you, about others, and I pull those from the group.

And then once you’ve got out a healthy amount of assumptions, good, bad, and ugly, then now that you can see what you or we all are assuming, then you ask, “Okay, now what are the actual facts?”

And, oftentimes, people confuse assumptions and facts which really get you off on a wrong direction. So that part is always up front. So that’s phase one. Phase two is we start generating and capturing questions. And the kind of questions that I was describing earlier, questions we’re asking ourselves.

And I’ll pause a little and give you a quote. I think I told you this, it’s, actually, I dreamt this. And the quote is, “A question not asked is the door not opened.” So if we want new solutions, new thinking, new possibilities, we need to be asking new questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely.

Marilee Adams
And so it’s a long process of generating new questions. And I also want to contrast this with brainstorming, because brainstorming, it is the iconic creativity exercise, and the research is, actually, that it’s not quite as useful as people think. And I believe the reason for that is, in brainstorming, you’re coming up with ideas, solutions, answers, which is all well and good. Well, what if you’re answering the wrong questions?

So if I were doing like a big organizational effort, I’d be doing Q-Storming before brainstorming because that opens up your thinking and it also opens up your collaborative movements. So once we’ve got a really long list of new questions, that’s the end of phase two.

And phase three is, “Well, what do you do with all those questions?” Now in the third phase, we have to analyze the questions.

So the first thing to do is start putting them in buckets. And you don’t want to proclaim the buckets before you do this because the coolest thing would be is, if you come up with questions that don’t fit in a bucket, because that means there’s a place where thinking wasn’t occurring before, which is really great.

So when I was doing this in person, and I remember doing this, and I won’t say the agency, but it was there were 200 engineers in a particular agency, and I spent, literally, an entire day doing a Q-Storm with them around some really mission-critical issues.

And so after we generated, we had hundreds of questions, and I had them on flip charts, and then I had people go around and pick. They had to read all the questions, and every time you do that, of course, it’s opening up your thinking and they had to pick their five favorites. So they had a marker or Post-it or something.

So, then, we could narrow it to, “These are the top five questions,” and then they could choose. And you could see that that would be the beginning of a different strategy because they’ve opened up their thinking collaboratively. So it really is so practical and so creative. And we have companies and agencies who do this all the time now because they realize how effective and efficient it is and creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Marilee, I’m loving this. Might we be able to do an accelerated demo of some Q-Storming?

Marilee Adams
Well, we’d have to have a topic or a challenge, and it would have to be yours.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’ll give you one. Sure thing. Let’s go for it.

Marilee Adams
This is great. Nobody has ever asked me this before.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, shucks. Well, I love, well, you know what, talk about questions, I love it when someone says that to me about my questions. So let’s go with this.

Let’s say, Marilee, I lose several hours a month of productive time because I get into little pockets of, “Ugh, I’m kind of tired and kind of bored and kind of don’t feel like doing what I probably should be doing on my to-do list. And so maybe I’ll just fiddle around on the news, or YouTube, or just sort of, like, time-wasting stuff.” It’s not really like life giving, right?

Marilee Adams
So the first question I would ask is, given that you said, the situation you said is maybe it’s procrastinating, which is normal, maybe it’s not feeling energized. But what would your goals be? What would you like to think and feel and do differently?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. I suppose my goal, it would be that each, well, I mean, I’m tempted to put numbers on them, but I don’t know exactly what the numbers would be. But I would just say the vast majority of hours in the vast majority of work days are spent on activities that are enjoyable and/or meaningful.

Marilee Adams
So a goal would be something like, “To use my time well so that I am productive and energized.” Would that work?

Pete Mockaitis
That is a clear, more succinct way to say that. Yeah, that works for me. Uh-huh.

Marilee Adams
Okay, so let’s go to assumptions. What assumptions are you making that hold up the state you want to leave? And, also, let’s do that first.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose the assumption in the moments could be that, “Oh, these tasks are not enjoyable.”

Marilee Adams
Okay.

Pete Mockaitis
“I am not in the optimal state of mind to do this at my best. It would be more fun to do this other activity.” Those seem like the biggies.

Marilee Adams
Okay, may I offer some assumptions that I think I heard, and you’ll tell me if they’re right or not?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Marilee Adams
So one is, “To do something, it has to be fun,” that you have to be in the right state of mind. Then there’s a deeper assumption that, “I don’t know how to get myself into the right state of mind.” Would that be accurate? As assumptions?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I think that those assumptions feel true at certain times. It’s, like, they flicker. They’re intermittent assumptions. Sometimes they exist and other times they seem like that’s nonsense. Of course, I do things I don’t like all the time, you know? Yeah.

Marilee Adams
Assumptions are just assumptions. And one of the really interesting things about questions, if you really think about it, particularly the ones we ask ourselves, is that entwined in our questions are our biases, our blind spots.

So when we ask questions, we’re actually bringing all of that history forward. So, can you think of a time when you actually got yourself into a different state? And then were able to do something?

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Certainly.

Marilee Adams
So tell me that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it happens nearly daily, perhaps, you know? I mean, I’m going to exercise or dunk my face in cold water or, you know, do some pump up music. Yeah, that’s very common practice for me.

Marilee Adams
Okay. So what you’ve just established as facts are two bunch of different things. One, there are times when you, I’m going to use my phrase here, that you enjoy being a couch potato and not doing what you said you were going to do.

Pete Mockaitis
There are those times, yes.

Marilee Adams
Me, too, by the way. I think everybody. And, also, there are times, when you bring some strategies to the fore that you know will work – put on energizing music, something that will help you alter your state. Correct?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Mm-hmm.

Marilee Adams
Okay, so let’s declare that the end of phase one, establishing everything. So now we have a goal, and a goal is not a question. Sometimes people think it is. A goal is a statement. It’s what we’re going for. So your goal is, “Use my time well,” which means productively and energetically or enjoyably, right?

So I’m going to start the Q-Storm part, the generating part, with throwing out a few questions. And then I’m going to ask you to start throwing out some questions as well, okay?

Pete Mockaitis
Alrighty.

Marilee Adams
“What have I done successfully in the past that has helped me become more productive and energetic? Which of those was easiest for me? Which were more fun? Which actually move me along?” So now it’s your time to put in one or two questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I guess, “What can I buy to make this better?” because that’s easy and fun. “How can I enroll other people to assist me in this endeavor? And whom should I enroll to assist me in this endeavor?
What changes in my physical environment, you know, what I’m actually seeing and sitting in, could provide helpful lift in this regard?” That’s what’s coming to mind so far.

Marilee Adams
Okay. Given that we have limited time right now, and we’re now going to move into phase three, if we stayed with it, we could come up with a lot more questions.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d like to ask you, do you have a guideline, amount of time or questions, ballpark that’s good to hang here?

Marilee Adams
It’s never a prescription, and that’s actually one of my pet peeves when people have a list of questions they’re supposed to ask when you do that, A, you’re not thinking, you’re not welcoming-thinking, and you’re also not present with the other person.

So the thing is curiosity is the booster, and caring also. And this is a case in which curiosity and caring would matter for you. You care about your state, you care about getting things done, you care about your output, you care about your timelines, you care about downstream effects, like, “If I don’t do this, how will that affect them or the project or something?”

So, at this point, I would just say to you, of the questions you said, if you remember them, what were the top three that felt good to you, felt right?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I want to use something that you said as well. in terms of, “What have I done historically that was the most fun and easy?” What I love about that is because, in a way, you know, hey, after nearly 1200 episodes of How to be Awesome at Your Job, yeah, we’ve collected a couple of tools, maybe too many along the way.

So what I love about that is it shifts me out of an overwhelm in terms of, like, “Oh, there are so many things I might do.” But it was like, “Well, no way, in your own experience, what have you found was the easiest and most delightful?” I was like, “That was really good. Well, yeah, let’s go ahead and keep a shorter list. This feels more more manageable.”

Because, in some ways, when you’re feeling tired and overwhelmed and not in the mood, having too many tools to choose from is counterproductive.

Marilee Adams
And what you just said was really important that this new question actually focused you out of overwhelm and gave you something to look for that was useful. Oh, you know what? I just thought of… I would include questions like, “Can I give myself a break sometimes?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I work too hard. I care too much.

Marilee Adams
You know, “Am I willing to forgive myself? And how can I enjoy being a couch potato for a specific amount of time?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is good. Okay, so now we’ve identified some extra winning questions. And where do we go from here?

Marilee Adams
Well, the last piece I would say, based on what you’ve just discovered and based on your goal, which is really an important one, what’s your first action item?

Pete Mockaitis
My first action item is to schedule a time to get an upgraded office desk chair.

Marilee Adams
Now you could list out a few more, and then you could prioritize them. So what other actions could you take?

Pete Mockaitis
I could ask Justin, who’s in the office with me, if there are some handy ways we could provide some friendly, accountable influence to one another, in focusing. I could get my pump-up tunes playlist, dusted off and curated a little better. It’s been a while since I’ve really tended to that, yeah.

Marilee Adams
I do Tai Chi every day, and I have an accountability partner, my Tai Chi teacher, and I text him every night after I’ve done it, “Did I do it once, twice, three times?” And he does the same with me. So he is my teacher, but we’re also accountability partners. And I know that it makes, there are times when I do it that I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t have him to be accountable.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good.

Marilee Adams
So you have new action items you probably didn’t expect at the beginning of our conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and I appreciate it.

Marilee Adams
I also want to add one caution I would make is learn it and be careful about it.

I have had people read the chapter and then decide they ought to try it in some large high-stakes meeting and have it not work because they actually don’t understand it, they haven’t participated, they haven’t practiced facilitating it.

And so I put in that caution because I don’t want anybody to say, “Oh, I get this. I’ll just do it.” Experiment. Do it with yourself. Do it with a small team. Do not do it with the big, high-stakes mission-critical issue.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Marilee, before we hear about some of your favorite things, in general, I would like to ask if you could share with us three of your all-time favorite questions. It’s like, “Boy, it comes up so often, and it’s so transformational.” I know every situation is bespoke and unique and all that, but if there’s a few that just rock.

Marilee Adams
Okay, and some of these are going to sound very normal, “What do I actually want here? Like, what are my goals?” is always important. I love the question, “What am I missing?” And the one I said earlier, “Who do I choose to be in this moment?” And it’s always a centering question. It’s a question about presence, it’s a question about relationship, it’s a question about actually listening to people around.

And I think those are really important questions to have in your toolbox to ask over and over. And notice, I ask them in first person singular, but if you were a coach or you were a leader who’s using coaching methodology, you could ask them, you could change the pronoun, “What do you actually want here? What could you be missing? Who do you choose to be in this moment?”

So you change the pronoun and then it’s something you can invite other people to do as well. And using the word invite, I do want to say that questions should be experienced as an invitation to think, to collaborate, and that would be from a learner mindset. But when you ask questions that invite participation energy, it changes everything.

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

Marilee Adams
This one is adapted from Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity, this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Marilee Adams
One is The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr, S-T-O-R-R. And the other one is How to Tell a Story, and that’s by the people who put on all the Moth events.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, great.

Marilee Adams
And, as you know, storytelling is a primary leadership skill. And, basically, if you want anybody to get anything, if you put it inside a story, it’s more likely to stick. They’re how we think. It’s why I wrote Change Your Questions as a story.

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

Marilee Adams
Great results begin with great questions. And so keep asking and keep looking.

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

Marilee Adams
My website is InquiryInstitute.com. And if people want to email me, it would be marilee.adams@inquiryinstitute.com. And I really welcome queries and feedback, and it’s how I stay connected. We have a learning community of hundreds of people and it’s so much fun.

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

Marilee Adams
No matter what is going on, stop, ask yourself – so pausing is really important – ask yourself, “What questions am I asking myself right now that I may not have been aware of?” Then you can ask, “Are they going to help me or hurt me?” And typically judger questions will impede progress, and learner questions will accelerate it.

And, of course, that stands on curiosity, real curiosity, because you have to be willing to discover a judger question. And then take action based on that. And that simple, it’s almost like a formula, will serve you professionally, personally, in every place in your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Marilee, thank you.

Marilee Adams
Thank you. It was fun.

Jul 27
0

1170: How to Make Discipline Feel Easy and Achieve Your Ambitious Goals with Jia Jiang

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Jia Jiang explains his four-step framework for making discipline and success easier.

You’ll Learn

  1. The problem with hard discipline
  2. How to make your goals feel easy and enjoyable
  3. Two handy tips to defeat procrastination

About Jia

Jia Jiang is an award-winning speaker, entrepreneur, and the bestselling author of Rejection Proof. As a keynote speaker, Jiang has spoken at corporate and industry events and in front of 400,000+ live audiences. His TED talk has millions of views and is ranked in the top 1% among all TED talks. Jiang is also the owner of Rejection Therapy, which helps people overcome their fear of rejection and develop mental resilience. His work has been featured in Time, CNN, Today, Business Insider, The Guardian, Wired, and more. 

Resources Mentioned

Thank you, Sponsors!

Jia Jiang Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jia, welcome!

Jia Jiang
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting. Your name has come up a few times over the years with How to be Awesome at Your Job, guests sharing transformational things they’ve read or tried. So I must start by hearing the tale of your 100 Day Rejection challenge.

Jia Jiang
Yeah, so I’ve been wanting to be an entrepreneur for all my life, but I had to delay it for a long time because I was kind of afraid of rejection. You know, I was afraid of failure, I was afraid of rejection for my family.

Eventually, I started my company at age 30. But then, as soon as I got rejected for funding, the first thought that came back to my mind was, “I’m not good at this. The guy, the potential investor, he knew much more about business than I did. So if he didn’t like my company, maybe I should change my idea or even not do this altogether.”

And that’s really a signal to me, it was like, “Man, I’m really afraid of rejection. Like, that’s a loser thinking. No people who are successful at anything can think like that, that they just wanted to quit after a rejection like that.”

So I said, “Let me overcome my fear of rejection.” Like, that’s my number one goal, overcome my fear of rejection. But I want to do it in a fun way. I’m like, “What can I have fun with rejection?”

So I started this project called 100 Days of Rejection Therapy, where, every day, I would go out and get rejected on purpose. And now I film myself doing this using my phone, and I made my first vlog. So, you know, I would go out and, like, I would ask a stranger for 100 dollars. And then the next day, I would go to ask for a burger refill after getting a burger for lunch.

Then there’s another day, I went out and I asked, I went to Costco and asked to speak on their intercom. I got a “no.” And then another day, I went to a PetSmart to ask for a haircut, to get a haircut. I asked for a German Shepherd cut, and they said no.

But I didn’t die, you know? At the beginning, I thought I was going to die. But not only I didn’t die, it was pretty fun. I had a great time, you know, and I had a good energy, you know. I was easygoing, I was making jokes. And then people started to say yes to me.

So my most famous video is, one day, I went to a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts shop and asked them to make me donuts that look like Olympic rings. There’s no way they’re going to do that, right? I’m just going to go in and make a joke.

And the donut-maker took me so seriously and, fifteen minutes later, she came up with a box of donuts that looked like Olympic rings. And she was like, “This is from me. This is my pleasure.” So she gave it to me for free.

And that video went viral. And that’s why a lot of people probably recommended my name to you, probably saw that video and saw my TED Talk later on, talking about it. So, yeah, that’s 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. It was a lot of fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s fun and it’s viral. Can you tell me, was it transformational for you?

Jia Jiang
Yeah, on a couple of levels, first of all, at the beginning, my goal was I want to come in and just ask and I don’t know what’s going to happen, right? But then I found people started to say yes to me. And I was like, “Wow, the world is different than I thought.”

I thought the world is according to a script. You ask for hard things, people say no. You ask for easy things, people will say yes. As it turned out, when I had this mindset of, “I won’t take myself too seriously, I’m going to have fun. I’m going to just go confront these fears and with a fun attitude,” that the whole script flips.

Sometimes it’s the hard request, the audacious ones that get yes, because people are curious. But also, because of me, right? I’m very relaxed and I’m fun-seeking. In that way, I exude a type of energy that people don’t push back to, right?

Sometimes if I come in really hard, people feel cornered, and they will say no to me. But if I come in very relaxed, then people would be like, “Ah, okay, maybe I’ll say yes.” So to me, it’s just a great lesson. The world is very different than I thought.

So I started teaching other people to say, you know, one, don’t be afraid of asking. Secondly, try to have fun when you’re asking. Try to have fun in whatever you do. The result will surprise you.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, so that’s a nice mindset, worldview, to not only enjoy life more but get better results. I’m also curious to hear, now how does rejection land for you. You’ve now had the 100 Days of Rejection Therapy, and I imagine subsequent rejections over the course of life and business. Tell me, how is a rejection feeling nowadays?

Jia Jiang
Yeah, instead of seeing rejection as a failure, now I see this as a start of a negotiation. I started just to be like, “Okay, cool. It’s fine I get rejected. But can I try something else? Can I ask for something else?” And I would try to ask for different things in a very fun way, in a very relaxed way.

So I no longer see rejection as a sign of signal failure, signals end. I see this as a signal to ask for more, to keep asking and have more fun to do this. So, yeah, that’s a complete mindset shift.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great. So it’s no longer a crushing emotional situation. It’s just like, “Oh, kind of interesting. Let’s try something a little different this time.”

Jia Jiang
Yeah. I mean, sometimes it’s like a negotiation, right? It’s like, you know, “Hey, what can I do? I can’t do this. Can I do that? If you don’t like this, why don’t you like it? Okay, I learned a little more any way I can get yes.” So I started having this dialogue with the person who rejects me.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig that so much. And, I’m thinking, it totally checks out with psychological research on exposure therapy. And I lived it myself with my first book. Back in the day, I sent out a whole bunch of one-page query letters to publishers and agents, and then they would come back. And I was actually wonderful to have the experience of being rejected over 100 times via letter because I could choose, “When do I open these letters?”

It’s like, “Ooh, I’m feeling down right now. Meh, let’s maybe wait till after lunch.” And then, “Okay, now I’m ready to face this letter. Oh, and it’s a rejection. Oh, and it’s another rejection.” And, sure enough, having lived that exposure, afterwards, rejections seem like no big deal. It’s like, “I’ve been through this over a hundred times. Is that all you got?

Jia Jiang
I love your approach to it because you kind of took control of this thing. When people get rejected, they feel they lost control, right, other people are telling them what to do. But you took control of this whole process, “Even though I got rejection letters, I get to decide when to open them. I get to have the mindset that, hey, these are fun. These are, like, things that are helping me to overcome that fear,” so you decide.

This mindset is all about initiatives, right? Who’s taking initiatives? Who’s doing what to whom? If you let the world do rejection to you, then you can feel very down. You can take it very personal. But you go to the other route where, like, “I’m going to do this to rejection. I’m going to have fun with rejection.” So who’s taking the initiative, like, determines how you feel and what’s your next step.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I love it so much. We had an earlier guest, Andrea Waltz, who talked about go for no. And so it changes your whole perspective if you’re having fun with it. And, sure enough, along the way, you get some yeses, and they’re surprising, and it’s fun.

And then it just sort of changes the whole equation, it’s like, “Oh, okay. All I need to do is ask a hundred people. And then, you know, one to six of them will probably say yes. I only need one. All right. Well, let’s get to it. Away we go.”

Jia Jiang
You can ask more people, right? You ask more people, you can ask differently, the same person differently. You can ask again that person more times. You can change your location, even your environment to ask, right?

Sometimes you’re at work, you ask for something, “Oh, it didn’t work. Okay.” You ask again. Then the next time, where you go to, you have a beer or somewhere. You ask again, right? Under different circumstances, you ask.

So there are all kinds of levers you can pull after getting rejected. But most people will just get rejected, they’re like, “Oh, man, that sucks. That’s the end, right?” But shift your environment, shift whatever, right? You can try it again, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jia, I’m going to try a hard segue here. Sometimes the rejection seems to come from within. We want to do a thing, and we just can’t muster the energy, motivation, discipline, gumption, whatever, to get her done. Your latest book is called Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things. Ooh, that sounds real nice. Lay it on us, how do we make discipline easy?

Jia Jiang
Yeah. So for most people, we try to think about discipline as a combination of willpower and pain tolerance, right? So I grew up in China, and I grew up with this idea called chi ku. In Chinese, it means eating bitterness. It means you have an ambitious goal, right? But to achieve that, you got to eat more pain, eat more bitterness than other people.

If you eat bitterness, you’re going to eventually find your way to success. And that’s called Chuku. But the problem is I suck at eating bitterness. I don’t like eating bitterness. And it’s against human nature because, like, your motivation runs away. You start something, then, very quickly, you learn you don’t like it but you have to keep doing it because you want to succeed, you want to achieve your goal, right?

So if you let the outcome you want to achieve provide the motivation for you to keep going, that will run out in no time. And then you’re going to start not liking yourself. You get disappointed, you lose confidence. You’re like, “I’m not made for this. What’s wrong with me?” That’s a loop that a lot of people have.

You see every year, people, there’s about half of the American population make New Year’s resolutions, right, “A new year, I’m going to lose weight,” “I’m going to find a new job,” “I’m going to make more money in the new year,” and all that, “Find love.”

And then, by February, it’s done. Like, only 9% of people who make New Year’s resolutions keep them throughout the year, by the end of the year. Why is that? Because we set these outcomes we want to achieve, and somehow using this outcome to motivate us and it doesn’t work. It works for someone, I’m not saying for everyone, but most people, it doesn’t work.

And I call this bare knuckle grinding through your way to success, hard discipline. Easy discipline, on the other hand, is later on I found in life, because I failed all my life, like most of my life, because I tried hard discipline, and I was just hating myself.

And then I started trying easy discipline, which was, “What do I like to do?” Instead of just thinking about the outcome I want to achieve, “Can I find things I like to do? Can I just start with easy? If something comes to me easily, I would just do it anyway,” right?

Like, I used to love playing video games. And I played for a long time, video games. And that wasn’t discipline. No one’s telling me that, you know, “Wow, you’re very disciplined in playing video games,” because I just love doing it.

But why when it comes to work, something that’s important, we feel like we have to feel like a prisoner, we have to feel hard, we have to endure the pain to actually achieve those outcomes? What if you just have that same mindset of, “How can I play? How can I turn my pursuit, my work into play so I can keep going?” And that’s what easy discipline is about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds delightful. And I have often wondered this. Indeed, I, too, enjoy video games. Recently, “Slay the Spire II,” it’s so good. And I will play it for more than maybe I want to, maybe more than I plan to over the course of a week.

And I thought, “Boy, if only doing the things that, you know, build wealth, health, spirituality, other goals, felt as appealing and fun to me as this video game, that would be amazing.” And so tell us, is that possible, and how?

Jia Jiang
A hundred percent. I’m not saying everything can be turned into video games-type of addictive, right? But it can get to, it’s just, I mean, there’s a spectrum, right? On one hand, it’s just dreadful. You do the work, you’re just like, “I got to do this, my goodness.” On the other hand, it’s just so delightful you cannot stop.

Most of our work, somehow, at this lower end of that spectrum, if you can just move that to the middle even, right, make this somewhat fun, make this be like, “Oh, I had a great time today working. I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow,” then that’s how you become much more successful.

I’ll give you an example. For a long time, I didn’t like exercise. Because the idea of me going to the gym to exercise, it was dreadful. And I tried it, you know, I bought gym memberships and I used it for a couple days, and they just go to waste.

I would go to the gym, and go there and sit there to see, “What do I do, man?” I’ll see all those machines, “That guy looks good. He’s doing this. I’m going to do that a little bit. And this guy’s doing this, I might do that a little bit.” Like, afterward, I was drained. I’m like, “Why do I have to come in for a buffet of movements, none of them I like?” And then, because of that friction, I don’t go anymore, right?

So I was like, “Okay, how can I remove all the frictions, and turn that into something fun?” The turning point is I started, I’m sure you’ve heard of this, P90X was actually a big turning point for me.

I started doing it because the guy, Tony Horton, he was the trainer on the DVD, right? And he was fun, and I didn’t have to think what to do. If I didn’t have to think what to do, just tell me what to do, and I would do it, and the workout is hard.

And then, afterward, I feel good. My body started to change. And then I started doing that again and again. I started doing different programs. Now, I follow this woman called Caroline Girvan. She does that on YouTube, all for free. I just follow what she does, you know, and I can’t wait. Sometimes, I feel if I don’t do it, I feel bad. And then I bought a Peloton, and I just follow Peloton. Like, they just tell me what to do, there’s programs.

So I removed all the frictions, and not only frictions, those exercises turn into fun. And now they became what I do every day. I turn this type of thing to exercise. I became a better worker, a better salesperson by using easy discipline. I became a better father by doing easy discipline. So I turned all kinds of goals I have in life that I’m not good at into something that I enjoy. And now I have a great time in everything I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot in terms of you identified a friction point, “I don’t know what the heck to do,” and then you found a solution, “Ah, the P90X guy tells me exactly what to do. Friction resolved.” And then you do it, you feel good, you see a result, and then you look forward to it.

So it’s a very beautiful pathway by which momentum is liberated and grows. I dig that a lot. So this is a nice contrast to, you say that bullying ourselves doesn’t get the job done. Talk to us about that, the alternative approach that’s not going to work.

Jia Jiang
Yeah, the alternative is like, “I know this is hard and I’m going to do it because I’m a badass,” right? You have this mindset.

Pete Mockaitis
David Goggins style.

Jia Jiang
I’m not going to try to mention him, but I actually see a lot of people who are falling into that type of mindset. The thing is, it can work. That’s the thing. It can work, but not in the long term. Over the long term, we burn out. Like, there’s a short-term success and long-term success, right?

If you bully yourself, you’re like, “I’m going to do, like, three months of David Goggins.” Most people can’t do it. Some people can. A few can. But the thing is, you can’t turn that into a lifestyle. You just can’t.

In my book, I write about Sisyphus, in the Greek mythology, the guy would push up a rock out up a mountain just all day, and then the rock will roll back down, right, Sisyphus goes back down and keeps pushing.

And most people feel like Sisyphus because you’re always going to be pushing. The gravity is always against you. However, I have an alternative version of that story. I’m like, “Why does he keep doing it? If he has no choice, then he’s dead already, he has no free agency. But if he has free agency, that means he must go back. He must be the person who goes back down and does it.”

“And why does he do it? That must mean he likes pushing rocks, right? He’s having a good time, and that’s why he enjoys it, even though it never gets to the top.” So I was like, “Okay, how can we flip that script in our lives, in our work, for us to enjoy the work rather than just thinking about the results, just the top?”

So that’s also the cover of my book. That’s actually my T-shirt, you know. I have this, like, this guy just floating upward with a rock rather than pushing upward. So can work lift you up rather than actually push you down?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. I was looking at your book and your book cover, and, yeah, “Oh, I see, that’s Sisyphus, except his rock is, like, a helium balloon floating upward.” And it’s sort of easy and enjoyable because, hey, we love balloons. My kids, they can’t get enough with a balloon and go wild.

Okay. Well, you’ve got a whole framework. So how about you walk us through that? And then I just want to go example, example, example, right, in terms of, like, “Okay, that works great for exercise. Cool. But how do I deal with email? I hate email. How do I deal with…?” Well, fill in the blank.

The thing, cold calling, you said sales, you know, “Hey, there’s a thing I need to do to get where I want to go, but, ugh, dreadful is where it lands on the continuum, far from delightful.” So maybe walk us through your framework, and then let’s just apply it again and again and again so that folks feel like, “Oh, okay, let’s get after it.”

Jia Jiang
Okay, so my framework is called EASY, so E-A-S-Y. E stands for enjoyment, right? That’s what I was talking about, “How can you turn your everyday work into fun, into more enjoyable than before, and use that enjoyment to fuel you rather than just you trying to be a badass?”

So in my book, I wrote about 12 different tools to how do you achieve easy, right? I’ll tell you one. One of the things that you want to have more enjoyment is you can be a game-changer, right? If you don’t like the game you’re playing, you can try to change the game.

For example, so you talk about this idea of making sales calls, right? If you are outcome-oriented, “I’m going to make the call,” you’re going to make the call and someone will slam the phone in your face. Some people will talk to you, give you a minute of their time, and then afterward, you may succeed or not, right?

There are more rejections than success, of course. Nowadays, people don’t pick up phones anymore. It’s tough. It’s really tough. But what if you changed the game? Instead of saying, “I have to make that call. My goal is to actually make the sales. By the end, I have a contract,” or whatever, the next step.

You’d be like, “What if I change my goal just to understand that person? What if I want to have a good conversation? Can I have an actual conversation with a person that actually shows who I am but also let me learn what that person is going through? Maybe have a game to be, like, I want to find that person’s biggest problem. Whether or not I sell to that person, I don’t care. But let me change the game.”

So now you start shifting games, right? So I’m someone who very much doesn’t like talking to people. I don’t. I don’t like making these calls. But I love solving people’s problems. I started performing the role of a therapist or a consultant, that helps me a lot. Now I’m having fun, because now it’s a different goal from the goal that I didn’t like.

So you can do roleplay and change your game. Call that a game-changer. That’s how you make your work more enjoyable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, So could you give us an example there with regard to throw a role play in there and, suddenly, a conversation that was not so fun is more fun.

Jia Jiang
Yeah, absolutely. So I used to be terrible at sales calls. Meaning, some people, like I’m great at speaking. That I know. If you get me on a stage and get me in front of your audience and talk about rejection, I can tell a great story and inspire your audience and get a standing ovation. Like, I can do that.

However, getting on sales calls is a different thing, right? Sometimes the potential client, they’re like, “Huh, this guy is interesting. I see his video. Now I got three to four potential speakers. I’m going to interview all of them to see if they’re actually crazy in real life, right? Are they who they are on the videos?”

I used to hate those calls because my mindset was, “Okay, how can I get the other person like me the most? And what do I do? And what thing does he or she likes to hear? Let me try to do a word salad or try to contort myself into a way that they will like my answer. Then, hopefully, they’ll hire me.” And that’s a terrible mindset.

I was tracking myself, “What’s my sales success rate?” I was at 18%. Like, I was getting rejected for most, like almost every time, but 18%

Pete Mockaitis
And they found you. They found you.

Jia Jiang
They found me. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re on the short list of finalists and there you’re only getting 18%. Okay.

Jia Jiang
Yeah. And I was like, “Well, I’m the rejection guy. I mean, I can take a rejection, that’s fine. But, man, this seemed like a drudgery.” So I started changing my two mindsets, right? The first, I’ll tell you, is “How do I have more fun? What if I changed my goal? Instead of thinking about how do I make them like me, what can I say to impress someone, let me be a consultant. Let me come in and maybe ask you questions.”

“What’s your business like? And what’s your goal? Why did you actually pick me as a candidate? Like, why? What are you trying to achieve? What is the everyday struggle of your audience member, of your association member, or as an employee who attends this event? What’s the day look like? Huh?” Then, right away, the dynamic changes.

Now I’m asking really good questions, and they would feel like, “Oh, this is a good question,” and they started telling me. Then I started getting a lot of information. The more information I get, the better solution that I would provide. So I do a role change, now I become a consultant on sales calls.

Boom! I had a better time. I like it a lot more. I’m no longer so afraid because now I’m just asking questions. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions and trying to understand the other person, right?

So that’s one thing that I can do to dramatically increase my…I do two things. I’ll tell you another thing, too, my other two things. But with the combination of these two things, I was able to get to 94% of success rate.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog!

Jia Jiang
It was dramatic. I mean, I track everything. And then after, I was like, “Man, I’m great at sales calls.” So that’s the first thing I did. So it’s, like, the enjoyment will make me like it more.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what’s the other thing?

Jia Jiang
The other thing is the A, right? A stands for artistry. So E stands for enjoyment, A stands for artistry. What does artistry mean? We’re not talking about, like, drawing stuff and singing stuff, but we’re thinking about being present.

So, again, the reason I used to hate these sales is because I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like people that much, you know? I read How to Win Friends and Influence People at a pretty young age. It tells you how to make friends, right, is to be genuinely interested in other people.

I wasn’t. I was just not. I don’t like people that much. But then one day, I went to Japan. I did this traditional tea ceremony. If you’ve ever been to Japan, I highly recommend it, traditional Japanese tea ceremony.

So, basically, you’re in a room with a host, right? The host will make tea for you. And every movement and every word she says is very present. Like, that moment is, you feel it’s almost like essential, if not spiritual experience when you’re there by drinking tea.

It’s never about tea. It’s about being in the presence of another person, and you giving your best. And the Japanese have a word for this called Ichiko Ichie. It, literally, translates into one time, one meeting. It means that every time we meet, that’s the only time we’re going to meet.

Even though we might meet again, Pete, again in the future or wherever, right, this moment will never be replicated. So, because this is a unique moment, I better be fully present, I better be giving my best. I translate this into the artist mindset because that’s what artists do. Artists take whatever the world gives to you and you make art in that moment. So nothing is perfect but you go deep with this moment.

Now how do I translate to sales calls? When I take the artist mindset into my sales calls, I’m no longer afraid. I just go deep. Everything the other person says, I reflect and I talk back. I dig deep into that conversation and forget about trying to impress someone. I forget about I’m trying to be good.

Every time, you know, if I get picked, I make over $20,000. I mean, let me forget about that. Let me just be having the best conversation. Let me give you my best. By having that mindset, the artist mindset, my goodness, I become a much better conversationalist. People like me more.

The result is people like me more, people buy me more, and I turn these sales calls into little pieces of art. And that’s how I went from the combination of both, right, the role-playing, the change of role, but also trying to make art. And I went from 18% to 94% of closing rate.

Pete Mockaitis
And so when you’re making art, it’s funny. I’m kind of feeling internally the shifts in terms of a lot of good things are happening automatically, like embedded within that notion, making art, just there in terms of like, one, yeah, you’re not thinking about yourself, the self-consciousness just disappears.

And just imagining, like, Bob Ross, or whomever, you know, with his happy little trees on the canvas, just that mindset and that groove, it’s calm, it’s present, it’s curious, it’s fun, it’s peaceful. And so it’s like, all that at once, in terms of I’m thinking about just, you know, charisma.

We recently had Olivia Fox Cabane on the show, and wow, you’re getting a lot of those internal vibes right, right away, just by imagining making art. But what is the art that we’re making? The art is, “I’m trying to craft a beautiful conversation, connection, understanding.” What is the art we’re crafting in this conversation?

Jia Jiang
Sometimes there’s no result, you know. I mean, you’re having a conversation where you want to be your best self. Like, the vibes, that’s all it matters. In the end, this is what easy discipline is about. If the vibe you have internally is right, you do the best work, and the other person feels it, right?

If you feel your vibe is right, very quickly, the other person is like, “Ooh, you know, this dynamic changes.” When you just think about, “I’m an artist now,” this whole dynamic changes between us, even having this conversation right now.

You start feeling differently, I start feeling differently, and then the result will be, when people are watching this, when people are listening to this, you can feel it, too, right? The vibe just changes, the feeling is good, and you get into the flow. When we get in the flow, whatever that comes out, it’s art, you know? It sounds very woo-woo, but it’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And then there’s also the internal state, because, I think, in my early days of podcasting, my vibe was different. It was still of service, but it felt a little bit more, I don’t know, aggressive. I mean, I don’t think I was ever mean.

But it’s like, “Okay, the clock is ticking. You have a ton of wisdom. We have a limited amount of time. Give me more wisdom. More, more, faster, better. What else? What else? Example. Story. Illustration. Tactic. You know, it’s like I want it all. And I want it fast because the time is ticking.” And that’s not a great vibe.

Jia Jiang
Because you had a goal, right? You had a goal, it’s like, “Oh, my goal is to get as much stuff from this person as possible and still stick into this little time we have. Let’s just keep go, go, go.” And when you have that, the vibe is not right.

And there’s no art being made by saying, “Go, go, go,” right? But real art is made by, “Oh, that’s interesting. Hmm.” Maybe pause a little bit, like, “I like what you were saying. My feeling’s different.” So that’s really making art. And that always produces better conversations. and most people enjoy it more.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so then, when you say artistry and making art, we don’t want to over-fixate on the product or the output so much as being in the vibe of we are creating something beautiful here now. And in so doing, that’s just good for everybody.

Jia Jiang
It really is. You get in flow and, usually, the best conversation of two people is just forgetting about themselves. They’re forgetting they’re in a conversation. They’re just, like, deeply immersed. And the thing is, their curiosity just pops up and you hear other people’s point of view or story. It brings the story out of yourself. You start responding with your own story. And then that’s two people co-creating art, right?

And I started having that mindset in everything I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. All right. Let’s hear about the S, systems.

Jia Jiang
Yeah, the system. So I tell the EASY is like four different characters. If the enjoyment is this happy go-lucky guy, that feels all good, the artist guy is like deep, right, very present. System is another character. He’s, like, very systematic, you know? What can I say?

I call this system smart. System smart is basically you try to figure out where you are, what you’re trying to accomplish, what your weaknesses are, and try to shape the environment that gets you to do more better input to get to the result.

Most people try to do work and take actions to achieve the outcome. System, meaning what can you engineer with your environment and your everyday activity, so you can actually manufacture better input that leads to the outcome? I’ll give you an example.

Okay, I learned this concept from Jim Collins, right? You know, he’s very prolific. He still keeps writing, and people ask him, “How can you be so creative and prolific? What’s your secret?” And you would think it’s like some sort of meditation, maybe some AI before anyone else had it.

And he’s like, “I have a stopwatch.” People are like, “What?” “Stopwatch.” So, it’s like, he has learned that the most creative and successful people in his endeavor, they spend at least 1,000 hours a year in 365 days to do creative work.

So he has a stopwatch, so every time, every day, when he had a conversation, when he started doing research, when he started thinking, when he started writing, doing creative work, he will start his stopwatch. And then when he’s done, he clocks out, right?

By the end of the day, he writes that number on a spreadsheet. And this spreadsheet go back to decades. He does this every day and all he makes sure is, he goes back to 365 days and it’s over a thousand hours, so cumulatively. And he said he’s never been under a thousand hours.

That’s his system. He has a system that kind of enables him to track the fun thing he loves to do. So that system works for him. I’m not saying it works for everyone. But it got me thinking, “Wow, what can I build, a system that fits me so I can be my best?”

So one of my biggest problems is this, right? Phone and also the computer. I get distracted all the time. I doom-scroll all the time. And because the world, nowadays, this whole world is engineered to distract us to get our attention. And for a long time, I didn’t like it. And, I mean, like, I want to be able to have better control of my own mind.

So I was like, “How can I have a system where I can be away from my distraction? I don’t have to find my distraction.” So every day, to write, I would go drive 45 minutes away from where I live, to this place called Half Moon Bay in Northern California.

I would park my car on the beach, overlook this ocean, and I sit in my car and write. That’s my office. I get the most beautiful view. I think I have the best office view in the whole world because of that place I park.

And then I don’t bring my phone. I don’t have my phone, so I don’t have data. I don’t have hotspot. I have none of that. I just have my computer without internet connection so I can just write, so I can fully focus.

And if my family needs to reach me, I wear my Apple Watch. I can take calls on the watch, but it doesn’t do hotspot with my watch. So I built a system for me, for me to be at my best to get the input. If I can be good at my input, the outcome is amazing.

So ever since I started building the system, my productivity just went way up. So that’s an example of system thinking, how to build a system for you to have your best work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the Y is yourself.

Jia Jiang
Y is called yourself. And this is more like a long-term thing. I grew up in Beijing, China. I met Bill Gates when I was 14. I heard him speak. I was mesmerized by him, you know, and I was mesmerized by his entrepreneur story, this idea of using technology to change the world.

So I wrote a letter to my family, telling them, “Hey, I’ll be the Chinese version of Bill Gates. By age 25, I’ll build the biggest company in the world and buy Microsoft.” I did write that letter, my family kept it for me all those years.

And then how do I do it? I’m going to replicate Bill Gates’ life. He went to school, and then he studied computer science. I’m going to study computer science. I couldn’t go to Harvard. I came to America, right, but I didn’t get to Harvard, but I’m like, “I can go to school early.”

So I went to school at 17, I go to a college. I was like, “I’m going to finish college in three years. I’m going to come off a boy genius. I’m going to then start building my company and, very quickly, I’ll be the next Bill Gates.”

Well, the problem is I’m not Bill Gates. That’s the problem. Like, I don’t have his mind. I don’t have his interest in programming. I hated programming, and then my college was miserable. Instead of spending, like, three years to graduate, as I thought, I spent over five years. I’m not ashamed to say it because I was not a good programmer.

Even after college, I started finding jobs and I sucked at my jobs. And I worked really hard. I’m just trying to push up the rock on the hill, right, doing programming every day. Then one day, my boss called me in, he’s like, “Jia, consider yourself fired.” Okay, that’s not a good start of a conversation, no matter how you cut it, right?

But then he said, “Hey, we really like you. We see how hard you work. We like how you treat people, how genuine you are. How about we rehire you? We’ll put you in another job. How about we call this thing…?”

So they came up with a new job title called client services engineer. I’ve never heard of that job title before, I’ve never heard that since. But he’s, like, “How about you serve our customers and write a script for them, rather than writing our main software?”

And then my whole life, my whole career trajectory changed that day because I love that new thing. I love solving problems for people. I love helping them. And then I became better. I no longer felt like I was a loser. I was never fired again since then. I was having a good time. And this is called yourself.

A lot of times, we have a goal that’s from outside that either someone put it in us or we install that in ourselves. But I was, like, “Instead of having that goal, what if you actually learn who you are, and then have that dream come out of you?”

So right now, I don’t even follow that tech entrepreneur dream anymore because that’s not who I am. I’m really good at writing. Now I know I’m really good at writing, I’m really good at speaking. So I said, “What if I build my dream out of that? What if I can be a writer for the rest of my life? I’ll be happy.”

So I didn’t like myself that much before because I couldn’t get that goal, but now I love myself and I’m excelling in the things I do because I’m doing who I am. That’s yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, excellent stuff. Well, I’d love your take now, it seems like these are some big ideas that we can put into practice in all kinds of different contexts. I’d love to get your pro tips for when you’re in the heat of battle, there’s a thing you know needs doing, and now is a fine time to do it based on the calendar and opportunities and availability, and yet, “Ah, I don’t want to,” what do we do?

Jia Jiang
Try to turn that, somehow, turn that into a game, okay? Turn that into a game to see, okay, by the way, I faced this. I still face this every day. Sometimes the most important thing you know is important, and because you’re so delaying it, that feeling of delay actually makes this thing worse, right? And so you turn that into a game.

You’re like, “Okay, what can I do, and just give myself 15 minutes, just do this task? What’s the best I can do in 15 minutes? Let me contain it. All right.” Whatever that comes out, it was, like, you know, your 15 minutes is a very short amount of time, right? It depends on what the task is. But I try to contain it.

I’m like, “I’m going to go nuts in the next 15 minutes. Let me start my clock. Just 15 minutes, go nuts on this to see what kind of art I can create.” That’s the artist mindset, right? And then whatever it is, it is. And then, usually, when I get started, when 15 minutes is done, a lot of times I’m not done. A lot of times I’m like, “Actually, I’m in the zone. Like, I’m in the zone.”

To get over procrastination, the best thing is just get started. Sometimes you can’t even get started. That’s the biggest friction. But when I have this container, just 10, 15 minutes, that’s it. “Let me dig deep. Let me have fun in the next 10, 15 minutes and I’ll have a coffee.” And then you get started, right? And then a lot of times, you’ll finish a task, and a lot of times you’ll do a good job.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, understood. So just getting started gets the momentum going, certainly. And then, any pro tips on, in fact, the getting started part?

Jia Jiang
Yeah, I mean, I have a secret. Sometimes just getting that is hard. I totally can understand. I call my wife, I was like, “Can I borrow you?” She was like, “What do you need?” I’m like, “Can you sit with me for 10 minutes? Just watch me and do this.”

And then it doesn’t have to be your wife. It can be anyone. It can be my son. I could get my friend. And it’s like, “Hey, are we friends or what?” They’re like, “Yeah, we’re friends.” “Can I borrow you for 10 minutes?” “For what?” “Just sit here with me, watch me get this started.”

And sometimes that’s it. That’s crazy. It’s just, like, you fire up that Microsoft Word or Google Sheet, whatever you’re doing, right? You fire it up, start doing, that’s it. You get started. Having that person to get you sitting here with you, you get it started.

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

Jia Jiang
A lot of times, when we’re trying to achieve something, right, and we think worse. We think we have a lot of flaws, and I used to think I had a lot of flaws, I still do. But I used to think those flaws are just there, just obstacles stopping me from achieving my dreams.

But now, those flaws are treasures, they’re assets, because I get to learn myself, and I get to bring them and try to build systems around them. And I wouldn’t be able to write this book, Easy Discipline, without those flaws. This book is all about my flaws, the how to actually turn your flaws into your treasures, into your advantages.

So whatever flaws you think you have, whatever part of you, you don’t like yourself about, switch it around. Think about those, start using, start mining those flaws, start just turning them into good stuff, and you’ll like yourself a lot more.

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

Jia Jiang
I found this quote, and it’s from Charles Bukowski. And he was like, “Who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to be.” And I love that quote. But I even made some modification on that quote, “Who you were before you told yourself who you were supposed to be.”

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

Jia Jiang
So one of the books that really inspired me was a book called Made to Stick. It came out about 20 years ago, still one of my favorite books by Chip and Dan Heath. They write about how ideas travel.

So there’s tons of research in there. One of them is saying, when you can make an idea more surprising, the idea will travel farther. So when you make the idea more emotional, it goes farther. So, yeah, it just tells that sometimes how you tell stories, the stories you tell determines how sticky, how influential it is.

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

Jia Jiang
Drive every day. I manufacture a commute to a place I write. And during the commute, I listen to audiobooks and nothing else. I get myself in the mood. I get myself inspired. So when I stop, just ideas pop up.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear them quoted back to you often?

Jia Jiang
“Rejection is like a chicken. It’s either yucky or yummy. It depends on how you cook it.”

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

Jia Jiang
You can search me on Substack, and I write. I definitely write every week and sometimes more.

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

Jia Jiang
Find one thing that you love the most. Just figure out one thing. What’s that thing that, of all the things you do at your work, you love the most? And then you tell yourself, “What if you just go even deeper on that thing? How about you go nuts on that thing and maybe you do nothing but that thing that you love the most for your work for a day to see what happens?” And maybe that thing can become the foundation of your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Jia, thank you. This is fun.

Jia Jiang
I had a great time. I had a great time. Thank you for having me.