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Dec 10
0

625: How to Be Happier, More Fulfilled, and More Effective Every Day with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar

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Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar says: "The problem is not the stress. The problem is the absence of recovery."

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar discusses the fundamental principles that help us lead happier, more effective lives.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why many ambitious people end up unhappy 
  2. Why chasing happiness won’t make you happier—and what will 
  3. How to find your motivation in just five minutes 

 

About Tal

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar is the co-founder of the Happiness Studies Academy, as well as the creator and instructor of the Certificate in Happiness Studies and the Happier School programs. 

After graduating from Harvard with a BA in Philosophy and Psychology and a PhD in Organizational Behavior, Tal taught two of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history: Positive Psychology and The Psychology of Leadership and taught Happiness Studies at Columbia University. He is an international, best-selling author whose books have been translated into more than 25 languages. 

 

Resources mentioned in the show:

 

Thank you, sponsors!

Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tal, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Thank you, Pete. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to chat with you. I’ve read two of your books long ago and so much good stuff to dig into. So, maybe could you open us up with a little bit of a background on how you became an expert teacher on happiness?

Tal Ben-Shahar
So, I became interested in happiness because of my own unhappiness. I was an undergraduate at Harvard studying computer science, of all things, and I found myself, in my second year, doing well academically and doing well in athletics, I played squash, doing quite well socially, and yet being very unhappy. And it didn’t make sense to me because, in terms of what I’d learnt until, and I checked all the boxes, I did everything that I thought I needed to do to be happy and yet I was very unhappy.

Now, I remember, this was a very cold Boston morning, there were many of those, getting up and going to my academic adviser and telling her that I’m switching majors, and she said, “What to?” And I said, “Well, I’m leaving computer science, moving over to philosophy and psychology.” And she said, “Why?”

And I said, “Because I have two questions. The first question is, ‘Why aren’t I happy?’ Second question, ‘How can I become happier?’” And it’s with these two questions that I then went on to get my undergraduate degree in philosophy and psychology, then studied education across the pond, in the other Cambridge. And then back to Harvard for my PhD, all the time asking, “How can I help myself, individuals, couples, families, organizations, and, ultimately, nations, increase levels of happiness?”

Actually, I did become happier as a result of my studies, then I went on to share what I’d learnt, and what I continue to learn, with others.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s great. I got a chuckle out of “About the Author” picture on the back of one of your books. You didn’t look super cheery, but you’re smiling a lot, so…

Tal Ben-Shahar
Well, I’m smiling a lot today, at the same time, I’m not always cheery. Happiness is not about a constant high. That’s a myth and illusion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’re going to dig with that, too. But I want to know, in your personal case, what did you discover was missing or, for you, what was like the discovery or the practice or the thing that made a big difference for you?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yeah. So, for me, the main thing was realizing that happiness doesn’t come from success. This is the model that most people have in their mind. They think that once you’re successful, once you achieve your goals, once you reach the summit, the peak that you’ve been aiming for, then you’ll be happy. That’s a misconception. That’s a misunderstanding of what a happy life is about. At best, success, arrival, achievement lead to a temporary high, nothing more.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I remember in your books you talked about often it’s a relief as opposed to happiness that we experience in those victories.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yeah, exactly that. So, it’s a temporary relief. It’s what I describe as negative happiness. Why negative happiness? Because you need to go through a lot of pain and suffering and discontent. And when that goes away, you feel the relief, and you mistake that relief for happiness. You know, it’s a little bit like having a terrible headache, and then you take a pill and you feel better, and it’s such a relief, you’re happy, but it presupposes going through a lot of pain before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, one key thing for you was the distinction associated with the relief and then the success, the achievement. Any other key discoveries that made the impact for you?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yes. So, another key discovery is about goals, in general. You know, there are essentially two dominant models when it comes to happiness. The first dominant model is it’s all about achievement, it’s all about getting there, arriving at that peak. That’s one model, it’s future-oriented. The other model is present-oriented. It’s all about being in the here and now, being present. And when you can be fully present, that’s when you can be fully happy.

And over the years, I shifted, as many people do, between the two models, and for a while I thought, “Okay, it’s all about finding a meaningful goal,” and then for a while I thought, “Okay, goals don’t do it for me or for anyone as far as I can see. Let me just focus on the present.” And in many ways, the future-oriented model is associated with the West. The present-focused model is associated with the East. And what I’ve realized, and what the research tells us, is that actually we have to synthesize the two models. The challenge, of course, is how to do that. How do you find the golden means, so to speak?

And the answer is that we need both, meaning we need to have a future goal. We are future-oriented creatures. We do need to have something that we strive, something meaningful, significant, in our life that we want to attain. We need that. At the same time, after we have that goal, then it’s time to let it go. Then it’s time to say, “Okay, I know where I’m going, I know my direction, I know where that peak is that I want to reach, and now I can just focus on the journey.”

And let me give you a personal example which, for me, is very timely. So, I have a book coming out on the 27th of April. That’s the date that my publisher gave. So, I have a very specific goal, a future goal. It’s a personally meaningful goal, which is of course important if we’re concerned with happiness. So, once I have that goal, I can let go of it. How do I let go of it? I say, “Okay, it’s in the future. Now, what I need to do is spend three, four hours every day writing in the present moment.” So, this morning, before this, I sat down for over three hours and I wrote.

When I wrote, I was in the present moment. I was focused on the here and now. I didn’t constantly think, “Oh, April 27th. Oh, I have to get to that mountaintop.” Not at all. That played its role as far as I’m concerned, and now I can let go and focus on the present moment, on the here and now, which helped me enter a state of being fully present or a state that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as flow.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. Thank you. Well, so let’s zoom out a little bit beyond your own experience. So, you spend a lot of time with Harvard folks, an ambitious bunch. Can you share, our audiences also are ambitious, any recurring observations associated with happiness and ambition that you saw over and over again that How to be Awesome at Your Job listeners should know as well?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yeah. You know, very often, this is unfortunately quite common, we see very successful people, in fact, people whom we would describe as the most successful members of our society, we see them becoming depressed or addicted, whether it’s alcohol or drugs or even, in many cases, suicide. And the question is, “Why?” Why does a person who seemingly have it all opt for drugs, alcohol, or suicide? And here lies the answer. It’s because of the model, the false model, that they have internalized from a very young age.

So, let’s take an example. So, you have an individual whose dream it is to become a famous movie star, and he is unhappy as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult. However, through his unhappiness, he constantly and consistently tells himself, “That’s okay because when I make it, when I become a famous movie star, then I’ll be happy.” So, that belief sustains him.

And years go by, years where he’s unhappy, however, continues towards the goal. And then, eventually, he makes it and he becomes a success and, suddenly, he has more money than he knows what to do with, he can buy anything. And he buys himself the best and the fastest car and the most beautiful home in the most prestigious neighborhood, and he can have any partner, basically, that he wants, and he’s living the dream, and he’s finally happy. He has made it. And that lasts for a month, six months, maybe a year?

And then very soon after he makes it, he goes back to where he was before, psychologically speaking, emotionally, he’s once again unhappy. He’s once again, in fact, miserable. Only this time he doesn’t have the illusion to sustain him, telling him that, “When you make it, then you’ll be happy,” because he’s made it, he’s there. But he realizes there’s no there-there. And then he becomes despondent. Because, you see, the difference between sadness and depression is that depression is sadness without hope, and he no longer has hope now. He no longer has hope that reality can provide him with happiness. So, he looks for the answer outside of reality. What’s outside of reality? Well, alcohol or drugs or the ultimate exit from reality, which is suicide.

The belief that success or outcome or arrivals will make us happy, that’s an illusion and it’s a sinister illusion because it’s causing millions and millions of people around the world, ambitious people, well-intentioned people, to reach a dead end.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that is powerful and well-said. Thank you. That rings true and explains a lot of things all at once. I want to shift gears for just a smidge. So, the goal of happiness, in and of itself, is a great one. I want to make a connection. I’m thinking a little bit about some Shawn Achor work with The Happiness Advantage. Can you share the linkage between being happy and being awesome at your job?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Sure. So, there is a lot of research that shows that success doesn’t lead to happiness but there is also a lot of research that shows that happiness does lead to more success.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Tal Ben-Shahar
For example, if you increase levels of wellbeing, even by a little bit, I’m not talking radical transformation here, but if you increase levels of wellbeing by a little bit, creativity levels go up. We’re more likely to think outside the box. We’ll be more innovative. You increase levels of happiness even by a little bit, you become more engaged, more productive, whether you’re in school or in the workplace. Increased levels of happiness, and relationships improve significantly, or if you’re thinking about the workplace, teamwork improves.

In school, grades go up. In organizations, performance increases. Profits, revenues go up if you increase levels of wellbeing; retention rates go up. So, happiness is a good investment. It’s a good investment as an end in and of itself because it feels good to feel good, but it’s also a good investment in terms of other outcome measures, other KPIs, key performance indicators, that organizations, whether businesses or schools, are interested in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so a double whammy, being happy feels good and increases performance. So, let’s dig in then, how does one learn to become happier? What are some do’s and don’ts, some practices to start and stop?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yeah. You know, Pete, the first thing that we need to keep in mind, remember, is what has been coined “the paradox of happiness.” So, what’s the paradox? So, on the one hand, as the studies have established, happiness is good for us, so most people want to be happy. Again, because it feels good, because of all the other benefits thereof.

On the other hand, there’s also research, and this is by Iris Moss and others, showing that people who value happiness, in other words, people who get up in the morning and say, “I want to be happy,” or, “Happiness is important for me,” they actually tend to be less happy, they actually tend to be lonelier. And loneliness is a very strong predictor of depression, so we have a problem here that, on the one hand, we were told and we know that happiness is good for us, we want it therefore. On the other hand, we also are told that if we value it and it’s important for us, then we’re going to be less happy.

So, how do you resolve this paradox? And is it self-deception? Do you tell yourself, “You know, I actually don’t want to be happier, wink-wink, I actually do”? That’s not the way to do it. What do we do then? How do we resolve this paradox? The way we resolve this paradox is that we pursue happiness indirectly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Let me explain this. Let me explain this starting with an analogy. Think of the following analogy. Sunlight. You’re looking at the sunlight. What happens? It hurts. It burns. Unpleasant. So, instead of looking directly at the sunlight, what you can do is break the sunlight down and look at it indirectly. So, how do you break it? You break it using a prism and then you look at the colors of the rainbow, and you can savor them and enjoy looking at the sunlight indirectly.

In the same way, pursuing happiness directly, that’s unhealthy, unhelpful. But what if you break down happiness and then pursue those elements that make up happiness? Then you’re pursuing happiness indirectly. Now, this insight was actually described by John Stuart Mill 160 years ago. Today, we have the research to back it up. So, we know that if we get up every day and say, “I want to become happier,” we’ll actually become less happy. However, if I pursue the elements that make up happiness, for example, a sense of meaning in my work or at home, or if I pursue relationships which are one of the elements of happiness, that’s pursuing happiness indirectly, and that resolves the paradox, and that can actually lead us to becoming happier.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then let’s talk about elements. Is there a collectively exhausted set of these elements? We got meaning, we got relationships. If there is a red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, you know, lay it on us, what are the other colors?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Exactly. So, what are the colors of the metaphorical rainbow? My colleagues and I have been, obviously, working on this for a long time, and looking at positive psychology, however, also looking at general psychology as well as philosophy and theology and literature and neuroscience, we have created a model that brings together the different elements of happiness, the fundamentals, the basics, the primary colors, so to speak. And there are now three primary colors, there are five primary elements to happiness, and here they are.

The first element is spiritual wellbeing. Spiritual wellbeing, we could, of course, find it through religion. However, it doesn’t have to come through religion. It comes through a sense of meaning and purpose in life and through being present in the here and now. So, if I’m present to a blade of grass or to a person sitting in front of me, and truly present in the here and now, this potentially is a spiritual experience.

Then there is physical wellbeing. Physical wellbeing is about nutrition, it’s about exercise, it’s about sleep or rest and recovery, in general, it’s about touch. We are also physical beings. Next is intellectual wellbeing. So, intellectual wellbeing is, for instance, about curiosity. You know, Pete, that people who ask many questions, who are constantly learning, they actually live longer. In other words, it strengthens our immune system. They’re also happier. So, learning and deeply engaging, whether it’s with a text or with a work of art or with nature, deeply learning also contributes to our intellectual wellbeing, into our overall happiness.

Then there is relational wellbeing. The number one predictor of happiness is quality time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. Relational wellbeing also has to do with the relationship we cultivate with ourselves, which is obviously important. And, finally, it’s emotional wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing refers to our ability to deal with painful emotions, which are an inevitable part of life, of every life, as well as our ability to cultivate pleasurable emotions, whether it’s joy, gratitude, love, and so on.

So, these five elements – spiritual, physical, intellectual, relational, and emotional, that make up the acronym SPIRE – these are the five elements of a happy life. And when we pursue these elements, then what we’re doing is we’re indirectly pursuing happiness and contributing to our overall happiness, circumventing the paradox.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is excellent stuff. And I think, right then and there, that can trigger things for listeners right away in terms of, “Aha. Well, I’ve totally neglected maybe some spiritual practices,” or, “I’ve been eating out boxes recently instead of having salads, etc.” or, “Hey, instead of really channeling my curiosity into rich, engaged learning stuff, I’m just looking at headlines which aren’t really deeply satisfying,” intellectual needs there, and then relationally and emotionally. So, that’s a lineup.

I’m curious, when it comes to dealing with negative emotions and cultivating positive emotions, I imagine there are some not-so-healthy ways you could do trying to do that and some better approaches. What are the do’s and don’ts here?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yeah. So, this is very important. In many ways, I see the foundation of happiness. The foundation of happiness is, first of all, accepting unhappiness, or more specifically, when we encounter, when we experience painful emotions, what we need to do is embrace them, accept them. Now how do we embrace and accept painful emotions? Well, we can shed a tear. That’s one way of expressing painful emotions. We can talk about them, whether with a therapist, or coach, or our best friend, or partner. Or we can write about painful emotions.

There’s a lot of research, wonderful research by Penny Baker, Laura King, and others on the value of journaling. And when we write about our most difficult experiences, traumatic experiences, we are expressing them, we are giving them space rather than rejecting them, and then they do not overstay their welcome. There’s a beautiful poem by a Sufi poet, Rumi, from the 13th century, called “The Guest House.” And in “The Guest House,” Rumi talks about how we need to welcome all thoughts, all emotions, into our house just like we would welcome guests. Why? Because they are messages from the beyond.

Now, I don’t know whether or not they are messages from the beyond, but what I do know is that when we accept them and embrace them and welcome them, like we do guests, then they come in, we experience them, and then they leave. Whereas, if we reject them, the paradox once again here, is that they only intensify, grow stronger.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, so I’d like to zoom into in my own experience, some days I’ll have, well, I call the BLAHs, it’s an acronym, it’s that ordinary tasks, they aren’t that big of a deal, call it like email, or making dinner, or something, on some days they just feel a little extra BLAH, a little extra boring, a little extra lame, annoying, hard or hassle, and it’s not that hard or annoying or lame really to do any of these things, but some days they just feel like that, an extra dose. So, what is your recommendation in terms of best practices when we’re just having one of those days where there’s some extra BLAH associated with normal stuff? What should we do?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yes. So, there’s a lot of great research, much of it done in Carleton University in Canada, on procrastination. If you can believe it, there’s actually a procrastination lab. I don’t know whether they get any work done but it exists, and they actually do get a lot of work, a lot of great work done. And the most important research coming out of the procrastination lab, to my mind, is, well, they have coined the five-minute takeoff.

The five-minute takeoff is about starting whatever it is that you want to do even if you don’t feel like doing it. Why? You see, procrastinators, and, by the way, the majority of people would classify themselves as procrastinators, and would pay a high price for seeing themselves as procrastinators, meaning a high psychological price.

So, procrastinators have the mental schema, the model, that motivation must precede action. In other words, for me to act to do things, I have to feel really motivated. Some people take it even further extreme, and their argument is that, or they believe that, inspiration must precede action. This is a false model, and this is a model that leads, inevitably, to procrastination because, very often, as you point out, we have those BLAH days, very often we don’t feel like doing the work even if, overall, we like our work, or if it’s not too taxing and even pleasant overall. We all have those days when we just don’t feel like getting out of bed or working.

And if one has the mental model that motivation must precede action, well, then there’ll be no action because there’s no motivation. People who do not procrastinate, or procrastinate little, because we all do some of it, they have the model the other way around. They understand, they recognize, that action usually precedes motivation, that action needs to precede inspiration. In other words, even on days when they wake up and they don’t feel like working, “So what? We can still take action even if we’re not motivated,” and they start doing it. That’s the five-minute takeoff. And after five minutes, or it could be 10 or 20 minutes, motivation comes, energy comes, and then they continue to work. There is inertia that’s created by the action.

In other words, simply put, fake it till you make it, or fake it till you become it. That is the best advice. And this is advice that I heed and many people do, and that’s how you get work done. I study a lot about the lives of writers, of authors, because I can learn a lot from them. And, inevitably, what the prolific writers do is they have a set of rules when they write and how much they write. And it doesn’t matter if they’re inspired to write, or they feel like writing, or they’re really motivated to write. It doesn’t matter. They sit down and write. And if they have to fake it till they make it, or fake it till they become it, then so be it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that five-minute guideline for the procrastinators, is there some magic to that number? Like, that’s kind of enough for the motivation to kick in pretty often or is it just sort of arbitrary?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Yes, and yes. So, it is pretty arbitrary. However, for most people, five minutes is enough, and if it’s not, then have another five minutes. There are days when a minute is enough, and there are other days when an hour is not enough, but it doesn’t matter. An hour is simply 12 five-minute sessions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true. Let’s talk a little bit about being in the pandemic, that has taken a toll on people’s happiness. Are there any particular threats or practices that are specifically relevant for this context?

Tal Ben-Shahar
I think most of the things that are recommended for regular times are good for difficult times only more so. For example, the rule of thumb in terms of the minimum amount of physical exercise that one should do is 30 minutes three times a week. The three times a week is a lot better than two times a week and it’s not much worse than four times a week.

So, this would be the rule of thumb, this is how much I used to practice pre-pandemic, three times a week, 30 minutes each time. During the pandemic, because stress levels are generally, for most people, higher, I would recommend doing four or five times a week. This is what I am doing now. Similarly, with gratitude, if usually even once a week of doing the gratitude exercise contributes to happiness, during difficult times do it twice a week or seven days a week. Just do more of the basics. In other words, increase the dosage of the regular interventions, of the regular practices.

Mediation. That’s another very helpful practice. And, again, mediation can be sitting down and focusing on the air going in and out, or it can be doing yoga, or it can be mindfully listening to your favorite music. These are all forms of mindful meditation. So, if you usually don’t do it, well, that’s a good time to start now. Or if you do it five minutes a day, bring it up to 10 minutes a day. So, go back to basics is what I recommend and be vigilant about them.

I often ask my students, “When is the time that you’re least likely to exercise?” And, invariably, they say, “Oh, exams, because that’s when there’s just too much pressure. I don’t have time to go to the gym or go out for a run, and then have to shower after that. Too time consuming.” And my response to that is, “When you are stressed, exam period or pandemic, this is the time to exercise, even more important than during ‘normal times.’”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And I think about these practices, I’m curious, are there any particular practices to do at work, whether it’s mental or the means by which you approach a meeting or an email or the writing, kind of whatever maybe your deep focused work is? Any key ways that we can do work better with a happiness perspective?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Very much so. Very much so. So, let me begin with brief tips, some of which I’ve already mentioned, and then go into something which I think is so, so important, and I’ll elaborate. So, first of all, simply, at the end of each day, write down one thing that you made progress on. This simple practice was introduced, described by Teresa Amabile who’s a professor at Harvard Business School in her book The Progress Principle.

And she found that people who focus on the progress that they make at work, and it doesn’t have to be something major, it can be “I cleared my desk or my inbox,” or, “I had a good client meeting,” or whatever. People who do it regularly are not just more satisfied with the work, they’re also more productive as well as more creative in the workplace.

Then there is another very important element, and that is probably the number one reason that companies invite external speakers, or psychologists in particular, to speak is because of stress. Before there was the COVID-19 pandemic, there was the stress pandemic. Burnout is a very common phenomenon in the workplace today. There is, fortunately, something that we can do about it. You see, many people perceive stress as highly problematic. In fact, many people talk about stress as the silent killer, as the destroyer of innovation, creativity, joy in the workplace.

However, once my colleagues and I started to study stress, we realized actually that stress in and of itself is not a problem, but actually stress potentially is good for us. Think about the following analogy. So, let’s say you go to the gym and you’re lifting weights. What are you doing to your muscles when you lift weights? You’re stressing them. Now, is that a bad thing? Not at all. On the contrary, you go to the gym one day, two days later you go back to the gym, you lift more weights. Two days after that, you continue your routine. And over time, you actually become stronger, healthier, better off than you were before. Stress is not the problem.

The problem begins when you go to the gym and you lift weights, and then more weights, and then more weights, and the following day you do the same, more and more and more. That’s when the problems begin. That’s when you get injured. That’s when you get weaker rather than stronger. The problem, therefore, is not the stress. The problem rather is the lack of recovery. And that’s a problem in the gym physiologically, or in life, in the workplace, psychologically.

What we need to do, if we want to fulfill our potential at work, is find more times for recovery. Now, recovery can come in the form of a 15-minute break every 90 minutes or 2 hours, whether it’s a cup of coffee or chatting with colleagues or just hanging out or exercising. It can even be 30 seconds of closing our eyes and taking three deep breaths, five to six seconds in, five to six seconds out. That in and of itself can shift us from the fight or flight stress response or to what Herbert Benson, from Harvard Medical School, calls the “The Relaxation Response,” because the problem is not the stress. The problem is the absence of recovery.

Recovery is also getting good night’s sleep. There’s a lot of research on the benefits of sleep for productivity, creativity, of course, happiness, for physical health, mental health. Taking a day off is an important form of recovery. Vacation, of course, is an important form of recovery. And if we punctuate our crazy busy lives with periods of recovery, then we can make the most of our energy, and we can be at our best more of the time.

One more thing that is related to recovery. One of the reasons why we experience so much stress in our day-to-day work is because of multitasking. And multitasking is fine, we do it, it’s natural, it’s important at times. However, what we also need is to create, what I’ve come to call, islands of sanity throughout the day. Islands of sanity are times when we are single-tasking, when we’re only doing one thing, when we’re focusing on it, when we’re mindful. And it could be doing email, and it could be being in conversation with a colleague, and it could be writing the organizational strategy. It doesn’t matter. But single-tasking, islands of sanity amidst all the crazy, busy multitasking.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Tal, there’s been so much good stuff here you’re sharing, and I know you’re sharing a whole lot more in your Happiness Studies Academy. What’s this program all about?

Tal Ben-Shahar
Well, the Happiness Studies Academy offers certificate programs in that respond to two questions. The first question is, “How can I become happier?” The second question is, “How can I help others become happier?” And, of course, through happiness, given the relationship between happiness and success, we also become more productive, creative, improve our relationships, and so on. So, the Happiness Studies Academy offers practical applied interventions that we can employ in our personal lives as well as our professional lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. And so that’s conducted online, are there classmates or groups or cohorts, or how does that go down?

Tal Ben-Shahar
So, it’s all online, and it’s on our website, which is HappinessStudies.Academy.

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

Tal Ben-Shahar
Albert Camus, “In the midst of winter, I found within me an invisible summer.”

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

Tal Ben-Shahar
So, I think my favorite research is one that it’s a joint study that was conducted by the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School. And what they found was that the best way to increase our happiness levels is through giving, by contributing to others, by helping, by being kind and generous. And I love that because what it does is it takes the whole field of happiness studies to a place where it’s not just a solipsistic, individualistic pursuit but rather it’s a pursuit that contributes to our own wellbeing as well as to society. It’s a wholistic pursuit.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Tal Ben-Shahar
I’d have to say Mary Anne Evans, aka George Eliot, Middlemarch.

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

Tal Ben-Shahar
Realize, recognize, that becoming happier follows the same trajectory, the same routine as becoming better at any skill, which means we need to invest time and effort. It’s not enough to just know what leads to happiness. What we need to do is practice, implement, do the work.

Pete Mockaitis
Tal, this has been a treat. I wish much happiness in all your adventures.

Tal Ben-Shahar
Thank you very much, Pete. And thank you for doing the work that you’re doing.

Dec 07
0

624: How to Be More Engaging with Storytelling and Humor with David Nihill

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David Nihill says: "Our human brain is crying out for the story behind the numbers."

Comedian David Nihill shares his key techniques from his stand-up act that can help you become a better speaker.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The secret to creating stories that stick 
  2. How to use callbacks to delight listeners
  3. How to always remember what you want to say 

About David

David Nihill is a bestselling author of Do You Talk Funny, listed by Book Authority as the best book of all time on public speaking and storytelling. “One of the best speaking coaches out there” according to Forbes.com his work has been featured in Inc, Lifehacker, The Huffington Post, Forbes, The Irish Times, TED, and NPR. His videos have been viewed more than 40M times. David is a winner of the prestigious San Francisco Comedy Competition winner, runner up in the Moth’s largest US Grandslam storytelling competition and the first ever Irishman to have a special on Dry Bar Comedy.

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David Nihill Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
David, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

David Nihill
Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me all the way from exotic Ireland.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Well, it’s great to have you here and it’s a late night for you a bit, but you say there’s not much to do right now anyway.

David Nihill
Yeah. It was a very early night at 8:45 P.M. back in the days in Ireland before this COVID carry-on but now, with no pubs or bars or alcohol on tap, really, it is a much longer evening with a much earlier bedtime. The time just doesn’t go by as faster or as fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, understood. Well, you’ve got a lot of fun stores. In fact, you’re award-winning at storytelling. We’re going to learn some of your wisdom there and when it comes to being engaging and funny. But, first, could you open us up with the short version of your story of being an impostor?

David Nihill
I did impersonate a business fellow called Irish Dave who just happened to be an established comedian in Ireland, albeit with possibly the worst stage name in history, but nobody seemed to question that when in America so I did pretend to be a comedian called Irish Dave for a full year to try and get over a fear of public speaking in the worst way possible, which was to do standup comedy every single night multiple times a night. And I had a fake website, and I had fake Twitter followers, had Facebook fans at one stage. I was really big in India there for a while, which was slightly interesting despite, sheer of the fact, that you could go on Fiverr.com and buy fans from India at a very discounted price, which is ethically questionable, but definitely it was done. And that’s how we get booked in…

Pete Mockaitis
It’s forbidden in some contracts I’ve signed.

David Nihill
It is forbidden, yeah. Well, I faced no such legal technicalities, thankfully, a few years ago, and it just allowed me to get booked in a bunch of places. I really shouldn’t have been with very little experience and it snowballed and got a little bit out of control.

Pete Mockaitis
What’s so funny, well, in the US, it’s like, “Okay, your name is Dave and you’re Irish so you might be Irish Dave, so.”

David Nihill
By default, yeah. But there’s no way you’re going to turn up in Ireland, where like, “Oh, my God, it’s American Pete.” It will just seem too obvious. But you guys love that stuff.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. That’s fun. That’s fun. And I love, I saw some of your YouTube videos. I love how you make fun of Americans, playfully. The majority of our listeners are in the US but you have people from all over the world, so feel free to let her rip. I love it when folks with accents do an American accent. Can you lay one on us?

David Nihill
Oh, they’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve been doing it recently because in Ireland we have a requirement that you can’t drive more than five kilometers from your house, but technically I’m on vacation from San Francisco right now,” whenever I get pulled over, and it goes horribly wrong because they’d be like, “How many weeks are you here for?” And you’re like, “Three.” And Irish people just cannot pronounce the number three and the police obviously know that, and they’re like, “An American would never nail the word three like that,” and I think that’s what gives me away every time. But, yeah, I definitely have a horrendous range of American people’s accents.

You know, I figured out the hard way that more people speak Spanish probably than English in America, so I was like, “Let me just get my Latino voice down in Spanish.” Actually, the best voice is an American trying to speak Spanish, where it’s like, “Yo quiero un harmbergeza,” and you’re like, “That is not Spanish. You just completely used an American pronunciation there to order a burger.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it might you get you a lot of burgers because I think of a guy, he’s name is Nick, in college, he was from the UK, and he’s like, “Hey, so what do we sound like to you?” He said, “I don’t know. It’s kind of like, ‘Hey, guys, want to grab a burger and fries?” It’s like, “Okay. Thanks.”

David Nihill
And, you know, I must say, I poke fun at America but always in a lovely way. I like it a lot and it’s kind of been my home from my home for like 14-15 years, so it creates some great opportunities. You can’t beat the positive in America.

Like, in Ireland, if I announce to my friends that I was going to try and do standup comedy to get over a fear of public speaking, they would quickly label me an idiot and tell me I was wasting my time, where in America, they’d be like, “You should do that, man. That could be a great learning experience.” It’s a very different approach, and you guys definitely lean on the positive where we lean on the negative.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, let’s talk about it. So, you learn some things the hard way, and you’ve captured some of those learnings in your book, Do You Talk Funny? So, could you just lay it on us, first of all, sort of what do professionals have to learn from comedians when it comes to public speaking?

David Nihill
I think everything because the scary thing is like if you dig into people who teach public speaking or training, you realize that they haven’t clocked up that many hours on stage themselves, so you’re like, “Where are you actually getting this information from that you’ve put together?” They seem to ignore. If you’re a big subscriber to, say, Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 Hours Rule that he popularized that 10,000 hours it takes doing something to make a master, you’re really not going to find any other group other than comedians when you go down that research path that is doing the 10,000 hours and doing it in the most high-pressure environment possible.

Like, there is nothing more difficult than someone who’s paid money for you to make them happy when they’re having a horrible day, and just walking in, sinking a couple of shots, crossing their arms, and going, “Hey, idiot, entertain me.” That is horrendous. And imagine you do that night after night. Like, they estimate it takes comedians about seven years on average to be able to make a full-time income from comedy, and that pretty much pans out, in my experience, as accurate. That’s kind of putting two to three to four hours into your craft most days over a period of seven years. That is a very large amount of learning in a very painful way.

And the thing is, “What did they learn the hard way on that journey?” And most of the time it’s just a more succinct entertaining form of storytelling that you’re missing in the average world of any snooze fest corporate presentation, or even more so at the moment. Like, virtual meetings are scaring the life out of people emotionally where someone with an imaginary sombrero sitting in front of a background of a place they’ve never been to.

There was a guy on a call the other day with me, and he was sitting on a virtual toilet in the middle of the call, I was like, “That’s not good. Just make it stop now.” So, never on Earth have you had such an opportunity to stand out in such an easy way by doing something a little bit different and open the engagement in all your talks. Like, all you have to do, if you’re the average listener, is take four or five stories that you absolutely love to tell. They’re the ones that when you go to a college reunion or a work meetup with colleagues you just kind of forgotten about or haven’t seen in years, and they’re like, “Oh, Pete, you’ve got to tell that story. That’s the one. Tell it.” And you’re like, “Oh, come on, I tell the story every Christmas when we meet up for beers.”

But every one of us has those three, four, five core stories that we kind of forget about, that for some reason, when it comes to business public speaking, we abandon them. And we’d be much better off if we just rewrote them, change the word order ever so slightly, so we’d borrow something from the world of standup comedy which would be the structure to tell the story, i.e., start in the action, know what you’re going to say last, know the key point or the key funny bit and go your way to make that the very last word. That’s what makes your timing look really good. And, actually, try writing it out or listen to yourself giving that story and have it transcribed if you hate listening back to yourself, like most people do.

So, we use a tool like Rev.com and just put it on a script, and go. Well, I say a lot of waffle unnecessary words when I’m telling that story. Imagine I was a comedian and I only had a short time period to work with, “Could I tell that big long-winded story in one minute? And if I could, what would be the words that I use?” And just look at it because it just forces you to be concise.

Most people, like in business, where it’s like, “Let me share a story with you,” and most of us are like, “Oh, my God, I’m out of here because this is going to be terrible.” We love storytelling, but once they telegraph the intention to try and tell it in an environment where we’re not expecting it, we’re kind of go, “Oh, I’m out of here.” But it’s just little things like that. Like, a comedian never say, “Now, I’ve got a joke for you.” They just tell you a joke. So, it’s by telegraphing your intentions, you naturally change the expectations for something. And I think the world of business just gets so many of those things wrong in business presentations that comedians would never get wrong.

Do you ever go to a comedy club or like a business event? If you go to it, you’ll hear them do an introduction for a speaker. And most business speakers in presentations don’t realize that when you’re in a meeting, or you’re giving a speech, or you’re speaking at a conference, that your talk starts with your introduction. It does not start when you start speaking. So, a comedian knows that, and a comedy club knows that, so they use that to capture some sort of an anticipation and buildup and excitement and guarantee that they get everyone’s attention to get the speaker a round of applause and off to the best possible start.

So, if you go to…they’re around the Bay Area, there’s a conference called TechCrunch Disrupt, and they’d be like, “Our next speaker is Brian. Brian is a serious A investor in Call Comm. Brian has invested in capital stock. And Brian and me used to go skiing together. We were really early at this particular company. Brian is a really great standup guy. Welcome, Brian.” Everyone knows it’s Brian. We don’t care. We’re not really tuned in anymore. It’s gone on for too long.

But in a comedy club, you’re going to hear them, “Ladies and gentlemen, your next comedian just opened for Jerry Seinfeld. His comedy album has debuted number one on iTunes. He’s currently streaming on Netflix. Please welcome,” and the key word, which is the name is only said once, only said last, and that gets people’s attention because they’re asking, “Oh, who is it?” And then when you say the name, they’re naturally trained to clap. And then the whole talk gets off to a great start because you don’t have to sell yourself as the business speaker. You can give your introduction to someone, give them three key points, in that way your audience is like, “Oh, you can just come out and be yourself.”

In nearly every presentation you go to in the world of business, it doesn’t start like that because they just don’t know anything about the world of standup comedy and they ignore comedians as a source of wisdom. So, that’s what I went very deep into but it’s just the small things that make a huge difference.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I love it. You’ve already dropped specific tactics that are right there in terms of what is at the very end and how you build some anticipation, and that’s really good. I’d love it if maybe we could zoom out a bit and hear sort of, I guess, maybe, fundamentally, what makes something funny or engaging? Like, it’s kind of hard for me to pin down, like, why is one thing funny and another thing not funny?

David Nihill
Yeah. Well, funny is a subjective one. When you’re trying to bake funny content, always start with fun and so you can turn fun into funny and then you don’t have much of a failure. Also, if you attach to it that you’re never trying to tell a joke, you’re trying to tell a funny story, and the key word, the key with the funny just happens to be at the end. So, by moving that to the end, you’re maximizing people’s chances of reaction to it.

Then you’re taking a bit of pressure off yourself to be funny because no one knows you were trying to be funny in any way. The engaging comes from storytelling. Number one, always start with a story but do one very key thing. Allow the listener to see themselves in your shoes. That’s what makes it engaging. So, the audience, whatever story you’re telling is not about you, it’s about the audience. So, if you’re talking about your own mother, they’re picturing their mother. If you’re talking about the car that you had that was a beat-up car, that was your first car, and it was red and the exhaust pipe was hanging off, and it was a 1979 whatever it was, the minute you start talking about it, they start picturing their own car in their own head. So, you’re automatically trying to make the storytelling process visual, and your job as an engaging storyteller is to make that easy for people.

So, any of the key details, if it’s a nice one, it has a color. If it’s a person, it has a name, and that gives the signals that, “This is important. Pay attention.” You have a couple little twists when you’re trying to be engaging. You have to keep people hooked and you do it CSI-style. Remember that TV show? It was a bit scary back in the day. The minute you turned it on, you know, there’s a police investigation. The minute you turned it on, someone was dead, and in 10 seconds somebody was on fire, there was like a cat and a hippo, and you’re like, “What is going on in this thing?”

Pete Mockaitis
Something falls out of a window to their…

David Nihill
Exactly. They’re dead. “Who killed this priest and why is he dead within 10 seconds? Well, I better hang around and find out.” And that’s the natural curiosity with engaging stories that it does not start chronologically. You’re not walking through somebody through your LinkedIn bio or your resume or your job experience. You got to grab them right in the middle in the action. So, you never start off by, say, you’re climbing a mountain, you never want to talk about your mental decision to climb that mountain. You want to start near the summit of the mountain. Is there a chance you’re going to make the top? I don’t know. And then you change some of the key words when you’re telling that story to make them into present tense.

So, you never want to say, “I was on the side of the mountain, looking at the top.” It’s like, “I’m standing looking at the summit of the mountain and I can’t feel my feet anymore.” People are like, “Whoa, what’s happening?” And this changes the dynamics of the story instantly. So, if you listen to Snap Judgment, or NPR, or some of the award-winning storytelling podcasts, you’ll hear every one of those guys change the wording of the stories to the present tense because that brings it to life. And within it they’re going to be using a lot of comedic techniques like they will try and build in triple sets anytime they can, which is just basically coupling elements into groups of three, that number that Irish people cannot pronounce.

But three is the smallest number of elements that your mind needs to create and recognize a pattern. And all comedians and great gifted storytellers are doing is usually just breaking that pattern and that makes content memorable because three is easy to remember. But if I say, one, two, four, it’s only retrospectively that you can figure out that I was multiplying the numbers. So, it appears that I’m ahead of you a little bit. So, I always would give an audience apples, apples, oranges. When Chris Rock was talking about…he had a joke that’s a bit dated now, but it was like, “Women, all they need to survive is air, food, and compliments.” I mean, that’s not hugely amazing stuff and it’s dated now and it’s referenced, obviously, but it does demonstrate clearly that pattern is one, two, four.

And when you’re storytelling, people who incorporate those things, link the start to the finish, put the key words at the end and start in the action, use key details, colors, and names, people just see themselves within the story, and that’s what makes it engaging.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Wow, this so much good stuff, so fast. I’m loving it.

David Nihill
Yeah. Sorry, got excited there.

Pete Mockaitis
No, bring it more.

David Nihill
That’s kind of the tactical side of it. But there isn’t much more to it than that. Like, people have courses on storytelling, and you’re like, “Stop with your four-day seminar on storytelling.” This is an innate human thing that we all know how to do. We just don’t all know how to do it in the most succinct form possible. So, it’s just consciously editing out all those details that don’t need to be in there. And you, yourself, identifying the key point of the story, and go, “I know this one.” I tell this in a pub. Friend of my friends laugh. Like, when I tell this at the dinner table, “Where is the biggest reaction moment and what do people remember or what can they say back to me?” And you just need to take out words to get to those points quicker.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, all right. So, now, in your book, you lay out seven principles. We’ve already kind of hit a few of them here in terms of having it start right in the middle of things with a story. Can you walk us through some of the other key principles that we haven’t touched on yet?

David Nihill
Yes. My favorite by a mile is to build in a technique called a callback. And the beauty of a callback is, and this is for job interviews, for meetings, a callback is killer. It is simply a reference to something that was said in the moment that couldn’t have been pre-scripted or planned. It was enjoyable between you and that other person, and it looks extremely spontaneous.

So, in the world of storytelling or comedy, a comedian, Dave Chappelle is known for using a lot of callbacks where he’ll drop something at the start and he’s always going to come back to it later on. And a great story will always have the same thing. In the book, it’s called bookending technique. In a movie, where they drop something at the start, they put in some clues, and they’re always going to come back to it.

And just in the world of general presentation, you’re in a meeting, you’re in a job interview, you’re on a sales call, you can use this stuff daily. I was on a call the other day trying to pitch someone from Salesforce, and I knew through research, we had mutual friends who organize a pretty wacky party in San Francisco where they all dress up around Christmas as elves. All parties in San Francisco are kind of wacky, in fairness, given they’re half naked going around in a bicycle from some Burning Man calls that you didn’t really know. Now, I remember all of a sudden. I definitely have those nights up.

I was chatting to them and they knew about this elf party organized by one of their colleagues. So, at the end of the call, I’m like, “Well, listen, I look forward to speaking to you next week. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll shoot you an email. Worst-case scenario, I’ll see you at an elf party.” So, even in that conversation that would’ve taken place on a call, you know it’s got the rule of three, it’s got the triple set, it’s got the flip at the end of it, and it’s got the callback, the reference to the joke that was already shared between a couple of people.

So, I had to give a TEDx Talk, a very short notice, about a year ago and it ended up in front of like 2,400 people. And I’m sitting in the audience, which is a key cool thing a comedian can do sometimes, and any business speaker should do is watch the people before you. How many times in life have you seen a business speaker go on and talk about and referenced something that somebody else just talked about? And you’re like, “Well, you’re not even listening to the last person. Like, they already said this.”

So, I would always sit in the audience and just watch what’s happening before me. And I remember this lady standing there, and she’s just come on the stage, and she hasn’t got much of an introduction, nobody really knows her background. And there’s a smoke machine and it’s clearly broken because there’s way too much smoke in this theater. There’s 2,400 people and she’s the very first talk of the day kicking it all off. And she says, “I’m going to start this talk when I feel an earthquake,” and then she just stops and stands there in dead silence, and just the tension is multiplying by the second. And we got to about 40 seconds and people are vocally shouting out the words “Earthquake!” They haven’t a clue what’s going on.

And then, finally, she stops and goes, “Right. I felt one.” And up on the live feed pops a magnitude earthquake in Guatemala or somewhere, and she is actually a human cyborg, and she’s had these sensors fitted in her body that allowed her to feel any seismic plate shift anywhere in the world, and it’s one of the craziest things you’ve ever heard, but that wasn’t really said in the introduction. The audience didn’t know this so they just thought she was nuts for 30 to 40 seconds. But I’m sitting there and I’m like, “This is a perfect callback. This is something that I couldn’t have planned for,” so I’m super nervous, and I don’t have butterflies in my stomach. I have pigeons. Like, I’m sweating bullets, all the usual nerves that you’re getting ready when you’re going to do a talk. But rather than focus on that, I’m like just trying to remember what she said.

So, I went up, I’m standing on stage, and the same two thousand and three hundred, four hundred people are staring at me, and I was like, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m a bit nervous to be honest. I’m put off because I don’t know how to start this talk. I had initially planned to just stand here and wait for an earthquake but that’s been done already.” And they just cracked up, and this applause just keeps building and building, and I was like, “And you’re obviously a great audience because when she said earthquake, I left the building. Like, you didn’t even budge from your seats. How much did you pay for these tickets?” And now, they know, I couldn’t have planned for this. This is obviously in the moment.

And, again, it’s a technique that you’ll see in a lot of great stories and a lot of great live performances, and even just great job interviews where whatever the other person says, you got to listen enough to give it back to them. And in the world of comedy and storytelling, it just shows that you’re not separate from the audience; you’re actually one of the audience.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful and a great example to bring that to life in terms of it’s clear that that was not pre-packaged, it’s in the moment, it calls back to something unique because, I guess, if you called back to something, I don’t know, not that noteworthy.

David Nihill
Well, you don’t want to reference something not funny.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “I was going to red shirt but the last speaker was wearing a red shirt, huh.” It’s like, “Okay, none of us care about that. Like, we’re not at all moved by what you’re saying here.”

David Nihill
But then if you…Here’s an example of stuff that isn’t wildly exciting. I spoke at a Google conference recently, and it was a developer’s conference, and I sat in there watched the three speakers before me, and someone told the story about Indonesia, and they’re like, “Oh, my grandmother in Indonesia is kind of crazy.” And I was like, “All right. The audience laughed a bit at that. Noteworthy.” And then someone started talking about origami and linking their passion for origami to coding. I’m like, “All right. That’s a bit unusual. Noteworthy.” And then the biggest cheer of the morning, by far, was when someone gave a talk, and they said, “We need more Google credits.”

Now, I have not got a clue what Google credits are but these people were going wild for Google credits. So, like about doing my talk, and a comedian will do this all the time. They’ll get up in the first 30 seconds all pretty locked down unless they’re going to do the callback and go. So, what I did in the TEDx Talk was a bit risky because I haven’t established any relationship with the audience that I’m clearly going off script. So, the payoff is huge but the potential for failure is a little bit high unless you know a key thing. So, a smarter way to do that is prepare the first 30 seconds of your talk like a comedian would do or a great storyteller. Make sure you get off to a good start and then try the goofing around just a little bit so if it doesn’t pay off you can just go seamlessly back into what you’re talking about.

So, I get on stage at this Google event and I started my talk as I normally would, and I just stopped for a second, I’m like, “It’s an interesting day-to-day, I tell you. I’ve learned a lot. I didn’t know anything coding but now I know a lot about Indonesia and I’m scared of grandmothers over there, and origami and coding are linked. Who would’ve known? And, most of all, my biggest takeaway is what’s clear that everyone in this room should get immediately more Google credits.” And they go wild and it’s an applause break for someone they don’t know, who’s a stranger and an outsider, and definitely has impostor syndrome because what do I know about developers or coding. But they’re reacting to a technique.

Again, it’s the callback. It couldn’t be pre-planned but it is. It’s put into a structure that just allows you to move along seamlessly. And it’s nearly, like, a magician pulling back a magic trick, someone showing you, “Oh, actually, I’m using this structure where I just need to pick different elements every time.” But those elements are quite important. The biggest reaction has to be last. It’s the same as the rule of three. So, normal thing, normal thing, biggest thing. And you want to build recency into that as well. So, you want most recent mention, second most recent mention, third most recent mention, because then they know what you’re doing. Whereas, if you do it the other way around, they don’t catch on as quickly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, there’s so much good stuff here. So, again, to have rocking, engaging stories, we want to have the good or funny bit to be last; patterns and threes are great, are as callbacks; it’s absolutely critical that it is relatable, like, “I see myself in your story, in your shoes”; and it’s succinct in that we’re getting just the most relevantly excellent bits and stripping away excess words and sentences and details that don’t need to be there; and some details like colors and names. Tell me, any other critical ingredients for a great storytelling?

David Nihill
Yeah, you’ve hit them all. I just think you have to love the story you’re telling is the probably the most critical one. Like, you actually have to dig it yourself and you actually have to get a bit excited when you’re telling it, and it has to be just from the heart. And the more personal it is, the better, the more unique to you. And you may be like, “Oh, that story is inappropriate.” It’s not if you make it appropriate. You can tell a story that is not as you.

I remember doing it. It’s the transition line that’s the key thing. So, once you plan the story and you’re building it into some form of talk or some part of learning point, once you write the story, go back and then write a transition line that makes it pretty fine and pretty obvious and unquestionable why you’re sharing that particular story.

So, I was speaking at a conference recently in Portugal called Web Summit, it’s the world’s largest tech conference, and they had me hosting a session on innovation which I know nothing about whatsoever, unless I find a new way of washing my underpants. That’s about as innovative I get most of the time. So, normally, I don’t really know how to start it off because they have 100 of the world’s most innovative large-scale companies in there sitting around, and I just start off telling about my mother.

And I was like, “Geez, you know, my mother came over to San Francisco to visit me recently. And she’s a bit older, grew up pretty Catholic and conservative, and we’re just sitting there on the couch. And out of nowhere, she’s like, ‘David, do you have any of those cannabis cookies?’ And I was like, “Cannabis cookies?” As it happens, I actually have a whole fridge full of them, thanks to San Francisco for legal medical reasons, obviously, so I fed her a few of them. And it was life-changing. We were making roast potatoes, which is basically caviar for Irish people at the time, and she was over-staring at the oven like a puppy just waiting for these things to be done. We nearly had to drag her away from it. The odor was kicking her up because it’s her first time in life having the munchies and she was basically snorting potatoes as they were coming out.

To only change her life, she went off walking to the Golden Gate Bridge the next morning, like this lady hadn’t been walking in years, came back with a pair of Lululemon pants on her, I couldn’t believe it. She’s like, “All the girls are wearing them,” and corrupted my auntie when I went home, just like weed smell coming down from the house in Ireland, I was like, “Geez, what is going on here?” And the thing is you think, “Oh, that story is not relevant to anything.” It got more bonkers, long story short. Like, one day she’s like, “David, what do you think of that gay marriage in Ireland,” because Ireland was the first country in the world, by popular vote, to legalize gay marriage, which is quite a turnaround for a place that’s seen as backwards in the eyes of a lot of people to be very forward that quick.

Before I could answer, me Ma says, “David, nothing new to me. I was the first lesbian in Ireland to get married back in 1970.” And I was just sitting there dumbfounded, I was like, “Does Dad know about this? Like, what’s going on here?” And she’s like, “Well, when your dad and I were going to get married, he got a bit drunk the night before, lost his birth certificate, we couldn’t find it. But, luckily, he had a dead sister, Patricia, she died when she was two.” And I was like, “Dad had a dead sister Patricia? You never mentioned this to me before.” She’s like, “Well, it’s not central to the story. Don’t worry about it.” I was like, “This sounds pretty central to me, mom.” And she goes on, she’s like, “Well, the priest didn’t have the best eyesight, your dad’s called Patrick, his dead sister is called Patricia, so we just went ahead and used her birth certificate, so technically I’m married to your dad’s dead sister.” Delighted with herself.

And I’m at this tech conference and I was telling them something similar, I can’t remember how much detail I went into the weed, but I was like, “We’re all in here in this room focused on innovation, but how well do you know your own family members? You assume that your customers, you know them, that you know what they want, that they desire, but I didn’t know my mom was into munching weed cookies and was experimenting with lesbian marriage on the side. Sometimes we assume we know things, and we shouldn’t. There’s nothing that research can’t solve that we could get to know our customers better and drive further innovation.”

And then whatever waffly section you put in there off the top of your head, it will come out better than what I just said off the top of mine. So, off the top of your head, then script it and write it, and say, “How do I get from this story to illustrate a point that I want to make?” So, the core point there was like, “You don’t know your end users as well as you think you do, and I’m going to substitute my parents for them in that story.” So, a big skill in the world of storytelling, I think, that’s overlooked a lot of the time is, “What is the transition line? Or what is the excuse you need to give yourself to make that story make perfect sense for your audience?”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, in the sequencing, the transition happens after the story and not before the story?

David Nihill
Yeah, usually, unless you say you kick off…a lot of TED Talks will start in this way as well or you’ll notice a lot of good effective talks will start with one very generic statement and then they’re into the story. And the statement is generic for a reason because they don’t want to get people to argue with them off the bat, so they’re not like a lawyer. When you’re doing storytelling or you’re doing any form of live performance, you’re trying to win over the audience. So, if you have an argument, you’re not going to make it at the top. You’re going to hide it.

So, say I got up there and I say, “Oakland is a crazy place,” and I’m in San Francisco, pretty close to Oakland, someone will cross their arms, dead stare me, and go, “I don’t agree with you. I live here. I love the place. I don’t agree with that statement.” But if I say, “Oakland can be an interesting place sometimes,” pretty much that statement would agree to everybody, agreeable to much more people, and it allows me to tell my story. And so, I haven’t made my point of view clearly on it so it’s a bit more intriguing, “Oh, what does this guy think about it? What’s he going to say?” Whereas opposed to, “I hate this. Let me tell you why,” which you don’t want to make.

So, it’s nearly the anti-lawyer’s approach to public speaking where a lawyer will make their argument really quickly because that’s their job, they’re on the clock to do it. As a public speaker, you really have to walk people into it, win over the room to get them on your side, and then you’re closing argument kind of sneaks up on them. So, your full license to tell the story.

There’s a TED Talk by Shawn Achor about happiness that’s one of the best you’ll ever see. I think it’s the eighth or the ninth most watched in the world. But if you watch it, it’s 11 to 12.5 minutes long, and the first 4.5 minutes is a story about him playing with toy soldiers.

Pete Mockaitis
With his sister.

David Nihill
Yeah, with his sister and breaking her arm. And it has nothing to do with anything, and you’ll see the same thing in Ken Robinson’s TED Talk. It’s “Do schools kill creativity?” It’s the most viewed and popular TED Talk of all time, and he tells a million stories, well, not a million, a slight over-exaggeration but there’s at least four to five stories in there that have absolutely nothing to do with that topic, but they’re beautiful stories that you can tell he loves telling, and they loosely are connected to the topic.

So, if you’re giving a talk about technology, your parents’ struggle with sending you emojis in an inappropriate basis, or whatever you’re getting eggplants from your mother in the middle of the night, who literally thinks they’re just eggplants and nothing else, well, that’s mildly entertaining to an audience, and you can use that to support a transition line that might be the struggles of a certain demographic to adapt to different features of user design.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, this is really rich stuff. I guess I’m thinking about there’s very different modes of communicating. Like you mentioned a lawyer, I’m thinking about consultants. We always talk about answer first, or the executive summary, I’m like, “All right. David, you need to sell this division for four key reasons. It’s unprofitable, it’s shrinking, and whatever.” And so, then it’s sort of right from the get-go. And so now our, like I speak for the consulting industry, the consultants’ perspective on the matter is that that is an efficient use of time for busy executives who don’t want to guess as to what your slide means. They want you to lay out the argument.

And so, I guess that’s how I’m thinking about the tradeoff there is it’s less fun than what you’re talking about, it’s less engaging unless you have a really strong vested in that position on either side, but it may be faster. How do you think about this, like, the different approaches?

David Nihill
I think that’s fundamentally the reason why many of us live and are subjected to so many boring meetings because we feel…we take the emotion out of people and we assume that they want the highest value in the shortest amount of time illustrated with numbers and graphs. Whereas, realistically, our human brain is crying out for the story behind the numbers. So, you can show me a chart and a line, they’re like, “Oh, look at the way the line goes up and then it goes down again, and then it goes up. Bet you didn’t see that coming.” “Woohoo, amazing. Please share your slide deck with me.”

By way of interest, next time you give a presentation, give a link in the end and say, “Here’s a link.” Make it a bit.ly link so it’s trackable and give it to people because they always ask for the slides. They love asking for slides, “Oh, I’d love to get the slides from that presentation,” and just see how many people actually click on that because. Like it is miniscule. I do it at big conferences where there’s like 2,000 people, people don’t care. They like the story, they like relating to you as a human. They’re more likely to buy from you if they learn something about you.

And if you have that kind of…it’s very hard to like someone that just leads with the numbers and just says, “Here’s the four things you need to do to turn this business around today.” Where if you could illustrate one of those things for me, I’m much less likely to give you resistance in following your advice in it if the story is so clear as to why I should do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. Well, tell us, we got a lot of good stuff, you’ve got something I can’t resist. You’ve got a secret for finding the funny: preparation, anticipation, punchline. We touched on some of this. Can you expand on this approach?

David Nihill
Yeah. I don’t know if that…it’s definitely not a secret because you’ll see it all over the time. But, yeah, it’s just, “What is that little bit of buildup that you need there to flip it?” I think it’s most easily repeatable in the world of visual presentations. So, if you have like a whole bunch of data and words on a slide or some form of presentation in your job, just take it off and put the key word or metric, or break it down to five words. And if you want to have a bit of fun, and you want to get funny in there, just don’t take a picture that’s funny and throw it up there and point at it like a lunatic, and be like, “Look at that dog. I found it on the internet. It’s nice, isn’t it?” And they’re like, “Yeah, okay. You’re a weirdo.” But if you build some anticipation to the image and use the misdirect, like the one, two, four, basically, you’re setting up the sequence where you’re not going to give them what they expect.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’d like to share with you our new mascot, the marketing team has been hard at work for months finding just the perfect brand…” and then the ridiculous dog goes, like, “Ha, ha, ha.”

David Nihill
Exactly. Or a three-legged hippo or anything, and then they always react. I had a friend, she was speaking at a conference in Australia, and she was the head of growth for Airbnb at one stage when they were in pure hybrid inflation mode. And she’s like, “Here’s a picture of me. And what I love is that I look so calm and calculated at this, my desk is organized. But the inside, I actually feel like this,” and that’s the moment that builds the anticipation because they’re like, “Well, what’s this look like?” and then the image becomes the flip. So, the timing on that is quite important to build up the expectation, then reveal the image, and then comment on the image.

So, she showed them a picture of a little girl getting sprayed in the face by an out-of-control fire hydrant for what she was then, and they cracked up laughing. But it’s not the viral hilarity by any means, but it just gives that anticipation, and it’s a very clear and simple misdirect. And I would say just bear that in mind when you’re presenting any form of information from wherever it may be to a job interview or anything. Just try and not do what they’re expecting you to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, maybe a final question before we hear about your favorite things. If folks, they think, “Okay, this is good stuff or good content and it’s funny but, hey, I think I may be just too nervous to deliver at this kind of high level. It seems intimidating to go. It’s like advanced ninja skills in presentation is what you’re asking. And I’m nervous already right now with my not-so-funny presentations,” how do you recommend folks overcome stage fright?

David Nihill
Yeah. Well, I think, number one, we get sold on the belief that we can overcome it, which I think is mostly false. I never overcame it but I got really good at managing it. And everybody else I’ve talked to over the years got really good at managing it. And I would add to that by saying when you were talking about advanced ninja skills, it’s a funny thing. And in the world of public speaking, they’ll try and sell you a beginner course, advanced, intermediate, whatever it might be. We’re not learning a language here. There’s no intermediate or advanced level. We’re just speaking. And the people who get paid 30 grand to talk, they make the same mistakes as someone who’s doing it for the first time. They just don’t know it because they have a bit of a false confidence that goes with the title they have.

But just recognize that the little things that make a big difference are not advanced, so outsourcing your introduction is super easy so that you don’t have to start off listing your own achievements and building your credibility, do that every time. Use an app like Perfect Timer, which is totally free, to track the timing of your presentation and go short before long. Never talk for an hour if you don’t have to. Like, the brain taps out.

The maximum human attention span, according to John Medina, who’s one of the world’s leading brain psychologists, is 9:59. Once you’re over that, you’re in a little bit of an uphill battle to keep people’s attention. So, realize that no one’s ever going to come up to you after a presentation, going, “That was amazing. I just have one problem. I wish it was longer.” Not even your family, your loved ones, that granny you haven’t seen in years, none of them want you to go for longer. So, go short before long. Let’s say never finish on a Q&A. Like, these are just simple things.

Like, when it gets to the end of your talk, say, “I’m going to take a few questions before I make my conclusion.” Ninety-nine percent of the world’s speakers don’t do that and they stand there like an absolute lemon while nobody asks them questions. They feel mildly embarrassed and that they don’t get an applause because nobody knows it’s over because you didn’t get asked that question anyway. And every speaker in history has been in that scenario, and they stand there, and the host is like, “Ooh, has someone got a question? You down the back?” And that person is like, “Hell, no. I don’t have one thing,” nearly going under the table. And you, as the speaker, go to walk off, “Okay, we’re finished here.” And then someone shouts a question, “Oh, actually, I have one,” so now you’re back on again. Now people are like, “Oh, God, how long am I going to be here?” so they start leaving.

So, it’s like this takes on like your favorite band. Like, U2 would never go around the world with their new album. Of course, I’m going to take an Irish example here and be stereotypical. But they’re never going to go Madison Square Garden and debut their new album, play 10 songs, get to the ninth song, and they only have one left, they planned it, it’s the best song, it’s the one that’s going to bring it home, but they’re like, “You know what, we were going to play that but how about, does anyone here in the audience sing? Anyone want to bring this home? Anyone want to bust out a ukulele?” That will be insanity, but every speaker does that, and they’re like, “Hey, audience, say something crazy to me.”

So, just using that sentence, “I’m going to take a few questions before I make my conclusion,” tells people that there’s more to come, their questions have to be short and sweet, and, of course, you’re going to save a slide with learning points on it to remind them what you’re actually talking about. And how many are there going to be? Three. And those things aren’t focusing on funny, they’re not focusing on humor, but they make you look way slicker, all of a sudden, as a speaker, and maybe you weren’t the most confident.

It’s like me with shaky hands. Like, my nickname in college was Shaking Stevens. When I gave a presentation, I shook so much that I turned into an Irish salsa dancer, like my whole body was going in places that I didn’t wanted it to be going. People would come from other classes just to see me falling apart in front of people. And it’s not a matter of, “How do I stop shaking?” I can’t because that’s adrenaline. I’m never going to convince myself to go.

So, to this day, that happens where you just identify, “Well, what are all the things that are going to go wrong? Someone is going to give me a glass of water and there’s no way I can drink a glass of water with a shaky hand. I’m going to have a bottle of water and my mouth is going to be dry. Well, geez, I’ll never be able to open a bottle of water. And if it’s a full bottle of water, I’m going to squirt it all over me. My hands are shaking so much.”

So, it’s a matter of little things like that, like no glass, get rid of that one, make sure the bottle of water is three quarters empty and already opened, and safe distance from you to knock it over. If you’re more comfortable, start with your hands in pockets. Don’t show people shaky hands. Use a technique called The Memory Palace that was popularized by Joshua Foer in his book, Moonwalking with Einstein, and he has a killer talk on that as well on TED, and it’s just a memorization technique that allows you to visualize key points so you’re never going to hold notes in your hands. So, now, if you shake, you don’t have to hold notes. You’ll look way more professional. And then if something happens, The Memory Palace, you will never ever go blank. And nearly everyone’s biggest fear when it comes to public speaking is going blank on stage but nearly nobody teaches it which is insane.

So, like, if I want to teach you the word in Spanish for “to fit,” the word is caber. It’s super hard to remember that tomorrow. But if I asked you to picture a New York City taxi cab, a yellow bubble one, and it’s pulling up downtown Manhattan in front of Trump Plaza, and a bear runs out of this taxi, or bumps out of Trump Plaza and tries to get into a taxi, and, of course, the hairy bear doesn’t fit, he’s huge, and his hairy legs are kicking out the windows as he tries to squeeze his body in the window, and his hairy bear bottom is in the air. And you’re visualizing that, and you’re visualizing that the cab, the bear does not fit in the cab, caber is the word for “to fit.”

So, you have this whole little trick of remembering information and making it visual. And, for the rest of your life, you’ll never forget the word for “to fit” in Spanish, and it’s because you’ve used something called The Memory Palace, which is visualizing, creating a crazy that only makes sense for you for everything you need to remember, and then The Memory Palace just means putting that, picturing it taking place somewhere that’s familiar to you.

So, instead of having a bullet point list for your talk, you picture your talk taking place in your house, and all you’re doing is walking around the lap of your house encountering crazy images that you’ve created, like a bear trying to get into a taxi cab. So, when you put that together, you become very spontaneous in public speaking because you’re never going to forget what you’re talking about. So, if someone falls off a chair, or farts, or burps, or screams, or interrupts you, you’ll react to it, and you don’t go into panic. If the fire alarm goes off, you don’t try and keep going, you just say, “God, the fire alarm has gone off.” Everything becomes an opportunity for some form of entertainment because at any moment you can get back on track.

So, I wouldn’t think of it as trying to be funny or off the bat. I wouldn’t put it as advanced level stuff. It’s just the techniques that can make you look advanced, that if you know 10 or 15 things that most people don’t, no matter how many years they’ve been doing speaking, you can normally look better than them really quickly. I have all people all the time writing me messages, and they’re like, “Dude, I give the exact same presentation as I did a year ago. I put in a couple of GIFs, some funny images, told one story and I got voted the best speaker. No idea. Night and day the last time.” And that’s the kind of stuff that happens all the time. So, it’s not as complex as people who are trying to sell you stuff make it out to be.

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

David Nihill
You know, I think I heard him on your podcast, Jeffrey Gitomer, and he has a lovely quote called “The end of laughter is followed by the height of listening.” I just thought that sums up the world of public speaking, timing, and delivery in one sentence. Because the most attention you’ll ever have from anyone ever is the moment after you make them laugh because their just brain says, “Give me more of that.” So, the dopamine spike lends itself to grabbing attention from an audience.

So, if you have to say something serious, the best time to say something serious and memorable and impactful, or ask for money, for example, or whatever you’re doing in your pitches, to make people laugh a little bit before that. But, yeah, “The end of laughter is followed by the height of listening.” That one I love and, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all,” but that’s not really…Helen Keller gets attributed to it sometimes but I’m not sure who actually said it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite study?

David Nihill
Favorite study. You know, Stanford did one once where they had people locked in a room staring at babies all day, and that was a good few years ago. I don’t think you could get away with that today, where all these researchers are like, “We’re just going to borrow your babies.” But the study was to show that babies, on average, laugh about 300 times per day, and grownups laugh about 15. So, for anyone who tells you, you don’t need a bit of laughter in your life, you definitely do, and you need more of it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

David Nihill
Oh, a toss-up. I like The Man Who Tried to Save the World, the Fred Cuny mystery, and The Fish That Ate the Whale. And I like both of those because they’re just stories of these individuals that did things that you didn’t think was possible just because they thought they could do it. Like, the Fred Cuny mystery is a guy who decided to declare himself the world’s expert on humanitarian aid relief. So, if a tsunami hits tomorrow, he’d be the first person who got the call from all the world’s leading agencies. And he had no skills or qualifications to get himself that job, and he got to the point where George Soros was writing him cheques, and saying, “Go fix Chechnya. That’s your job.”

I don’t even think there’s an audiobook version of it. I learned it from a girl who’s a journalist, and she’s like, “This is the best book you’ll ever read that no one’s ever told you about.” So, yeah, it’s The Man Who Tried to Save the World, the Fred Cuny mystery. And The Fish That Ate the Whale is about the guy, Sam, the Banana Man, Zemurray, who basically all the CIA manuals for taking over a company, err, sorry, a country and putting out puppet president in place were based on what this guy did to take control of Honduras just so he could sell more bananas. They’re brilliant stories. You’re like, “Okay.” They’re kind of things like, “I can’t believe I never heard of these stories before.”

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

David Nihill
I like HubSpot a lot. I don’t know if it makes me awesome at my job but it definitely improves me a bit, even the free version of HubSpot. I think if you’re selling anything online, I think, just to be able to track emails and know that somebody actually opened your email, forwarded the links in your email, or just activated, or looked at it, or was interested in it, that makes a big difference. But I use Rev.com a lot for transcribing stuff. Probably the easiest way you can improve your public speaking is to watch yourself or listen to yourself back, but nobody ever wants to do that because it’s painful, and they will avoid it at all costs. But if you put it through something like Trint or Rev.com, it does the transcriptions there that turns your work into a script, and it’s really easy to see where you need to improve when you do that.

So, I use that a lot. That and Perfect Timer, which is basically just a countdown timer on your phone that you can’t miss. Because if you do public speaking in meetings and conferences, usually you’re so distracted you’ll lose track of time, or the event organizer tells you, “Oh, we’ll keep track of the time. We’ll have a clock on the stage,” and then everything breaks. So, it’s saved my life a lot. And that app is free. I think it’s called Perfect Timer.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

David Nihill
Favorite habit, kite surfing by miles. I nearly get killed on a weekly basis and I still love it so it must be good for something.

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

David Nihill
You know, funny enough, Jeffrey Gitomer’s line is the one that I built into my talks over the years that I love the most, and it’s probably the most quoted. So, I wish it was something that I said but, honestly, I think that sums up the whole argument for using humor the most, that, “The end of laughter is followed by the height of listening.”

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

David Nihill
Towards DavidNihill.com. I think I have everything there. And in the world of public speaking, I put under a course name called Hacking Public Speaking. So, that was my bit of marketing experimentation. I was like, “I wonder if I offered 50% of their money back for a completion within 30 days. Would they actually do it?” You know, you take online courses. I signed up to Master Class and I’m not cooking like Jamie Oliver yet. I’m just blowing up microwaves for survival. I’ve blown up hotdogs in the microwave. So, everything I know I learned the hard way is there, or you can read a lot of it for free. And I think I have a talk on Google, an altar talk with a lot of the content are on public speaking if you just want to improve for free.

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

David Nihill
Yeah, I would say to put more of your own personality out there in the world of business and you will get more clients from it. And don’t give them that little bit of amazing new miracle thing that you have in your presentation, and be like, “Oh, that number is going to resonate with them.” The personal story and the something that allows them to see themselves in your shoes and come up to you after a presentation, or just relate to you on a one-on-one level, that’s going to be a story, something for your own life that you normally wouldn’t share. And if you think you have nothing funny, the magical recipe for that one is, if it’s embarrassing for you, it’s funny for me.

Pete Mockaitis
David, this has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck in all of your fun adventures.

David Nihill
Thank you very much.

Dec 03
0

623: Mastering the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in the 2020s with FranklinCovey’s Jennifer Colosimo

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Jennifer Colosimo says: "It takes a lot of confidence to have humility."

7 Habits expert Jennifer Colosimo discusses how to practice Stephen Covey’s principles more consistently in your daily life.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The 7 Habits and why they’re still relevant today
  2. How proactivity improves your effectiveness by 50X
  3. The two habits that make the biggest difference in your career

 

About Jennifer

Jennifer Colosimo is a 7 Habits expert as well as President of the Enterprise Division for FranklinCovey. She has led teams in operations, human resources, IT, sales, learning and development, and corporate social responsibility while with Accenture, DaVita, FranklinCovey, and several private equity backed organizations. Her titles have included chief learning officer, COO, EVP, Vice President of Wisdom, and Vice President of Sales. 

She co-authored the book Great Work, Great Career with Stephen R. Covey, and has been a featured keynote speaker and panelist at numerous business, government, and education conferences. She has also delivered onsite training and keynotes to more than 50,000 people across 45 states and 12 countries.

Resources mentioned in the show:

 

Thank you, sponsors!

Jennifer Colosimo Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Jen, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jennifer Colosimo
Appreciate you having me, Pete. Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m really looking forward to digging into your wisdom. In a way, this is sort of like a stroll down memory lane. The 7 Habits was one of the first books that got me in to think, “Wow, there’s books about how to just live life better. I want more of these in my life as a teenager.” And you actually had the honor of co-authoring a book with Stephen Covey himself. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jennifer Colosimo
I did. Stephen passed eight years ago so this was a few years before that. We co-authored a book on building a great career, it’s called Great Work, Great Career and many of the principles in there are based on The 7 Habits. So, my voice was primarily different stage in my career, obviously, than Stephen was, and how I applied them at that different stage.

Pete Mockaitis
We’ve had a couple FranklinCovey folks on the show. Can you share any fun stories or anecdotes that give us a bit of a feel for who that man was and the impact he’s leaving?

Jennifer Colosimo
In the years that I worked with him, the one thing that I think really stands out, that I don’t know that you can say about everyone, is that person was an authentic, same person, work, home, he did his best to live what he was writing about. He believed it completely and with total passion. And it didn’t matter if you saw him at a grocery store, or were at a board meeting, or were working on a book. He believed in the principles and put them into practice in his life.

Now, I probably had it easier because he was a mentor and advice-giver. I worked and have worked in the past with some of his actual family members. I think as teenagers, they sort of got a little bit tired of some of the principles and have all come back to living them. But I think they would finally be like, “Dad, could you just be like a dad?” And he was but he lived his principles.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s funny. I think my family feels that way about me sometimes a little bit on not-so grand a scale. And I understand he can also be a bit of a goofball at times.

Jennifer Colosimo
Oh, he was a joker. He said funny things. He would take you off guard because you would wonder, “Is that serious? Are you being serious?” until you really got used to some of his jokes. I mean, one of my favorite things, long, long time ago, is he kept his speaker microphone on while he ran out to use the restroom. And we were chasing him, basically being like, “Turn it off. Turn it off before you get in there. We can still hear you talking in the hall in the big room.” And he just joked it off.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, so I think this is going to be a fun one. I think many of our listeners have probably read or listened to or, at least, heard about The 7 Habits, but many of us have probably forgotten some of them. So, maybe before we dig into the nitty-gritty, like, “What are those seven habits?” could you maybe give us an overview of what impact have they had over the last 30 years? And why do you think this book, this message, has really just lived on and on and on?

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, a couple of things. Number one, when Dr. Covey said effective, he meant the ability to get results now and maintain your ability to get those results in the future. That’s a more complex skillset than, “Can I just get a result right now?” And those principles, in order to be effective, are, frankly, timeless. I mean, when I say words to you like the ability to make choice, having empathy, collaboration, personal management, which is often geared now into social and emotional intelligence, social management. Those principles of effectiveness of how you would get results now and in the future are timeless.

What changes is the practices of how you put that into place. And when we came out with the 38th edition, while we didn’t change any of the original texts, there are pieces added in by Sean Covey, Stephen’s son, kind of updating some of the practices and adding some detail to each of those but they’re timeless principles. I mean, how can you not say, “You’ll be more effective if you make choices that will get your result now and in the future.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I mean, it totally is just true. And, you know, it’s funny, I was listening to the audiobook just a few months ago, and I hear him in my voice now, P/PC balance and the golden goose, production and production capability. So, let’s dig into it a little bit. Could you give us maybe the one minute each version of what are the seven habits of highly effective people?

Jennifer Colosimo
So, the seven habits were not original thinking. Dr. Covey would say they’re aren’t original thinking. What they are is organized in a way that actually builds effectiveness. So, they all start with a verb, and the first three are focused on what is called private victory, “Are you self-aware? Are you confident in who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish?” So, they focus on, number one, being proactive, which is the habit of choice. In summary, things happen. We know a lot that’s happening right now in the world. Things happen and how you choose to behave defines who you are and making that choice.

Habit two is “Begin with the end in mind,” which is the habit of purpose and vision. So, “Do I let life just take me and I’m in a wave across the ocean, and I react to what comes my way? Or, have I set out, ‘This is who I want to be, what I want to achieve. This is my life’s mission to take it to the most detail big picture’?”

Third, “Put first things first.” So, you can make choice and you can have a purpose and a vision, but if you don’t make choices day to day and managing yourself, then that will never come true, right? You have to manage yourself, and not every little thing, but you have to manage yourself in order to make that vision come true. With that private victory, you have a level of confidence that allows you to be more effective in relationships. It may be counterintuitive but it takes a lot of confidence to have humility.

And the next three habits, focused on relationship, are requiring you to look at how you better collaborate, how you have an approach to an abundance. Think win-win, notice it says, “Are you looking for mutual benefit?” You don’t always get to it but are you trying? Habit five, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” I would say has an immense amount of skill-building built into it in how to practice empathy, how to actually understand someone. Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply, “When will her lips stop flapping and I can reply?” And so, that’s a big skillset because empathy is so critical in the workplace in order to build connection.

And to get to the sixth habit, which is synergize as a verb. Really, this is the habit in our terminology now of innovation, of building inclusive environments, “How do I think win-win, build understanding, express myself with I-messages in a way that we can create something better, whether that’s a result at work or in a relationship?”

And the seventh habit circles all of those, the private victory and the public victory habits, called “Sharpen the saw.” And the basis of that is balance, “I can’t be as effective as I possibly could be if I’m not physically, socially, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually defined as something that gives you a greater sense of meaning unless I’m sharp.”

I mean, think about it. If you’re really sick, it’s hard to be effective. You can do your best but it’s hard. If you’re struggling with a relationship at work, you know the person that you now are meeting all the time on Zoom but used to sit several cubicles over, if you are constantly just always upset at them, how effective can you be?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. That’s a nice rundown there. I love it. Well, you are an expert. You have the title of the seven habits expert because I think a lot of us are like, “Oh, yeah, I kind of know the habits. It’s like be proactive and, you know, win-win.” So, I like that. That’s excellent.

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, thank you. Again, an expert just means you now know what you don’t know.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Jennifer Colosimo
But it leaves a lot of holes of you thinking, “I don’t know that well enough.” But thank you for that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, before we put you on the spot here as we dig into a little bit more details, so I was struck by…I love numbers. And so, in The 7 Habits, it says under “Be proactive,” that the difference in being proactive versus not being proactive makes for a 5,000 plus percent difference in effectiveness. Now, that’s a big number, 50X. Can you sort of lay that out, how that is true and even possible for anyone who says, “That seems too big”?

Jennifer Colosimo
That seems too big, that being proactive would make that much more effectiveness.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Jennifer Colosimo
And, actually, this has worked behind it in terms of neuroscience, in terms of data that says researchers that will say the level of effectiveness you can get in different jobs has different quantum leaps. So, let me just talk about maybe different categories.

I worked fast food as a teenager, if I am the very, very best at flipping hamburgers then what’s the percentage difference in effectiveness you’re going to get? And we’re only on the line and we’re not working that much with other folks in the restaurant, we’re not client-facing, “Oh, you’ll get a different percentage. They’ll be cooked different, it’ll be faster.”

Pete Mockaitis
Or maybe doubling if you’re a chief burger sensation.

Jennifer Colosimo
Maybe doubling, maybe doubling, if you’re just…yeah, you’re a savant at it. But when you go to a more complex job, let’s say nursing, and you think of patient care, talking, speaking with relatives, making very quick decisions based on all of your background, how much effectiveness seems reasonable there?

Pete Mockaitis
More. I don’t know the number.

Jennifer Colosimo
More, right? We don’t know if we’re at four to five thousand percent. Actually, and some of this work comes from, you can see it. There’s a newer book from Netflix, I’ll think of the author, where they basically said their approach to hiring was they believed there was 5,000% in software developers.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Yes, that is ringing right now…

Jennifer Colosimo
Do you remember the book?

Pete Mockaitis
…in terms of, I think I was looking at their culture deck which maybe made reference to this or some Netflix document. So, yeah, understood. And so then, different domains, that’s a great point right there. So, different domains have a different ceiling or capacity to be differentially effective and, I guess, hey, the more responsibility you have, the more that’s going to be more variability there. So, how is it specifically that being proactive can unleash that 5,000 plus percent difference?

Jennifer Colosimo
So, obviously, a lot of it is based on the technical domains we were talking about, right, the technicalities of that job. But, and when you think about the communication pieces, regardless of, let’s use the one that we’re saying has a huge differential, software developers, they still need to communicate with those on their team, to sell their ideas. Some may aspire to higher-level leadership roles. They may aspire. And as you think about being proactive and making choices, the really direct link is we’re talking about social-emotional intelligence, “How well do I communicate? What choices do I make?”

So, let’s just give an example. “I’m the most talented software developer and I can’t sell my ideas because I can’t communicate in the form that the finance person understands or that my sales manager understands. In addition, everybody on the development team seriously just wishes I wasn’t there. I’m not viewing my results as both the results as a developer, a very talented developer, but the results I’ve obtained in relationship.” And that’s a bit of a mindset shift, “Do I make choices to get to the end in mind I’m looking for even if it’s just, ‘get my new game on the market’? Am I making the choices that help me get to that end in mind? Or, am I, basically, sabotaging myself because I’m not being proactive and taking a space between things that happen and my response?”

Pete Mockaitis
And I buy that in terms of if you’re proactive versus reactive, think of software developers, that’s sort of like, “Hey, I’ve got a really cool idea.” Proactivity would be to sell that idea, to package that idea, to get stakeholders, collaborators rallied around it to test that out, to see if it’s even a good idea that people can care about this or it’s just kind of my thing.

And that very well can make all the difference in terms of, “Yeah, that’s the breakout feature that makes this program or game like the coolest thing that everybody has to have,” and then you can have huge sales flowing from that, maybe 50 times of sales, as oppose to you’re just like, “Ah, well, you know, no one really cares and I guess I got to just sort of finish my to-do list.”

Jennifer Colosimo
Right, “I’ve just got to finish my to-do list. People don’t listen to me.” I think one of the deepest…well, this is actually something that Stephen would say, I’m paraphrasing, that one of the deepest needs of the human heart is to feel understood. And so, you may be a very talented, and we could go to any role of any of your listeners, but if you want to build your influence, are you influenceable? Are you working on your self-management, your social management, in addition to that technical skillset?

You know, LinkedIn, and I’ll miss some of them, but said the skills that people are really looking for that are soft – so I’ve got to assume you’ve got the technical skills, you’re the best in this whatever – are empathy, collaboration, self-management, communication skills, all things that are in The 7 Habits.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that makes sense. All right. I’m convinced, 5,000% is real. No hyperbole there. Let’s talk about being understood. That’s a deep need and I think there’s not a lot of that going around. How does one do a great job at understanding others and having them feel understood?

Jennifer Colosimo
So, a lot of the seven habits is really based on, first, who you are, building character, second, how you think, and I’m going to start there, and then how you behave to get the result, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Jennifer Colosimo
So, with mindset as the starting place, this is the mindset that I would challenge if you’re really trying to truly, in your intent, you’re thinking, “I do want to understand. I really do. This isn’t fake. I really do,” can you stop the chatter in your mind, literally, stop thinking, “Do I agree or disagree? Do I have another example of that that I want to either judge or assess? What’s my response?” Stopping, “Do I want to have a comeback?” Simply, can you stop?

So, let’s assume I’m listening to you and I’ve decided, and I might even be angry, I might even totally disagree so this is an incredible discipline, so I get hit with this amygdala hit of like, “I’m totally ticked off.” Can I stop and say, “Okay, I’m going to stop all that chatter, I’m going to listen for…” and if I’m lucky I can see you. Hard in social media days but if I can see you, I’ve also got nonverbal cues, I’ve got your face, I’ve got your tone of voice in addition to the words, “How does Pete think and feel about this? How does he think and feel? And can I accurately summarize it?”

Probably not parroting back because that might make you crazy, like I’m just parroting, so, “Pete, you’re upset about X.” “Well, yeah, that’s what I just said.” But what I found is as long as you don’t put that response out, as long as you’re waiting to actually get to understanding, “So, let me summarize if I heard you correctly. What I’m hearing is you,” this is the most basic, “feel blank about blank.” And often you’ll say, “Well, that’s not totally it. You missed this small piece.” “Okay, so I missed this piece. So, in summary, you feel blank about blank,” putting in different words, “Your assessment is, your thinking is. No emotion. I’m truly trying to get to understanding.”

If you have that discipline, you will, at a minimum, develop an understanding. And the purpose is not to get necessarily to an agreement. You don’t have to agree but you can get to understanding as long as you can control the chatter in your mind and truly focus on what the other person is thinking and feeling.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. You know, it’s funny, what comes to mind here is I was chatting with…this was a real rock star over at the Northwestern Mutual financial network, so life insurance, sales. I wasn’t super interested in having this meeting but he was a friend of a friend, so I said, “All right,” and he was so good because we had one meeting where that’s all that he was doing was understanding, seeking to understand my stuff.

And then so we met again like a week or two later, he’s like, “You know, Pete, I heard you say this and this and this. And you mentioned this and it what was really important to you is this.” And it was like it was the weirdest experience because it was like he was some kind of a prophet or like a psychic, and it’s like, “I know I said all these things to him, but it is a unique experience to have someone have really absorb all of that and kind of gotten to the heart of things,” which is why he’s leading the practice, he’s really excellent and has a big team, I don’t know.

So, yeah, it is wild how powerful that is. And so, you just mentioned the most basic level is, “You feel blank about blank,” so I’d say, “Jen, you feel frustrated that there’s a family member in your life who needs an XBOX.”

Jennifer Colosimo
We talked about this, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
“You feel frustrated that there’s a family member in your life who needs an XBOX, and it is very hard to come by, and you sort of feel like they’re putting you in an impossible situation and that’s really uncomfortable.” I don’t know if you actually feel that way.

Jennifer Colosimo
I do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you may have mentioned it.

Jennifer Colosimo
I want one. But, see, the difference between that conversation, number one, I mean, the question back to you, you mentioned it was weird. Whether you decided to purchase or not, because that’s in a sales environment, was it weird because you actually felt, “Wow, yeah, I am understood. That’s what I want”?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, it was weird because, well, one, I guess he was talking for like 10 minutes, about 10 straight minutes of him talking of understanding me, and it’s like, “I don’t know that that’s happened before.” So, it’s weird just because it’s novel.

Jennifer Colosimo
It’s novel.

Pete Mockaitis
And that it was so dead-on. I did not end up…I kind of wanted, I didn’t need it but I wanted to support this guy, it’s like, “Man, he’s just so great. I want to help him out.” It’s like, “But I really don’t have any kids, I don’t have…”

Jennifer Colosimo
Yeah, I don’t need it at all.

Pete Mockaitis
“I don’t need an insurance right now. Maybe later.” So, yeah, that’s why it was so weird for me.

Jennifer Colosimo
So, if you think about it, one of the big hints of you…and I don’t mean it to mean used, but to really say, “I am going to try to understand.” And, again, intent is big. I said who you are. You don’t want to use this to be a manipulative person. You’re using it because you actually do care, really. I think people know when they’re being manipulated, right? They know.

If you are truly trying to care, it’s less about technique than it is caring. And the hardest time to do it is when there is – but it’s also your best signal – high emotion or some level of conflict, right? I mean, think about how hard that is especially if…you summarize well. I am frustrated and I would like to find an XBOX. But if you and I were truly arguing and you just said…

Pete Mockaitis
“Mom, you won’t give me anything cool.”

Jennifer Colosimo
“Mom,” or work, right? You know, “Jen, what you did in that meeting completely…I mean, I can’t believe that’s what you did. It’s ruined this project,” and I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m being attacked.” That’s why those first three habits are so important because if I can’t feel confident enough in myself that I don’t need to win this argument, I’m truly thinking about how you and I are going to work together in the future and I, all of a sudden, become very curious, “Wow, I must’ve really done something. Pete is mad.”

I’m not responsible for you being mad. That’s not what I’m saying. I may be based on actions but I’m not taking the responsibility. I’m taking the responsibility to understand because I would like you and I to maintain our work relationship. Possibly, I’ll apologize. Possibly, I’ll get to the point of where I understand and I’ll say, “So, Pete, do I understand?” “Yes, you do.” “I see it differently. Could I share how I see it?” We may not come to agreement but it’s part of thinking about, “How do you gain influence in an organization? How do you get to your potential? How do you get sponsors and allies that will support you?” And a big part of it isn’t just your technical skillset.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. And so then, let’s talk about the different levels there. So, we arrive there via curiosity, via being very kind of solid and firm in your character and foundations, and genuinely caring about the person and their perspective, and having that curiosity to dig in. And then the basic level is, “You feel this about that.” What’s the advanced level? What’s the master of understanding vibe?

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, again, I think intent counts much more than technique here. In fact, I would totally assert intent counts more than technique because if you’re truly trying to get to it, people will give you a lot of leeway than if they think you’re using a special technique. And if I can see you, I could nod because you might have some emotion that keeps you going for a minute, and I’m processing, okay, like, “Okay, wait it was that? Is it that? Is he mad at me for that or was it this?” I’m processing, I could not, I could say, “Mm-hmm, go on. So, when that happened, it caused this? Right, I’m summarizing back some of the things you said, paraphrasing,” or it might be just staying silent, but you know I’m not using empathic listening if I say, “Pete, I totally agree.”

Now, I might get to that but that’s not me getting to understanding. That’s me totally agreeing with you. Or, “I disagree,” or, “You know what, my sister kind of thinks the same way,” or, “You know what, this work group that we worked on, they agree with me.” It’s the, “I’ve taken everything away and I’m just trying to understand you.” Does that get to more advanced?

Pete Mockaitis
It does, yes. And I’m thinking sometimes when I’ve done this well, which is rarer than I’d like to admit, I guess I almost think about it like…we had Chris Voss, the FBI hostage negotiator, on the show, and in his book he talked about sort of like identifying sort of what is the religion of the person you’re working with. Not really like Catholic or Mormon or Muslim, but like the worldview and ultimate beliefs that are kind of underneath this. And I think that’s a good lens as well as sometimes I think about it in terms of like if I were an actor who needed to convincingly portray this person, it’s sort of like a Sprite commercial, “Excuse me, what’s my motivation?”

Jennifer Colosimo
Exactly, “What’s my motivation?”

Pete Mockaitis
It’s sort of like, “What is the motivation?” Like, if you were a director, or a screenplay writer, or an actor trying to imbue that character with a life and a motivation and a backstory and a belief or religion, it’s sort of like that’s kind of what I think, for me, is how I kind of try to see if I’ve really nailed it. And it’s been kind of rare but it’s been awesome when it happens, you’re like, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel.”

Jennifer Colosimo
“Yes, you get me. Yes, you get me,” which is huge when we’re talking about effectiveness whether it’s in work, in your family, in relationships. You don’t have to agree with me, although I would love it if the whole world agreed with me but that’s probably unrealistic. But that felt need of you understand me, especially in times that are a bit turbulent, to use, a bit turbulent where there doesn’t seem to be much understanding, I think that’s a nice way to say it.

Frankly, have you ever been at work and you’ve solved a problem that wasn’t even the problem? Because, you know this, and people bring this up to you all the time and you just hear two words, you’re like, “No, no, no, no. I got this. Here’s what you do,” and they walk away and then you find out later that was not even the problem at all. It can be that tactical of, “What is really the problem here that we’re looking at? Have we defined it and are we working at that? Or am I so impatient, I just hear two words, and I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no. I know this problem. Solve it this way’?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. Well, boy, so many directions we can take off from here. Maybe could you share, in your experience, what is the habit that has the – it’s kind of like consultants, right, we could put everything on 2×2 matrix – the habit that is the most lacking amongst professionals and the most costly in terms of, “Boy, this is really hurting your career and if you nailed it, your career would soar”? Maybe that’s one habit that nails both of them or maybe it’s two separate ones, but lay it on us.

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, I think the one we just discussed is the one where you’re going to really kind of get the exponential. It’s quite an emotional intelligence but intent skillset and it requires self-awareness. It’s like a hard one and it really accelerates. The one I would say, truly, that is foundational to being effective, so getting the results now and in the future, is, and that’s why it is habit one, as I mentioned, they’re progressive, is choice. And let me give you an example.

Some of what the company I worked through has done has worked with inmates in the correctional system using the seven habits. And habit one, while if you and I are discussing it, or you read it in a book, and you see some great hints, you may be able to integrate so much more of it into your life. Habit one takes months in the correction facility because it’s basically saying, “Regardless of what has happened to you or does happen, you have the ability to make a choice in how you think and behave.” And just think about that for a second.

In The 7 Habits, there’s four gifts that are human-based, so you have to have the self-awareness to be able to say, “Okay, this is how I feel.” You have to be able to have the mental, like be able to look out into the future and say, “What I do now matters and this is probably the best to fulfill my vision.” You have to be able to tap into conscience, “And here’s what I value and here’s who I am.” And then you have to have the independent will to act in the face of things that may not have been natural to you.

And it’s even as much as using language that is proactive. There’s neurotransmitters when you use positive language. This used to make me crazy. I used to say, “That’s to woo-woo for me,” even though I’ve been around this forever. But when you think about me saying to you, “I’m going to the grocery store. I’m flying to LA. I’m going to work out,” the difference between that and, “I have to work out. I have to go to the grocery store. I have to fly to LA,” truly serotonin differences in the way you use your language, which is part of habit one.

So, honestly, where I think for many professionals who are good at it, that’s where we have the most opportunity to be solution-focused, to ensure we’re making those choices, and to use those gifts. And then, probably, the biggest career advancer when it comes to building credibility, connection, collaborators is habit five, the “Seeking first to understand then to be understood,” because you also have the skillset to be able to convey your ideas with respect.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that just makes me feel great as the interviewer because the two I zeroed in on, and I was like, “You tell me what are the two?” It’s okay, we got synergy.

Jennifer Colosimo
And you knew. Was that a leading question?

Pete Mockaitis
No, I thought, I was like, “Hey, I’m going to pick two that I think are important and I’m going to throw it to you and say, ‘What are the two…’” Okay, cool. Well, we’re on the same page. Hey, how about that?

Jennifer Colosimo
We are.

Pete Mockaitis
So, then let’s talk about how one develops these or any habits? How does one embark upon change, personal transformation in general? Like, what are your top do’s and don’ts here?

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, one is basic and I bet you’ve had other guests even say it, is that it takes at least three weeks to form a habit. It does. Really conscious effort, you know this if you’ve tried something new like physical, “I’m going to go running.” The first week you’re all, “Yay, yay, I’m running.” The second week, you’re kind of achy, maybe you can miss Wednesday or Friday and by the third week, you’re like, “Ahh, as long as I can get out one day,” right? It takes three weeks to be able to form it in any kind of…and then, obviously, it gets easier after that. That’s why trainers are literally saying, “You got to commit to three weeks.” Most diets, three weeks.

But when you think about it, you have to have a commitment. And, frankly, books, including The 7 Habits have actual things in the back saying, “If you want to improve this, watch your language for four days and see how many times, ‘You have to,’ ‘You have no choice,’ you use victim language, and how many times you use proactive language,” right? Each of these has a practice you can put into place.

One that I’ve been challenged, I’ve done a significant amount of executive coaching, is to say, “You need to have a sticky note that says, “The first time I feel a strong emotion, I’m going to stop and pause, examine what the feeling is, think before I speak, and try to put these practices, whatever they may be, into practice.” Like a reminder as soon as you feel emotion. Because how can you predict when you’re going to feel a strong emotion while you’re working? But most of them have practices you can put into place.

One of the most details, habit two “Begin with the end in mind,” actually encourages you to write a mission statement. And you can Google mission statement builder. There’s an app, free, but something that we have at FranklinCovey, and then there’s others. Write a mission statement. “Put first things first,” has many tactical hints and tips – managing your technology, managing distractions. So, it really depends on the habit that’s yours, “Is this more of a think than do? Is this, ‘Okay, I’ve got the think down. I just need to do’?” Which one is it and which practice will help you the best?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. And maybe the last question before we hear about your favorite things. In a world where everything seems urgent, how do we escape and really do those important but not urgent things?

Jennifer Colosimo
Well, of course, there’s a lot in The 7 Habits and I recently read a book that I think inspired me, and I don’t know if I say his name correctly. It’s a book called Indistractable, Nir…

Pete Mockaitis
Nir Eyal.

Jennifer Colosimo
Yeah, Indistractable. Have you read that book?

Pete Mockaitis
He’s been on the show.

Jennifer Colosimo
Oh, I didn’t see that when I looked through the other podcasts that I was listening to. I honestly think his practices, well, the principles of personal management, and the mindset pieces we do a quadrant model of how to think about urgent versus urgent versus important versus aligned to your values and managing your technology. I think some of his practices…did he talk about the tree app that he has in his book? Do you remember?

Pete Mockaitis
The tree app? I don’t have a picture in my head of a tree, so.

Jennifer Colosimo
It’s an app that you pull up a tree and you say, “This tree will be built on my app as long as I focus on this task for this amount of time. And if I take my mind off that task, and I have to click it and it kills the tree.” There’s all these great hints, obviously so many. So many will say, “Establish your rules. Here’s where you turn it off. Here’s how much time you say that you’ll respond to your email. This is when you’ll respond to texts. This is when you’ll do social media,” and some of that is even in The 7 Habits even though some of those tools weren’t there. I think the mindset of urgent versus important and tying it to your values, but there are a lot of practices to put that into place. I was really inspired by his.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so that’s great. So, there’s a lot of practices, but if we go ever deeper to the foundational root, you’re suggesting it’s more of about having kind of like a total clarity on what’s important based upon an understanding of your values.

Jennifer Colosimo
Yeah, and I’ll say imagine there’s kind of a beam, since people can’t see me. If on one end of the beam are the things that you profess to value, and some of the work that is proposed in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to write down statements that you would want people who know you in that role to say about you. So, maybe it’s my retirement party and I wish people would say this about me at my party. Maybe it’s a partner or spouse, here’s what I would want them to say. What would they all say? My ideal is this, and this is what I’m trying to do in my life.

And on the other side of the beam is how I actually act every day, and no way would I get any of those tribute statements based on my actions. Well, then you philosophically know, no matter what tools you’re using, you aren’t aligning your important things with your actions each day, so how do you get closer to that? And one of the strategies that’s in The 7 Habits that’s worked for me is, of course, you can’t align your whole life to that, but do you choose one thing for each of your roles that you will do – It might be relationship-focused or it might be result – that would get you closer to that tribute statement each week? And on a weekly basis, do you do at least one thing that moves you closer to that vision?

And if you’re not doing anything in alignment with who you say you want to be and what you want, frankly, you’re not going to have a very credible claim to feeling peaceful let alone effective.

Pete Mockaitis
Yup, I buy that. Thank you. Well, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jennifer Colosimo
You know, one of my favorite quotes, and it gets attributed to a lot of different people. Albert Schweitzer, I think, said part of it. Stephen Covey used to say it but I love this quote, “In everyone’s life, at some time, an inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.” And then sometimes people add, “Let’s be thankful for those who rekindle the inner spirit.” Because I think about times my own flame has gone out where I’m kind of like, “Okay, I’m completely depleted.” The people that will burst you into flame and bring back you and what you can contribute, I mean, what an amazing contribution.

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

Jennifer Colosimo
My favorite research, and I realized this by thinking about how many times I read it or look at profiles, is really Martin Seligman’s and positive psychology. His books on Flourish, Learned Optimism, the positive psychology assessments that have been built, I just find that work so fascinating, and it goes so deep in thinking about how your mind drives, truly, positive psychology which is different than happiness but more of that sense of fulfillment.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Jennifer Colosimo
My favorite business book most recently, and, of course, it’s not the newest book, but I love Ray Dalio’s Principles book. Love. And my favorite author doesn’t write enough, I have two. Donna Tart, and she’s only written a few books. And then I love Tana French. She’s an Irish author who writes mysteries.

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

Jennifer Colosimo
Honestly, I would say it’s less tool-based, although I am, especially I work from home right now, working at home, I really love IM chats. So, you could use a variety of tools. Sometimes it’s been Slack, sometimes it’s been Zoom chats, sometimes it’s been Teams chat, but with my close workers, I think it feels more like that we’re in the same environment because people can pop in.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Jennifer Colosimo
My absolute favorite habit, and as you might expect, I get asked for career advice a lot, of course, it comes from The 7 Habits, Pete. You would’ve had to have expected that. But my favorite habit is proactive. I say the number one thing you can do in your career is say, “Based on the situation I’m in, what’s the best thing for me to do or say right now?”

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

Jennifer Colosimo
What gets quoted back to me a lot as an original quote is, “You have to have curiosity. If your curiosity dies, you’re dead.” Especially at work.

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

Jennifer Colosimo
I would point them to FranklinCovey.com. That’s where you’ll learn more about what we’re doing and all of our books and all of the works that we have for individuals. Me, personally, I’m at @jencolosimo on Twitter. I have tweeted very little over the past several months because I had to do a bit of a calming myself. My be proactive was not to be Twitter but that’s where I am on Twitter. Also on LinkedIn at Jennifer Colosimo.

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

Jennifer Colosimo
My final challenge is to take up the challenge we invested the most time in this conversation on. Bring empathy into the workplace. Although you can’t force others to bring empathy into the workplace, you will release more potential, you’ll be more fulfilled if you bring empathy into the workplace yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Jen, this has been a treat. Thank you and I wish you all the best as you’re practicing the seven habits.

Jennifer Colosimo
Thank you, Pete. I appreciate the time.

Nov 29
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622: Taking Control of Stress Before It Takes Control of You with Kirsty Bortoft

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Kirsty Bortoft shares easy ways to keep stress and negativity at bay.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to un-hijack your brain in 12 seconds 
  2. How to effectively deal with stress in five steps 
  3. The number one reason why most people struggle with stress 

 

About Kirsty

Kirsty Bortoft is an award-winning mindset coach to entrepreneurs and professionals. She helps them to dissolve stress and anxiety without having to resort to medication and traditional therapy. Kirsty developed the unique ‘Freedom Alignment Method’, a three-stage process that crushes the obstacles so many high achievers frequently face during their lifetime. Obstacles that inevitably leave them feeling trapped by their current circumstance and pulled from the inner peace and happiness they deserve, despite working so very hard for it.

Resources mentioned in the show:

 

Thank you, sponsors!

Kirsty Bortoft Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Kirsty, thanks for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Kirsty Bortoft
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to learn your wisdom and it sounds like you’ve got a lot of it. And I understand you’re a monk. What’s the story here?

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, I know, it always makes people laugh when I say this. I am what’s called an Ishaya Monk of The Bright Path. So, yeah, it was a journey that started 2005 when I started getting really into kind of self-development and wanted to know more about, I guess, how to live my best version of my life, and I went on a bit of a soul-searching journey.

And in 2010, I bumped into a friend, and they’d been on this meditation retreat, and I was like, “You know what, I think I need a bit of Zen in my life.” So, he says, “Well, here’s the link, go and have a look.” So, I did. But, to be honest, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had an image of meditation being pretty boring because I can’t sit around with my eyes shut, and I’m the kind of person that’s got quite a lot of energy, I like doing things, so I thought, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s going to be for me.”

But, anyway, I went to this weekend and I had this lightbulb moment, and the only way I can describe it is, imagine a jigsaw, and there’s one piece it just can’t find its way home. And on this Saturday morning, the lady shared something and it kind of went ca-chunk, and I just saw this vision of realizing that I’d been spending my whole entire life trying to fix myself on the outside. And I realized at that moment that no wonder I find life stressful and really difficult because there was always another problem.

And so, what they taught me was to shift my attention from the outside and go inside. So, I thought, “Oh, I think I need a bit of this.” So, after doing that weekend cause, I bundled my children into a car, we drove to Spain, and we lived on top of a Spanish mountain, and I studied with some Ishaya monks on the workings of the mind and how the mind-body connection works, and how to go inwards. And after about six years I graduated as a monk myself.

Pete Mockaitis
Six years? No kidding.

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, that was quite a journey.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you moved to another country and hung out for six years.

Kirsty Bortoft
No, I came back and forth but, yeah, yeah, yeah. Came back and forth but, yeah, on and off for six years. And then in 2015, I graduated as an Ishaya monk, which is hilarious because you can see me, I don’t really look like a monk coming out of that stereotypical…

Pete Mockaitis
You’re wearing an XBOX headset on your collar at the moment which you see on brands for monks.

Kirsty Bortoft
My son’s. Very trendy. Yeah, so it’s cool. So, yeah, one of the things I do now is I teach The Bright Path meditation ascension, which means to rise above the mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s talk about the mind. So, I want to dig into stress and mindset and just learn all of your good stuff. So, let’s think about, in your experience working with professionals, what do you see over and over again are kind of the biggest sources of stress?

Kirsty Bortoft
So, stress, really, is triggered by four different areas and you’ll relate to all of this when I tell you. You’ve got chemical stress, so you get stressed out because you’ve got a hangover.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that will do it.

Kirsty Bortoft
They’ll say that you would relate to that but that’ll do it. And a virus, which is obviously a big topic right now, bacteria, medications, for example, so that’s chemical stress. Everyday source of stress. But you’ve also got emotional stress and everyone knows when we’ve had that stressful day at work with perhaps a colleague, or maybe you’re just not going on quite well with your partner, or there’s been a fallout with a neighbor, so that kind of emotional stress. And then you’ve got that good old physical stress, so that’s when you’re injured or maybe you’ve just had a really long week at work and you haven’t stopped, and physically you’re exhausted.

But then there’s a fourth one, and I think this is the most important path that when I learned this it completely changed my relationships the way I saw stress. And that’s this, that we are the only organism, which I think there’s about something like 8.7 million other organisms on this planet, but we’re the only one that can trigger the stress hormone, which is cortisol, with thought alone.

So, what I mean by that is you could be sat on your sofa at home potentially thinking about, I don’t know, a business meeting, or perhaps you’ve had an argument with somebody yesterday, or maybe you’ve got to go and have a difficult conversation at work tomorrow, and your mind thinks that’s actually happening now. So, your subconscious mind has no ability to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not. So, it just thinks, “Oh, my goodness, little Johnny is having some sort of stress. We need to protect him.” So, it does its job and it triggers off the stress hormone.

Meanwhile, you’re actually sat on your sofa watching an episode of Game of Thrones, something like that, but your mind does not know that it’s not happening now. And I think it’s such an important fact for people to know that actually their thoughts have a lot to do with the mental, emotional, physical state in which we get into.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that resonates and I think, for me, it’s so funny how I can just kind of imagine that, let’s say, I’m going to submit some work to a client somewhere, and then I think that they might critique something. And then I would start thinking about, it’s like, “Well, they do that.” And I want to be like, “Well, look, you can’t change the deadline on me.” It’s like I’m already having a fight that’s not a real fight but with that imaginary person about something, which they probably won’t even bring up. And then I’m worked up truly as though they are ripping into me right now. And so, that happens all the time.

Kirsty Bortoft
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, that’s good to know that, one, the body will just naturally react to that and produce those kinds of things as though I’m really there. I guess, two, immediate thoughts there are, one, if I don’t care to go there and have those thoughts and the emotions that come from those thoughts, how do I develop a sense of mastery of my thoughts so that I can just choose, “Hmm, yeah, I’m not going to think about that right now, and that’s okay”?

Kirsty Bortoft
Well, without having a lobotomy, the best way is… It is mastery. You are right in the terminology that you used there because one of the things I say in my signature program The Freedom Alignment Method is that, number one, awareness precedes all change. So, the first thing that we have to do is we have to become aware that we are actually going off into this addictive thinking actually because even if it is us having like an imaginary argument with our work colleague who’s really annoyed us because he never made us a cup of tea and made everyone else one, even if that’s what we’re doing in our mind, that is still, as I said before, triggering the stress hormone.

And so, the first part of it actually is becoming aware that you’ve gone off into that thinking pattern because, quite often, we go into imaginary states in the future or in the past and it takes us a while to even realize that we’re doing that. But, meanwhile, what happens is your mind and body are completely connected. So, you know this is true because if you’ve ever been really hungry and you’ve like walked into someone’s home who’s baking some fresh bread or you’ve walked into a restaurant and you can smell some beautiful food and you’re starving hungry, you see the food, it’s nowhere near your mouth but your mouth starts to salivate, and that’s purely because your mind and body are connected.

So, in the same sense, what happens is you attach yourself to a thought but then you go off into thinking. So, you start thinking about this work colleague or this deadline that you said, and then what happens is the thoughts are the language of the mind, but the body then kicks in with emotions, and all emotions and all thoughts are in the same vibrational level.

So, I, for example, have never had a client who is utterly peaced out, who is having an anxiety attack. The same way around, I’ve never met anybody who’s thinking really negative thoughts, who feels like they’ve got loads of energy. The mind and body are completely the same at all times. So, if you are feeling stressed, the stress hormone, some of the effects are it makes your heart go faster, it makes you feel quite clammy and sweaty, and it also makes you feel quite exhausted.

And, in the same breath, when you’re feeling elated and you’re feeling excited about life, you feel like you’re energized. Suddenly, you’ve got this like energy from nowhere and anything is possible. And so, that’s purely because your mind and body are completely connected, so one triggers the other. They always are the same.

So, how do you stop that? As soon as you become aware that you are actually starting to downward spiral, so you’ve gone off into that addictive thought, you simply go, “Stop, Kirsty. Stop right now.” Now, depending on where you are, I don’t suggest you say it out loud because people might think you’re going a bit bananas. But wherever you are, in your car driving to work, whether you’re working on your laptop or you’re with people, you can, literally in your head, just tell yourself to stop. And in that moment, you then take your attention and you put it on something different.

So, the chemical reaction of an emotion is 12 seconds. That’s it. So, if you take your attention and put it onto something different, very quickly you start to change the chemical reactions within your body, which then starts to change your thought patterns and vice versa. So, the big part of this is really going, “You know what, I actually have control over where I put my attention but the first part is I need to become aware, and become aware of where I am and put my attention.”

And, recently, because there is so much stress going on in our planet with the virus and then we’ve also got what’s going on in America right now, it’s very easy to get sucked into the TV and all the negativity, and it’s very easy to be caught up in conversations about that, and sometimes you have to ask yourself, “You know, how much of this do I need to put myself in front?” Like, “Okay, I need to know what’s going on in the world. But do I need to be like putting myself around that negativity 24/7 when it’s actually making me feel horrendous?” And the answer to that is no.

No, you have a choice. You have total choice. And I would say to people, you know, that we’ve got no control over what happens in our planet. So, it could start snowing, for example, and we’ve got no control over that. It’s fact. But we have total control over the meaning we give something. So, it might be that you have got a really sort of big event at work you’re about to embark on it, it may be pushing you out of your comfort zone, it may be quite challenging. But instead of getting caught up in the what-ifs and, “This could go wrong, and that could go wrong, and people might judge me. And, oh, my goodness, my career could be over,” instead of doing that, you can just stop and say, “You know, it hasn’t happened yet, and right now I have the ability to give it a different meaning. And the meaning I’m going to give it is, ‘God, this is so exciting, it’s new. Who cares if it doesn’t go 100% right? I’ll learn from it and I’ll still be living at the end of it, hopefully.’”

It’s all about you giving your power back to yourself and saying what meaning you might give in this stuff, and is it actually real. And by choosing the right meaning will change your state and change the way you feel about something.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there’s a lot of great stuff there. Well, 12 seconds is, I think, that’s huge right there and I think that’s about true in terms of I think of talking about you’re taking three deep breaths, for example, it might be 12-ish or a little bit more seconds, and then that is sufficient to move from one place to another. And then choosing the meaning that you’re giving there, that’s cool. Well, thank you.

So, then let’s talk about choosing meanings in a big way when it comes to mindsets kind of across a whole lot of stuff as opposed to one given moment or experience. So, you are an award-winning mindset coach in your bio.

Kirsty Bortoft
I am.

Pete Mockaitis
Which I find exciting because I’ve been listening recently to Kelly McGonigal’s The Upside of Stress, and I hope to have her on the show soon.

Kirsty Bortoft
Oh, exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
And I was so intrigued how there were a number of mindset interventions which don’t take a whole lot of effort but really do kind of yield to, or yield great results whether whatever you’re measuring in terms of like it’s not dropping out of college or whatever years later, and so I thought that was awesome, whenever there’s just a little bit of effort produces a lot of bit of results. Very cool. So, can you lay it on us now, what’s a mindset? And what are some of the most high-leverage things we can do to adjust our mindsets to make good things happen for us?

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, that’s a brilliant question. So, I think I want to start off first of all to say that our brains, for the last 50,000 years, have not changed very much at all, and our minds, which I think the brain is the house in which the mind works from. The mind has many different functions but one of the functions that it has is the stress response system, which has not evolved at all since the cavemen times.

So, we may have something going wrong with a colleague at work and we may feel stressed about it, but we can’t go into the office and start fighting for our lives when we get annoyed by somebody, or just run. Our fight or flight system, however, still kicks in, and it’s literally kicking in like a false alarm almost. And so, what happens is every time this happens, it releases a stress hormone into the body, into the system.

Now, any organism can deal with short terms of stress. We’ve been made to deal with it. It’s fine. The problem comes when it’s on repeat and it’s happening day in, day out. Now, unfortunately, most people, every single day of their lives, whether they’re aware of it or not, are triggering their stress hormone maybe not just once, twice, three times. And so, this is what happens when the stress hormone gets turned on.

You have two paths of your body that are happening all the time. So, you’ve got your immune system which is fantastic. It’s protecting you from viruses, it’s protecting you from bacteria, it’s doing a great job. And you’ve also got maintenance because your body is continually rejuvenating. I mean, in the last five days, you’ve had brand new taste buds on your tongue, which is phenomenal. So, you’ve got these two aspects at work.

But as soon as you start getting stressed, and you start having acute stress, the first thing that happens is your immune system gets switched off. Now, again, if it was just switched off for a short time, not a problem. But you can see where the problem kind of kicks in when it gets switched off for long term.

So, how do we deal with this? How do we ensure that our immune system, especially now, is firing on all cylinders? So, The Freedom Alignment Method is my signature program that I’ve created over the last 10-15 years and it addresses this exact problem. So, you might want to grab a paper and pen because I am going to literally give you the five most simplest steps that if you implement these, it works.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you say it works, let’s get really clear. Now, what is the goal, result, the outcome that we achieve by doing this?

Kirsty Bortoft
So I always imagine cortisol being like little taps in your brain that releases into the body. So, if you imagine what it does, it allows the little taps to be switched back off so that your stress hormones stop releasing into the body and you start to return back into homeostasis.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we stop stress just like that. Okay, intriguing. Let’s proceed.

Kirsty Bortoft
So, the first step is, you probably know this first step because it’s quite commonly known that when we get stressed, we don’t breathe very well. We really go shallow in our breathing so it cuts off oxygen to the brain which makes us feel weird. So, the first most simplest step is let’s get some oxygen into your brain and take three really big breaths. And that is so simple, I know, but, honestly, I can’t tell you that our first little step, how it sets you up for the rest of this process. So, once you’ve done the first part and you’ve got some oxygen in the brain, you start to feel less weird.

Now, step two, I mentioned earlier, awareness precedes all change. So, you, first of all, ask yourself, “What have I been putting my attention on?” So, it might be in your mind or it might be actually something in front of you, okay? So, it could be actually happening or it might be just that you’re thinking about it. So, what have you been putting your attention on?

Once you’ve established what you put your attention on, the next thing is you need to start taking personal responsibility for the next step. Now, what does that mean? You’re probably going, “Well, I do.” Well, it means is that, probably, what you’ve been doing over and over again hasn’t been working so we need to do something different.

Now, I just love what Einstein said, which is like, “The definition of insanity repeating the same behavior and expecting something different.” Oh, my goodness, how many times have we all done that and then got really crossed because we haven’t either felt better or things haven’t turned out right for us, and we do this all the time. And so, this part of the process is going, “I’m prepared to do something completely different and trust that, by doing something different, I will get a different result.” So, this is where the paper and pen comes in.

So, this process is called the feel, deal, and dump process which is what I named it, and it’s for our fundamental part which underpins The Freedom Alignment Method, and it’s the most simplest thing, so listen because you might miss it.

The first part of this is you need to ask yourself what was that thing that I asked you to do in step two, which was, “What are you putting your attention on?” So, I’ll give an example. Let’s say you’re at work and you’ve been putting your attention on a deadline and actually you’re winding yourself up, getting worried, thinking you won’t get it done, then this is going to be the title that you put on your paper. So, you put that at the top of your paper, “Stress or worried about a deadline.” Now, this is the part that is fundamental to this process.

Now, before I share this part, I always say this process is really not difficult, and it isn’t, but it is different. And because it is different, the mind will try and jump in and say, “This is too simple. It’s not going to work.” I’m going to invite you now to ignore that running commentary and just do something different anyway and just see the result.

So, you’ve written down at the top of the paper, you’ve written down that, “I’m worried about a deadline.” Now, this is what you need to do next. You take your paper to pen, pen to paper even, and without thinking, which is quite difficult, which is why I get you to write because when you’re writing, it takes your mind off actually trying to think about something. I want you to just directly go to that title and ask yourself, “How does this, honestly, make me feel?” And I just then want you to start writing and allow your pen to flow like a stream of consciousness.

Now, what might happen is your mind might try and kick it. If it does, just take off your pen off your paper, take a deep breath, go back to it and just keep on writing. This exercise can sometimes take a minute, or 10 minutes, or 20 minutes. It really doesn’t matter but you’ll know when your brain dumped enough because there’ll be nothing left to write.

And what you’re actually doing at this point is you’re actually going straight into your subconscious and you’re releasing any suppressed emotions directly onto the paper, so you’re letting things go and you’re doing something different. So, you keep writing. Sometimes when I do this exercise, I can’t even read my writing. It’s like a mess. It doesn’t matter. The intention is how this process works. So, you keep writing until there’s nothing left to write. And as soon as you have finished, you ask yourself a simple question, “Have I written about my feelings or have I written about what went on?”

Now, if you’ve written about what went on, I want you to stop and go back because it’s really important that you write about the emotion and not the act, the actual thing that’s going on. Once you finish this, you take your piece of paper, you just crumple it up, and you go outside and set it on fire, and give it back to the universe. And what we’re doing there is we’re just doing a cycle, so we’ve taken the emotion out of the body, onto the paper, and then given it back to the universe.

It is so simple that people sometimes get it wrong. And I know that’s ridiculous because I’m saying it like this right now but it’s because the mind, the egoic mind is a control freak, and it likes to keep you in your comfort zone. So, when you do something different, it will have a running commentary, and its commentary is always pessimistic because its job is to look for problems. It’s not the enemy actually. It’s doing its job but your job in this moment is to override that and not listen, and just go back to the emotion.

Now, once you set it on fire, you’ve given it back to the universe, you then need to take your attention, so this is step five, and put it onto something upward spiraling. And to be honest, the best upward spiraling thing that you can ever put your attention on is simply gratitude because gratitude naturally expands your experience upwards. So, just by one thing, it doesn’t matter what it is, and just write down why you are grateful for that thing or you can even say it loud, it’s fine.

But what you’re doing then is you’re now choosing to put your attention on something that’s expansive rather than downward spiraling. And when you do that, it allows you to be more grounded and centered in the present moment and stops you from going back off into that kind of mindless chitter-chatter that’s going to cause the stress and trigger the hormone again. There you go in a nutshell.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we start with the three breaths, we say what’s our attention on, “I’m worried because of a meeting,” or whatever, and then we journal on, “How does that honestly make me feel?” just sort of the emotions, not the thoughts, not the thing, just the feelings. Then you set the page on fire, and then you put your attention on something like gratitude, and that’s your five steps.

Well, let me talk about the fire just for a second. Like, if some people are in office buildings…

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, you can’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Can you rip it up or is that okay?

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, that’s okay. Yeah, please don’t be like, “Our fires have gone up.” Yeah, absolutely. If you’re inside, don’t obviously do that or maybe save it to later. Yeah, don’t do it and set the fire alarm off.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s intriguing here is, I think, in step three, that distinction in terms of the feelings. Like, can you give us some examples, like, “How does this make me feel?” Because I think that you can just say, “Sad,” “Angry.” Well, yeah, but I have a feeling there’s going to be a little bit more to it than that.

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, so let us just take the title that we’re stressed because we’ve got a deadline. So, it might be, this is hypothetical, “I’m feeling overwhelmed. I’m feeling scared. I’m feeling like judged, feeling not good enough. I’m feeling hopeless.” I’m just making that up. It’s that simple and it’s literally whatever is there in the moment for the person, they write down. And the power of this exercise is the energetics, really, of what you’re doing, because the person is doing something completely different to what they’ve been doing.

So, mostly, what happens when we experience something that’s uncomfortable is our kneejerk reaction is to push that thing away whatever it might be, even if it’s not actually happening in real life; it’s happening within our mind. Our kneejerk reaction is to push it away. And the reason for that is because we’ve been programmed to move from pain to pleasure at all costs, which is why when we decide to go on a diet and lose weight, unless we have actually dealt with the unconscious programming in our minds, what will happen is we will sabotage ourselves every single time because the desire to move from pain to pleasure will be so great that we’ll then go back in the fridge, eating that piece of chocolate cake, saying, “I’ll start one day.”

Before, when we felt stressed, we’ve suppressed the emotion back down into our subconscious usually by distraction techniques like drinking, maybe spending money we haven’t got on our credit cards potentially, staying up too late, playing video games, all these types of things, our distractions are really from the real feelings that are actually going on in that experience.

And so, what this process does is it takes us from what I call resisting the experience into feeling. And when we do that, we go into a state of allowing. When we go into a state of allowing, that is the only place where healing and letting go can happen. So, when we’re in resistance, it’s not possible because we are literally pushing something and resisting something, and we haven’t got the space for something to move. But when we shift that into a state of allowing, it allows it to go, it allows it go move on and be set free.

And so, this simple, simple exercise, the power in it is because the person, for the first time, is taking out resistance into a state of allowing. And when they do that, they’re allowed to freely let go of the suppressed emotion, the anger, the guilt, the fear, whatever it may be. They’re allowed to honor it, feel it, and let it go.

We’ve been taught, most of us, from childhood that negative emotions are not good. I was told when I was younger, you know, “Come on, Kirsty, please stop. You’ll be fine,” if I was upset about something. And it wasn’t that my parents were being awful. It was that they thought they were doing the right thing, but the truth was that I immediately learned from a very young child that it wasn’t good to show being upset because I felt like I hadn’t done something right or it wasn’t good to feel angry.

And so, what I learned was to push these emotions down. And we’ve all done it. And the reason for that is because the way that the brain has been designed is that between about the age of two and the age of seven is our brainwaves are in this like Theta state, which is the imaginary state.

It’s also the time called the hypnotic stage as well. And the hypnotic stage of the brain is when we download programs. So, we download how to survive, we download how to be in the world, we download how to interact with each other, we download our parents’ belief systems, we download at school what’s right and what’s wrong. And the majority of it is really good stuff, and it teaches us how to be adults. The problem is that there are certain things that are slightly dodgy and don’t serve us.

So, for example, well, the one that money doesn’t grow on trees. And so, what happens, we download these pros and cons, and suddenly, at the age of seven, our brainwaves change, and we go into Beta state which is what you and I are in now. The fundamental shift with that is that now we only can learn through repetition, right? So, what happens is when we have a stressful experience, the brain, being designed to keep you alive, so what it does is it takes that experience, and if it could speak, it would say something like, “Can little Johnny, right now, deal with this stress? No, he can’t,” so it takes that emotion and it would push it into your subconscious mind.

And I always described it a little bit like before like we’ve all got this rucksack on our back, which is invisible, but we carry in our life, and every time we go through something really stressful, we chuck a bit of it into this bag. Now, as I said too early, your mind and body are completely connected, and so this bag is large but it’s not infinite. And so, at some point, it gets so full it starts to overflow. And when it starts to overflow, it offloads from the mind into the body and starts manifesting as stress and anxiety and depression and migraines. And so, all we’re doing when we’re doing this exercise is we’re not just dealing with the actual stress at the moment. We’re actually starting to release some of that out of our bag.

So, when we start feel, deal, and dumping, we’re letting go of some of this unnecessary stuff that we have just dragged through our whole entire life. And so, what I love about this technique, the feel, deal, and the dump, is that it is so simple, and it’s probably likely you’re going to have to do it more than once because you’ve got a lifetime of stuff, but that’s okay. And what I suggest to people is if you are feeling really stressed, you are feeling really anxious, then just keep doing this exercise over and over again, and you will get some relief, I promise you. And if you’re struggling, then reach out. Reach out and have a chat because I’d love to help you.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Thank you. All right. Well, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Kirsty Bortoft
Shall I tell you about my book that’s coming out in two weeks?

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing.

Kirsty Bortoft
So, Break Free from Pain, it’s my first book, so I’m really excited. It’s more like a guide to help people with physical, emotional, and mental pain. And it’s a step-by-step handhold process to be able to really support you and ensuring that you can live an empowered life rather than a stressful life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now can you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Kirsty Bortoft
I’m a massive, massive fan of a number of different scientists but especially newer scientists. My favorites are Joe Dispenza, I love him, he’s amazing and his publications on the mind. And, also, I just love Biology of Beliefs, which is another book. I also love David Hawkins, and his work is incredible. And, unfortunately, he passed away a few years ago, but his work, he’s got a fantastic book called Letting Go which I would say is my go-to book. And he’s also done lots and lots of studies on consciousness and the mind, and I just think he’s phenomenal. So, his work and publications, I would recommend over and over again.

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

Kirsty Bortoft
Meditation, I guess, is the first thing that came into my head. But I would also say that it’s not just meditation. I’m a massive fan of daily rituals. So, every morning, I feel like the first hour or two has got to be about inputting back into the soul. So, for me, I get up and I do meditate, but I also move my body a little bit. I also ensure that I have some good nutrition. And I also make sure that I set a really positive intention for not just the day but just for my life. And I think that that makes a massive impact on how I feel for the rest of the day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah. All my clients know what I’m like. And one of the things I would say is I just think that the first couple of hours of your day really set up the rest of your day. So, if you get up and you are consciously inputting positive expansive things into your experience, what happens is I feel like I go out into the day and so, obviously, real life still happens, but I feel like I can deal with it. It doesn’t get to me. It’s, again, about making a conscious decision about the meaning I’m giving things. And how I do that is by these daily rituals. And I guess another thing I throw in there is back to the old gratitude as well because it’s such a superpower, and I think so underused.

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

Kirsty Bortoft
So, come and get in touch definitely at www.Kirsty-Bortoft.com and you can email me at hello@kirsty-bortoft.com. I’m on YouTube which is the Mindset Coach at Kirsty Bortoft, or you can find under the same name on Facebook or Twitter, Kirsty Bortoft. And if you want the spelling of that, I don’t know whether I need to spell that really slowly, or whether it will be somewhere on here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure, it will be on the show notes but B-O-R-T-O-F-T, and Kirsty not Kristy for the…with a K. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Kirsty Bortoft
Yeah, I just think that it’s got to come back to that we, as human beings, are so powerful and we give away our powers way too easily, and I think that the action here is tomorrow when you wake up, is just remind yourself that you have the choice of where you put your attention firstly and the meaning you give things. So, don’t give that power away because anything is possible. And, honestly, you sincerely are in control of your destiny when you do that. So, just make sure that you live your best version by putting that first.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Kirsty, it’s been fun. I wish you lots of luck in all your adventures.

Kirsty Bortoft
Thank you so much.