KF# 37. Drives Vision and Purpose Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Daniel, welcome back!

Daniel Coyle
Hey, it’s good to be back, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about flourishing. You’ve done some great work here with your book and a lot of research. Could you kick us off by sharing what’s perhaps one of the most surprising and fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us humans and workers and flourishing?

Daniel Coyle
Two of them. One is that it’s still happening. It feels like we’re living in this dystopia sometimes, but, man, there’s a lot of good stories of human flourishing. And by flourishing, we should kind of define it, I guess, which is joyful, meaningful growth. Joyful, meaningful growth, like the highlights of our lives, the thing we all want for ourselves and our kids and our work and our colleagues.

And the biggest surprise of it, when I went into this sort of researching, finding people who were flourishing, I had the assumption that I had learned, which was that kind of you flourish alone, like it’s up to you, right? We’re in this individualistic culture. It’s like my deal.

And what I found over and over again was that’s not how it works. That’s just not how it works. There’s no hermits in caves in Switzerland who are like kicking ass flourishing. We require other people to bring out the best version of ourselves. It’s we are pre-wired for this. You can try all you want and grind all you want and try to be the solo mountain climber but, in the end, flourishing is a human ecosystem and it’s interdependent.

And if we think back on the times in our lives where we’ve grown the most, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts, as they say, that you weren’t by yourself. You were surrounded by people. When we look at stories of great success, the narratives we receive are often stories of the solo hero. But scratch that just a little bit, just look half an inch beneath and you will find ecosystems of support. And that’s what those places are building.

They’re building community. It’s the power of community. And where that gets really interesting is applying it to our workplace because a lot of times our workplace are built under that similar assumption that everybody’s you’re on your own, man. You get promoted by yourself, you get reviewed by yourself, but the places that I visited were really good at creating that kind of connective energy and that group brain that makes one plus one equal ten.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I love that so much, and it’s funny that I think I’m coming around to realizing something that has been on my mind for 28-ish years. And it was this, back in high school, I participated in a marching band. I was in alto sax, if you’re curious. And I was amazed at marching band camp.

So here in the summer for about two weeks, like 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.-ish, we just played music and tried to move to different spots on the football field over and over and over again. And so, yeah, and so we’re talking about seven hours, day after day after day to put together a little marching band show.

And so I always thought, “You know, this is fun.” I was there. I liked meeting people, you know, it was a thing to do, my brother did it, and I just had a good time just hanging out with people and playing some music, doing a show.

But I always thought, during marching band camp and many times afterwards, “Boy, if I could just buckle down by myself and put that kind of energy and attention and time into an endeavor, the way we do in marching band camp to do a little music show on a football field, what kind of incredible things would I be able to achieve? What kind of flourishing and growth could I encounter?”

And, well, you know what, Daniel, it may not surprise you, you’ve done the research, 28 years later, I still can’t do that by myself.

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, right. It’s true. That’s how we’re wired. It goes deep. Think, let’s just move the camera back a few hundred thousand years, right? Who’s going to survive? The group that can cooperate and do their marching band, call it killing a mammoth or whatever, or the lonely, strong, courageous lone wolf guy? I mean, there’s no question.

So when we play a game, let’s say we’re trying to do something and we’re both wired up to some machine that measures our overall happiness and energy and our brain waves, our shared success lights us up way more than our individual success.

Like, if you want to tap in, if you see your life as like a journey where you need a lot of energy and a lot of ideas, don’t do it alone, right? Really finding these ways to connect, finding these communities. And the power of community, that’s a word that I always thought was such a boring word, like you’d see community meeting on a sign and it would kind of be like, “Oh, snooze,” you know?

But what I’ve realized in looking at these flourishing places is that they don’t see community as a noun, they see it as a verb, as a set of actions. If you’re going to form a community, it’s not just, “Oh, yeah, we swim in the same area at the same time.”

Super intentional about creating these little pauses where people come together in the workplace. Super intentional about creating spaces where people can explore questions, simple questions like, “How should we march across this football field? Like, how should we play this song?” The workplace version of that.

And they’re not operating as lone wolves. They’re creating spaces where they can come together and explore that mystery, and all their brains are lighting up and they’re growing and changing and they’re creating these little, I don’t know, like little gardens, right? And like what happened with you.

And I think everybody has their own marching band camp experience back there where you come out of it and you say, “I’m kind of different now. Like, I grew and I helped other people grow.” And that’s like the most core human energy.

And what’s interesting is that we’ve kind of like hollowed it out of the workplace. Like, all the fun and energy that is possible for humans when they come together to do projects, our workplace has been really good about, like, eliminating that in some ways. There are a lot of works that feels very hollow.

I’ve heard it called the emptiness epidemic where it’s like, “Oh, man, I know exactly what I have to do. I have all the information. I have exactly my markers, you know, my KPOs. I’ve got everything that I need, but I just don’t have any meaning and I don’t feel like that energy and I don’t feel that connection.”

And so these places are kind of the antidote to the emptiness epidemic that I think a lot of us are feeling around the workplace right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, there are so many places to go there. So if you find yourself in that spot, exactly as you described, you’ve got all the marching orders, the clear KPIs for evaluation, and it’s just kind of lifeless, what’s to be done?

Daniel Coyle
Well, you know, what’s to be done? What’s to be done? It’d be great if I could be like, “Here’s a silver bullet that will solve all the problems.” That doesn’t exist. Two things I would say, though. First of all, reflect on where you are getting a sense of aliveness.

There’s a little litmus test that you can give in terms of flourishing, which is, “Who do I feel most alive with? Is there anybody in this? Who do I feel most alive with?” And the second is, what are you growing together? What are you making together? What are you growing? So ask that.

Find locations in your life. Find the spaces, the conversations, the relationships where you feel that energy in that sense. That’s the first thing. And then start experimenting a little bit. Your culture, your community is the 15 feet around you all the time.

And these little moments, I call them yellow doors, little moments that maybe green doors, for sure we go through them, red doors we don’t. Yellow doors are kind of this where you’re not sure whether you should go through it or not.

And what I saw in these places is that they had the habit of reaching out and, you know, we talk about relationships like they’re a machine, like, “I’m going to go build relationships.” Relationships grow. They grow in tiny moments of warmth, eye contact. And they grow in questions, just asking questions, “What’s energizing you about this podcast right now, Pete? Like, what are you responding to?”

Like, questions that are in the moment where it actually makes people come alive and respond. And, all of sudden, you’re on a different depth with them. You’re on a different level. And the third thing I would say is get good at pausing. Like, our workplace life these days resembles a race, right, an information race and a project race.

And the places that I visited and the people that I visited were exceptionally good at stopping and zooming out a little bit. And when they zoom out, they’re asking questions like, “What does this mean? Like, where is this headed? Who might help me here? What is this going to look like?”

And I really began to see pausing as like the ultimate ninja skill. Anybody can work harder and faster. And in the age of, obviously AI, we’ve got all the answers are right here. We can just go, go, go, go, go and sprint. Every day is a sprint.

But the places that I visited had this ability to say, like before a team would go out on a project, they wouldn’t reflect. They would preflect, like do a pre-flection where it might be like, “Oh, what do we want this to, what’s the ideal outcome? What’s the end state we’re going for? Let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s talk about what’s energizing us about this project. Like, what are you most curious to learn? Where are you curious? And then let’s talk about like, what if everything goes sideways? What does that look like? Like, how will we know we’re screwing up?”

And then afterwards they would do an AAR, similarly, a pause. It feels like a waste of time. The project’s already done, right? But the pause afterwards where you say, “Okay, what went right? We all share. What went wrong? We all share. And what are we going to do differently next time?” It takes like five minutes. Navy SEALs do it. A lot of high-performing organizations do it. Do a preflection and then an AAR.

And they’re just these moments that inject meaning and relationships to what could be just cold, hard KPIs projects. And if you don’t get good at investing at creating those moments, which just take a short amount of time to put some, like, life and oxygen and curiosity and realness and authenticity into them. And that happens in a pause. That happens by everything I just did, was a series of questions, right, “What are you curious about? What do you want to learn? What could go wrong?”

Like, I think we’re so good in our culture as being as worshiping at the altar of the answer, like, “Oh, that guy’s got all the answers. She’s got all the answers. That’s great. They’re so good.” That’s cheap. Like, I’m sorry, but the world has always changed and the answers are going to be different tomorrow than they are today. So having an answer is less valuable than it ever has been in the history of the world. You can get answers a lot of places.

Having great questions, however, is becoming more and more and more valuable. And those questions don’t just exist as informational questions. They exist as spaces for people to come together and explore those questions together to say, “What’s really going on?” so that they can actually build shared mental models and build shared relationships.

Those relationships are the energy source that powers you in your career, in your personal life. You could take all the studies of long-term adult development and they’d add up to one thing – relationships, relationships, relationships. That’s all that makes us happy. That’s all that makes us fulfilled. And so if we approach everything as transaction, we end up kind of hollowed out.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. It’s like, Well, yes, that was the top thing. I remember we had Robert Waldinger on that very long-term study of Harvard graduates, and that was the thing. It’s like all about love and relationships. Also watch out for alcoholism.

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, don’t drink too much and don’t worry about much else. Like, it’s more powerful than genetics, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Okay. So that’s a lovely piece in terms of it doesn’t take a ton of time to inject meaning and relationship human bits into efforts. And I’m thinking about that ritual of always checking in how it went. And I remember I was stunned by, we had a mega church pastor, it might’ve been Clay Scroggins or someone on the show – we’ll put in the show notes – who said that that was a thing that they did after every Sunday worship day, like on Monday, that was just like, “Hey, how did that go?”

And I remember I was so struck by that because it’s so beautiful in that you can really create some cool compounding results in terms of, “Oh, man,” like I’m thinking about this James Clear Atomic Habits type stuff.

Daniel Coyle
Yes, right.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Oh, shucks, if we get 2% better at putting this thing together each time, then, my goodness, I guess that’s how churches could become mega. This is a pretty amazing experience.”

Daniel Coyle
That’s how everything becomes mega, isn’t it? It’s like everything is a spiral, Pete, you know. This shape, it’s a natural shape. It’s not a machine, but all natural learning, like your learning, my learning, your listeners’ learnings.

If you really think about it, they’re doing just what that pastor did, which was like, you have an experience, and then you got to go back and get a little feedback about it, and that elevates you a little bit, and then you do another one, and then you get a little feedback, and that elevates you a little bit. And that spiral upward is what we’re all seeking.

And the problem is that we mistake it for a ladder. We mistake it for like a straight line thing and it’s never straight because there’s going to be some wrong turns, there’s going to be some failures. And one of the most useful concepts, there’s been a concept that I learned during this book that just blew me away and I keep thinking about it all the time as a parent, as kind of an entrepreneur, as a writer, and that’s the distinction between complicated and complex. Is that a familiar distinction to you?

Like, I always thought that was the same, like you. I thought they were like similar, like it’s complicated, it’s complex, same thing. It turns out that’s deeply wrong. Like, complicated things come together the same way every single time. Like it’s building a Ferrari, right? If I give you all the parts of a Ferrari and I give you the instructions and you put them together in that way, you will get a Ferrari every time.

Complex things change. Complex things, when you interact with them, they move and they respond. And so the mental model is like, “Is this more like building a machine or is it more like raising a teen? Like, there’s no instruction book. Everything I do changes the dynamic.”

And so our lives, our careers, our learning is way more complex than it is complicated. And so adapting it, knowing that our path is going to be curving, knowing that we’re going to fail, knowing that failure is going to teach us something, knowing that the only way you can figure things out is to kind of act your way into them.

Actions and experiments are incredibly powerful for that reason. That’s why science is so strong. It’s actually trying to figure out what’s there, probing, and then learning, and then probing again, and learning, and probing again.

And when we take that kind of stance toward the learning in our career development, it puts you in the front seat more, like it’s a more active thing and you start to see failure not as a verdict but as a learning process where it’s like, “Oh, totally, that conversation went off the rails, but guess what? I’m never going to make that mistake again, you know?” That was powerful.

And change in that stance can be, I’ve just seen that over and over again in my career of hanging around with high-performing organizations, that learning bit, you know, we kind of always tip our hat to it. It’s good to be a learner, but, man, this world changes fast. It’s not just like morally good to be the learner. It is, by far, the most powerful stance you can take toward reality.

Pete Mockaitis
And I also love that notion that if teams are regularly having these exchanges with one another, that goes miles in terms of – well, I guess growing, not building – growing the relationships.

Well, so as I think about these relationships growing and getting stronger and having these kinds of exchanges, I think that’s also just going to do loads for psychological safety. Amy Edmondson was on the show talking about that, and we’ve had others who put it very simply.

People see stuff that’s dumb all the time but they’re probably not going to mention it unless you’ve got some sort of relationship or belief that that’s going to go somewhere.

Daniel Coyle
That’s so deep, isn’t it? And that word safety is a tricky one a little bit because it implies that we’re going to make everyone feel very secure. But, in fact, it’s about courage. Like, the courage to say, “Oh, I noticed that was off and we can fix it.”

And so what I’ve seen leaders do over and over again, because we’re naturally like hierarchical, right? So for all the young leaders out there, the most important words you can say are like, “Hey, I screwed that up before,” or, “Hey, what do you think?”

If you could change one thing to actually go kind of overboard in taking off your crown of power and inviting people into, again, let’s go back into question space, where they can explore it together, that’s where relationships are built in that exploration when we’re stepping into that uncertainty.

And the deeper level of that is really all about how vulnerability works. Like, I think our story in our head about trust and vulnerability, we’ve got it deeply wrong. Like, we normally think, “Okay, Pete, I’ve got to trust you before I can be vulnerable. So I’m kind of looking to see if you can earn that, right?”

We’ve got it backwards. Moments of vulnerability are what create trust. It’s called a vulnerability loop. When you’re vulnerable, that gives me permission to be vulnerable, and now we’re closer. And think about your best friends in the world. Are they people that you earned the trust of? Or are they people that you were, like, thrown into struggle with and people that you were very vulnerable with?

Those are our best friends because that’s how vulnerability works. It doesn’t come after trust. It comes before.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, could you share perhaps a story with us of folks who were not so much flourishing and then they incorporated some of your pro moves here and saw a real increase in that flourishing?

Daniel Coyle
Pro moves, I like that. So there’s one story, I guess this might resonate. I’ve been consulting with the Cleveland Guardians baseball team for the last 13 years. And when we started, they had just started a large organizational effort to build the organization around the general, and basically, back context here. They’re one of the poorest teams in baseball.

In baseball, there’s no salary cap, so the Yankees can spend four times as much money on their players every year. So the Guardians can’t buy players. They have to make players, grow players. And like every baseball team, they’ve got a sort of a school system of there’s minor league teams, single A, double A, triple A. And it’s like a giant baseball school. And so we have to figure out, “How can the Guardians compete in such an unfair game?”

And so we created a generative question, which was, “How do we help every player improve?” And we oriented all the departments around it. And we quickly realized, “Man, if players are going to improve, we need to really improve our coaches. Our coaches need to be learning fast.”

And so our first move, we said, “Well, let’s bring in expert coaches. We’ll tell them how to coach.” We brought in Michael Phelps as coach. We brought in NFL coaches, Navy SEAL guys, and it felt good. It felt like it was a really smart thing to do.

But then as we watched it, the coaches did what everybody does, which is they kind of resisted. Nobody likes being coerced from the top down. Nobody. Nobody likes that. Go tell your kid to clean their room and see how fast they clean their room. It doesn’t work.

So we flipped it. We flipped it around. We created a question space. We put the coaches in small groups and said, “Okay, guys, who is the best coach you ever saw? And what did they do?” That was it. All of a sudden, at these tables, the conversation starts to bubble like champagne. All of a sudden, they’re throwing out stories and ideas and concepts.

And we went from like top down saying, “Do this expert stuff to…” “You guys, we’re going to value you. You’re really smart. Let’s bring those out.” We turned that into our model of excellent coaching, which we still use to this day.

And there were a million other little programs like that, whereby, sort of flipping the polarity from “Here are the experts. Here’s best practices. Follow these instructions,” from coercion to, “Whoom! Let’s explore this together. What energizes you right now?” and aligning that with what the academic studies and what works with coaching.

And over the last 13 years, we’ve made the playoff eight times. We’ve won as many games as the Yankees and spent $1.3 billion less. We’re adding up to more. We’re growing. We’re getting a little better at growing players. It’s not easy, and we haven’t won the World Series yet, but it has been alive. It’s been energized. It’s been challenging, but it’s been really joyful.

And so that’s kind of the piece where I see it happening. And when I see that happening at the highest level of sport, where everything is quantified and where things are extremely difficult, it gives me some hope that it can happen where the places that are maybe away from the bright spotlight.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And I love, though, the notion of we flip it and then you ask the question. So can you share with us, you’ve given us a couple fabulous questions, can you give us a few more of your faves that unlock some cool flourishing action?

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, no, I really like flight checks. It’s a concept out of IDEO. Flight checks is you do with your team. And all of these are all social, right? You can do it by yourself if you want to, but it’s always better to do with other people.

Pre-flight, you know, “We’re about to do a project, let’s do a pre-flight, let’s do a mid-flight, and let’s do a post-flight.” And the questions are always really basic, it’s like, “What’s been the biggest positive? What’s been the biggest negative? Are you still energized by where we started out? What did you learn?” These basic sort of check-ins.

There’s one question that I really like before a team gets together because, you know, lot of times you’re coming together, you don’t know each other. And there’s an exercise called the 4HS that’s really powerful.

And it’s kind of a relationship builder or relationship grower, rather. Let’s use our language correctly here, Pete. 4HS, you get to a small group and everybody shares their history, just a little bit about their history, “Where are you from? Where is your family from?”; their heartbreak, “What’s something that broke your heart?”; their hero and their hope for the coming year. Super simple. Take a couple minutes. You go around the horn.

But what’s happening is you’re turning off your narrow attention system and you’re opening up your relational attention system. You’re creating connective energy in that moment. So that’s one that I really like. It’s really basic.

And there’s one more that is more for individuals. It was taught to me by a Columbia University psychologist, Lisa Miller. It’s called the Counsel Exercise, and I’ll just describe it or we could actually do it if you want. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to walk through it?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s walk through it.

Daniel Coyle
All right, let’s walk through it. Close your eyes, picture a wooden table, just a simple wooden table, and around that table, picture people living or deceased who truly have your best interest in mind, who are truly deeply on your side. And let them come and take a seat.

And now picture yourself walking in and taking a seat. And now ask them if they love you and listen to their response. And now ask them, what is it that is important for you to know right now about where you are headed? What is it that is important for you to know right now about where you are headed, and listen to their answer?

And now you can open your eyes. And that’s it. It’s a little grounding exercise. How did it go for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Daniel, I bet people cry when you do this.

Daniel Coyle
Yeah. I know.

Pete Mockaitis
Yep, I’m tearing up a little here. And it’s so funny, it’s, like, that’s always inside of us. And yet, unless you pause and really go there, because in some ways it’s, like, we like to rush. We like to get their answers, like, “Do I really have to visualize the table? And now I’ve got to visualize people. And now I to visualize me walking in the room, you know?” As opposed to just, “What’s the answer?” And yet it makes all the difference in terms of it hitting home.

Daniel Coyle
It makes all the difference. It hits home, right? I love how you said that. Those people are always with you and yet we don’t sort of stop and turn and listen to them. And so a lot of this stuff is about getting in deeper touch with what we really value, what’s really beautiful in our lives, what’s really true in our lives, and creating space in our work, in our home life where we can stop and do that.

And our ancestors stopped a lot more than we did, right? Old-time life was filled with moments like that, rituals where you’d think about the people who came before and think about what they meant, and look at treasured objects and symbols. And our life has been like kind of ruthlessly stripped of a lot of those pauses.

And so it’s up to us to smuggle them back into our life, to take a second and feel that powerful stuff that’s, like you say, it’s waiting for you. It’s not something you had to build. We all have got, that’s called your counsel. We’ve all got a counsel. They’re with us all the time.

And listening to them at those moments can, it’s not just comfort. For me, the powerful part of it is the clarity that you get from that because you get a new sense of what matters and what doesn’t matter. And that’s actually incredibly stabilizing in this world where it feels like we’re always chasing something, chasing shiny objects.

It is incredibly stabilizing to have a moment where you can stop and activate what you’re born to do, you know, let go of control, and connect to what’s really there. It’s just like the most powerful skill and it’s half an inch beneath the surface waiting to come out.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I love so much about this is, you know, I’ve had guests and they say things like, “Oh, form a personal advisory board.” I was  like, “Okay, that’s good advice. Yeah, sure. Good thinking, uh-huh.” And then we’ve had Tara Mohr on the show who did some great thoughts about thinking about sort of like an inner mentor, a wiser, maybe older version of you who cares about you, and you do a visualization, you speak with them. And that’s cool and powerful as well.

What I like here is you kind of, wooh, merge those in a groovy way. And, well, for me, just to share, it was sort of a notion of having some worries, concerns, anxieties associated about the future state of some things. And then to feel the reassurance from these people that, you know, my capabilities are vast. In one way or another, we’re going to figure this thing out and there’s really no need to to get all worried about all this stuff.

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, I know. It’s a good feeling, right? It’s just stabilizing. I just love that. Grounding, right? It’s grounding.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Daniel Coyle
So you got that for a big one, and then you’ve got all kinds of other little ones. Like, there’s a little deli in Michigan that has grown into a $90 million community of businesses that does a nice job of teaching this stuff. And he talks about, Ari Weinzweig, who’s the CEO, he talks about SBA, which is stop, breathe, appreciate. Like, to have a minute where you stop, breathe, and appreciate – SBA.

It’s another good one, but it’s just like, I think most of us could use three or four of these things in our holster, you know, some to do in a team context, some to do in an individual context, some to do in kind of a more, “I’m going to retreat and think about things” context. But, yeah, the world wants to lift us off the ground, and so we have to have our own tools for grounding ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you also have a turn of phrase, nurturing beautiful messes. What does that consist of and how and why should we do that?

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, when I visited these places, I thought when I’d visit them, they’d be tidy. I thought that these flourishing places would like have all the answers. And as we’ve said, what they had was a lot of questions. And then what they would do is explore those questions in a messy way.

Like, to go back to the Guardians and the coaches gathered around trying to come up what the best coaches did. That was not a nice, neat process. There was a ton of slack in it. There was a ton of little rabbit holes that people chased down because that’s actually how growth works.

Think about a time where you grew the most. Was it a time where you didn’t fail? No, it was probably a time where you failed a decent percentage of the time, right? Was it a time where you understood or you could execute every single plan that you came up with? No, it was a time where you were probably forced to improvise a little bit.

And so with these flourishing places and these flourishing people and this flourishing community, what there was was this kind of self-organizing around obstacles that was invariably messy. Because if it’s not messy, you’re not doing it right. If it’s not messy, you’re not giving people the freedom to self-organize and take a role.

We had a moment over Thanksgiving where my wife and I were putting on a dinner for our family and maybe 25 people. And turkey was about to come out of the oven and nothing was ready. The table wasn’t set, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

And I kind of looked around, you know, sort of did the father thing, like kind of skeptical, like, “Is this going to come together?” And then, you know, all of the kids and all their friends, it was like one of those Walt Disney, like fast motion things.

Everything’s perfect. Candles are lit in a tiny amount of time, way more than if somebody had said, “You do this, and you do that, and you do this.” It was a little messy and that’s what gave it the energy. Mess isn’t actually mess. Mess is agency. And when you give people agency in a space, you end up with a much better result than if you kill agency.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that makes a lot of good sense. Okay. Daniel, as people think about this flourishing stuff and we’re getting excited and, like, “Yes, that’s cool. I want that more. Yes, please,” what would you say are your top do’s and don’ts for professionals who maybe don’t have leadership, managerial authority, but want some more flourishing and they want to get it going and want to avoid any missteps?

Daniel Coyle
Yeah. Well, the do would be get a three-by-five card and make a mark on it for every day, and start paying attention to where you feel most alive and where you feel you’re contributing to stuff, to something that’s kind of alive and growing. Just notice that. That’s all. That’s the first step.

Like, if anybody gives you like a set of instructions on how to flourish, then that means it’s not actually a good set of instructions, because it is up to you. It is not something, but that’s a guidepost. Look at what’s already happening in your life. Where are you feeling that energy?

And as far as a don’t goes, I think the biggest don’t would be to don’t do it alone. Like, share your story with other people, and share your journey with other people, and share your struggles with other people. That is the thing that will create the energy that will allow you to get through. We live in a world of self-improvement, but shared improvement is way more powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I totally resonate with that. And I’m thinking about, I’ve had times with accountability groups, some men’s groups, my podcast mastermind group, and it’s been transformational. And what’s really cool is you don’t necessarily have to have these humans in your own workplace.

Ideally, you could, if you have some great fun team experiences and, hopefully, you can move in those directions if that’s not currently happening. But even if nobody wants to play ball, you can tap into some of this goodness with your other communities and relationships around you.

Daniel Coyle
Exactly. It’s a whole ecosystem, so explore it.

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

Daniel Coyle
I love, I always go back to, I think it was William Faulkner who said, “Only connect.” Only connect. The clarity of that and that has always made, at the end of the day, what’s it about? It’s about that.

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

Daniel Coyle
You know, I keep getting taken with this, it was a priming one. A lot of the priming experiments have been a little bit debunked, but the difference between when you’re approaching a task, the difference between saying “I’m nervous” and “I’m excited.”

Like, I feel that in my body. When I say I’m nervous, it just gets worse and when I say I’m excited, it’s a reframing of that. And some of that reframing stuff I find to be like personally super applicable.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Daniel Coyle
The Right Stuff. It’s the book that made me want to be a writer. There’s a feeling when you’re reading some books where it just feels like you can feel the top of your head coming off. And I don’t know if you ever felt that with a book or a song or anything, but it’s like that, that knocked me out. Tom Wolfe.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Daniel Coyle
I like a great pencil, a great mechanical pencil.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I have the same one!

Daniel Coyle
Come on, dude.

Pete Mockaitis
I got multiples.

Daniel Coyle
Check it out. That’s awesome.

Pete Mockaitis
This is a Graph Gear by Pentel, for our listeners.

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, for our sponsors. But it’s great, right? Like, I really get a lot of joy out of that. You know, it’s like that stuff matters. It’s a little sacred.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Daniel Coyle
I think I got to say, like trying to get it, I don’t do it every day, but when I do have a workout, like a hard workout, that is like, makes me feel so much better.

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

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, you know, culture isn’t something that you say or something you are. It’s something that you do. It’s a set of relationships moving toward a goal.

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

Daniel Coyle
DanielCoyle.com

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

Daniel Coyle
Yeah, I would say that the call to action would be to make one random reach out to somebody who you haven’t connected with in a long time for no reason. Just reach out, an old friend or something like that, and see what happens. That would be the challenge. It’s like renewing those acquaintances ends up just being the highlight of a day.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to dig into that a little bit because I think that folks naturally can feel some emotional resistance, like, “Ooh, that’s kind of weird. We haven’t talked in like three years. They’re going to think I’m trying to rope them into a multi-level marketing scam. How do I say it?” You know? What do you say to folks who are having a little bit of emotional resistance to this thing?

Daniel Coyle
You know, try it. I mean, everything good is on the other side of fear, period. So that you’re feeling fear is absolutely appropriate, right? But I would also turn them to the work of Nick Epley at the University of Chicago, who has people do this at scale.

And you can see the numbers where it’s like the people who are asked to talk to other people on the train are really pessimistic about it. They think, “Oh, this is going to suck.” Guess what? Highlight of their day. People who are asked to, “Just stay by yourself on the train. Just prepare for your work. Focus on yourself,” they end up enjoying it a lot less than they thought they would.

So there’s this flip. We think we’re not going to enjoy these interactions, but we are built, you are pre-wired to enjoy and appreciate and be energized by them. We can’t help it.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. Daniel, thank you. So much good stuff.

Daniel Coyle
Super fun, Pete. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Molly, welcome back!

Molly Fletcher
It’s awesome to be back with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’re talking about your book, Dynamic Drive, which sounds like something I’d sure love to have more of. Could you kick us off with maybe a super inspiring story of someone who was struggling but then made the switch and saw that sustainable success on the other side?

Molly Fletcher
Yeah, Pete, that’s awesome. Well, I think, fundamentally, I’d frame it with the fact that, as an agent for you know, almost 20 years as a sports agent, what’s so fascinating is that the fans see, with sports, all these moments of achievement. Like the fans see the trophies and the accolades and the big contracts, and these pivotal peak moments of achievement.

But, for me, what I saw every day, all day, day in and day out, for, literally, decades is everything in between the moment of achievement, everything that got them there, who they became in that pursuit, and what happened after the achievement, and who did it again and again, and why, and how. And so, they operated differently, and that is in part what Dynamic Drive is, is this pursuit of better every single day, and I unpack seven principles that are critical to living that way, and, in many ways, parking complacency to the side forever.

And so, it’s this focus not on a moment in time or on achievement, which is really the traditional definition of drive, this linear pursuit of an outcome, and dynamic drive is this continuous pursuit of better in a way that’s sustainable and anchored in purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that sounds like it could fire me up, sure.

Molly Fletcher
Are you fired up?

Pete Mockaitis
So, can we hear about someone who kind of lost the path, but then got back in the groove?

Molly Fletcher
Well, absolutely, I mean, I think that is, in part, my mission, is to help people recognize when they could be sliding into complacency and don’t really recognize it. You know, I talk about that there’s a big difference between contentment, which is totally a great thing to have your toes in the sand with a book in your hand on a beach and be content, and there’s a totally different thing when we think about complacency, which, to me, is this unintentional parking of something in your life that potentially actually matters to you a lot.

And so, I tell a story, actually, in the book about a gentleman that I really walked through something that I think is probably really helpful for your listeners, which is an alignment audit, which is an opportunity to pull back and say, “What are the things in my life that really, really matter to me? What are my most important people, things, behaviors, beliefs that matter to me deeply, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, spiritually?”

Write all those down, and then rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on the amount of time, attention, and energy you’re giving those things that you’ve identified matter to you a ton. And so, I unpack a story in the book, to your question, of a gentleman by the name of Dave. And what he realized in doing that was, “Gosh, I got a gap. I mean, I say that my son is A1 and just such an important part of my life but I miss every one of his games and I go hunting every weekend.” And I say that it matters but he rated himself a five, and so that was a gap.

And I think we can all recognize the roles that we play in our life – wife, mother, sister, daughter, neighbor, parishioner, community member, leader. There’s a myriad of roles we play in our life, and I think we’ve got to recognize, “How do I show up as the best version of myself in those roles and be remarkably intentional about living into that in service of really leading the life and leaving the legacy that we want to leave in alignment with the things that really matter to us?”

And there are so many moments in my own life where I was pursuing this thing that I was told, candidly, as a wife and a mother when we had three kids in 12 months, Pete, which is sort of hard, it’s a little crazy, right? I mean, we had one and then we had twins. And everybody was like, “Molly, you can balance all this.” So, the peak of my career, 300 athletes, and coaches, team of agents, like you can balance all this.

And so, that was what I was trying to do, was I was trying to balance all of these things, which was a lot of things. And then I was finding myself completely exhausted and drained and feeling like a total failure and just fried. And, fundamentally, what was happening was I was attempting to take all of these various things and go to bed at night with a teeter-totter perfectly balanced, and I actually don’t even think that’s what we want.

I think what we want is alignment, which means that sometimes we will be out of balance, but it’s on purpose, right? Like, when I wrote my book, I was a little over-indexed from a work perspective. I’d take about a month plus in the summer and go to our cottage in northern Michigan where I’m out of balance with work, but I’m totally in balance, you know, I’m aligned with something that’s deeply valuable to me and my family.

So, I think it’s just critical to say, “What are the things that matter most? How can I live into that?” which isn’t balance, it’s alignment. And I had a guy that I interviewed actually on my podcast, Pete, and he said that when he, and this would be an example, he said that when he was going to play in his very first Super Bowl ever, and this guy was like selling shoes at Foot Locker a year before, so this was just incredible for him.

He, essentially, told his family, like, “Hey, I am fully locked in for the next two weeks, training for the Super Bowl. Like, my phone is going to be, I’m going to be locked in.” So, he was out of balance, but he was aligned with a really remarkably unique window of time and had communicated that to the people in his life who really matter, and then was able to have a really special experience.

So, he was getting ready to have a really incredibly unique and super special experience in the Super Bowl, so he was a little out of balance with his family, but he had communicated that in service of ensuring he could perform at his best in a moment, professionally, that really mattered to him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I think we had a guest, Dan Thurmon, who wrote a book called Off Balance On Purpose, and he’s, like, a yearly cyclist and gymnast.

Molly Fletcher
Cool.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s a good visual, it’s like, yeah, there will be times in which you choose to be off balance, but in so doing, you get some momentum and a direction, and so you kind of handle your stuff appropriately elsewhere with the communication and the heads-up and all that kind of thing. Well, then tell us, when it comes to having a dynamic drive, what’s the big idea or core message that makes it all possible?

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. Well, purpose is fundamental to dynamic drive in the sense that it’s the red thread that threads through it all. In other words, I think when we know why we do what we do, it changes what we do and it changes the way that we show up in moments that can be hard. And we know that when we’re pursuing a better version of ourself, we can unlock greater joy and greater fulfillment. We can align with the legacy that we want to leave.

And so, purpose is so critical because, you know, I think about athletes and coaches that I worked with, who had injuries and rehabs and trades, but if they were clear on why they were doing what they were doing, it gave them the strength to overcome, at some level, the speed bumps and the hiccups and the challenges, and we’re all going to have them.

But when we know why, and I often tell an analogy, sort of a metaphor of sorts where it’s like you have two high-rise buildings and you say to an individual, “Hey, look, I’m going to ask you to walk across the high-rise building, I mean, on a plank, across these two high-rise buildings. I’ll lay the plank over the top. It’s an inch and a half thick; it’s a foot and a half wide. It’s kind of a sunny day. Eighty percent of the people that walk across this plank to the other side make it. It’s a thousand feet high, five hundred feet apart, let’s say, 80% make it, 20% don’t.”

And I’ll ask a room of 1,000 people in a keynote, “Would you walk across that plank for a million bucks?” And I get five hands. “How about would you walk across for 5 million bucks?” and I get a couple more hands. And then I ask, “If the most important people in your life, the most important people in your life are on the other side, and the only way you could save them is if you walked across the plank?” Everybody’s hand shoots up before I can finish the sentence.

In other words, when we know why we’re doing something, it fundamentally changes our ability to show up in that moment with the kind of mindset that we need to execute. And so, I unpack seven keys, mindset, of course, being one of them, to living this way. But I’m watching you and you have a question, you’re contemplating something. I want to give you a shot here, Sparky. What do you got? Talk to me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, one, I mean, you’ve crafted quite the visual, that I am imagining, and it is sort of terrifying, you know, thinking about the heights and whatnot. I think it reminds me of skydiving and more here. And so, yeah, it really does, emotionally, experientially, in the gut, crystallize a concept that can be very theoretical.

It crystallized a concept that can be a very theoretical and rational, it’s like, “Oh, yes, my family is important to me. Like, yes, I should have purpose, yes. Yes.” And yet, when you put it that way very sharply, it becomes quite clear, “Millions of dollars would be pretty cool but not worth risking my life for,” versus, “My family, no question.”

So, it’s kind of like, if you’re willing to risk your life for something, and yet not something else, then it’s not too far of a stretch to say, “Well, then how will you spend your life? How will you choose to invest your finite hours before you expire in that which is truly meaningful?”

And it’s quite easy to get sucked into all kinds of things that you’re like, “Well, wait a second, this is cool and helpful, but it’s not my purpose. This is fun and interesting, and I’d like to be helpful to other people. I don’t want to let them down. I want to make good use of my degree in certain reasons, rationales, excuses, any of them,” but it’s a much higher bar and far fewer things are worth risking our life for and, thus, spending our life in pursuit of.

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. And I think that fundamental question, that is so important to consider, kind of to your point, is, “What are you chasing?” I had a friend who, I mean, she’s got a promotion and raises and all these things, but she was looking at me, saying, “I’m exhausted. I’m traveling constantly. I’m disconnected from my husband, and my daughter and I are sideways. I’m not sleeping. I’m gaining weight. I’m not exercising,” and she was just in a really tough place.

And I remember looking at her, and she had a huge job, and she had gotten this promotion, and I said, “What are you chasing?” And she looked at me, and was like, “What kind of a question is that? What do you mean?” Well, I’m like, “Well, like, it doesn’t sound like you’re having, fundamentally, like, just fun and it sounds like you’re compromising some things that matter. And so, like, I’m just trying to, I mean, what is it?”

And I’m, like, waiting for her to go, “Well, I’m going to do this for six months so that I can do X.” She goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, what is it all for? I mean, your daughter is 16. What is it all for? What are you chasing?” And she didn’t have an answer. And so, I think it is a very difficult question to answer, but it’s a really important one to answer because we want to know that.

Otherwise, I think sometimes we just find ourselves on a treadmill on 10, holding on for dear life, with an incline of 10, and we’re not really sure where we’re going and why we’re going there. And so, I think we just have to take the time and the energy to get aligned in that regard so that we’re connected to the things that do matter to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, help us out, if some listeners are having a similar stuck response, “Uh, I don’t know, Molly,” what’s the path or the sequence by which we get some clarity and insight there?

Molly Fletcher
Well, I mean, the alignment audit, I think, is really powerful that we sort of just unpacked, which I think is a really cool way to get aligned with what matters, how much time and attention are you giving to the things that matter. So, that’s really critical and foundational relative to the opportunity to live with balance or alignment, not balance, in fact.

But then I unpack seven principles in Dynamic Drive, and one is mindset, right? So, oftentimes, we have what I call an inner critic that we want to turn into an inner coach. So, we think about in our lives the way that maybe an inner critic might talk to us, which is, “You can’t,” “Why me?” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not this enough,” and we have these automatic thoughts to the tune of almost 80,000 a day, and some of them are that inner critic.

And so, what we want to do is, first, recognize the things, the scripts, the self-talk that are not taking us where we want to go, that are keeping us a little bit stuck, and then we want to shift that to truly a bit of an inner coach that’s going to take us where we want to go. So, I’ll give you an example.

Let’s say you say that exercise is important to you but the self-talk is, you know, “I just don’t have time. I mean, how in the world am I supposed to take time to exercise or work out when, I mean, I’ve got this job and I’ve got emails, and I’m married, I have kids, and I’ve got dinner, and I got all these things? And, like, I don’t have time. I don’t have time to work out.”

And, fundamentally, pulling back and saying, “Okay, well, what if I shifted that story to, when I take time to work out, I feel better, I sleep better, I make better food choices, I show up better for the people in my life who matter most? I need to take the time every day to ensure that I protect that time and I exercise because I show up better for the people in my life that matter.”

And then, when the inner critic comes in and that self-talk or that thing that might keep us stuck in this place, we shift to that better script. And I also encourage people to reinforce that new script. Maybe it’s something you write on your whiteboard in your office. Maybe it’s a sticky note on your desk. But we want to keep that new script in front of us so that, when we do slip, and that inner critic starts to find its way in, we can suffocate it with that new script.

So, mindset is a really, really critical place to start. And then, I talk about energy and discipline and curiosity, resilience, connection, you know, confidence, obviously, is critical, but this is a way of life that isn’t linear, in the sense that we might find ourselves in certain moments where we need a little bit more discipline, or we need a little bit more curiosity, or we’ve pushed hard and we need resiliency.

And so, it isn’t like A to B, B to C, C to D, right, and then, “Whoop, we’re there.” It’s the ability to circle back in and touch the things that we need in the moments that matter.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s lovely in terms of the reframe, what it’s for, makes all the difference as opposed to simply, “Well, I should. Well, you know, the government recommends I should have 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic activity each week.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s not much of a pull.” It’s like, “I should do it.” Or, now that I’m 41 years old and married with children, trying to have a hot bod is not really a motivator the way it was as a youth.

Molly Fletcher
That’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, in the dating market with competitors that I had to pass it in the pursuit of the lady. So, yeah, that makes the world of difference, is getting clear on the underlying purpose or benefit, which serves as an antidote, a counter-response to the inner critic and head trash going on.

Molly Fletcher
And I think, oftentimes, people talk about burnout so much today. I actually think burnout is really a result of doing too much of the things that don’t align with what matters most to you, that don’t align with your purpose. I don’t think burnout is a result of working too much. I think it’s working on the things that don’t matter to you.

And so, I also think we can keep burnout at bay because we’re pursuing something that is deeply critical to what matters to us relative to who and how we want to be and do whatever it is that we do in our life.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. So, I’m curious then, if we find ourselves in a spot where, let’s just say with jobs, like, “Hmm, that’s ringing a bell, Molly. I am feeling a touch of burnout, and it’s because I don’t actually, deep down, care much about what I’m doing. It’s a job. It pays bills. That’s handy. It would be cool to do some other things, but I don’t know,” how do we start to work with that?

Molly Fletcher
Yeah, for sure. Well, I think we also have to recognize that, not everybody’s work is going to also be their purpose. Is it ideal and optimal? Absolutely. But the purpose might be that we have to shift our mindset to one that then allows us to make the life for our children a little bit better than ours was, or gives us an opportunity to do X or Y.

So, we want to take the time to, certainly, if we can do the work that we believe is our life’s mission, that is absolutely ideal, no question about it. And I think what I would push somebody that’s in that place to recognize is maybe there’s an opportunity to understand, beyond the paycheck and beyond the check clearing and beyond the money, what, in fact, is underneath all that, that is making an impact in a way that’s deep and real and substantive?

I spoke at an event for a payments company, a financial payments company, and it was interesting. The leader really pushed, you know, you would say, “Well, I didn’t wake up in all my life where I was dying to run payroll for people.” And she really pushed people to understand that, “Look, we execute against the payroll of, I mean, just enormous amounts of individuals in the world. And that then, in turn, creates meals and family dinners and people sitting around a table.”

And so, look, is that a stretch? Maybe, but maybe that’s a way to reframe it in service of saying, “You know what, this isn’t really about payroll. This is about something bigger and deeper than that.” And then I think we have to have the courage to recognize that maybe, that our legacy, the thing we want on our tombstone, isn’t directly aligned with what we do day in and day out, but it feeds the thing that is, in fact, maybe be more deeply threaded relative to our purpose.

I would encourage people to recognize the power of saying, you know, I think, oftentimes, people will say, or will hear, “I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice.” I think that we actually have more choices than sometimes we really want to face. And I think we have to have the courage to really go, “Do I not, really? Like, maybe there is something that I could change. Maybe there is something that could pivot, that would allow me to align my purpose more directly to the work that I’m doing and in service of me feeling like I’m living into that more deeply.”

And I think taking the time to explore the fact that we have a fair amount of control on where we put our energy, more so than, I think, sometimes we can admit to, and it’s hard. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but, I mean, we have to, at some level, have the courage to ask ourselves some difficult questions that could help us create that alignment.

And I think we also have to have people around us that have no agenda, but to help us be the best version of ourselves, that can help us unpack maybe where there’s gaps and opportunities for us to step into our purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. And I’m curious, then, you’ve got seven keys to unlock our dynamic drive: mindset, energy, discipline, curiosity, resilience, connection, confidence. That’s a lot for an interview. But we talk about mindset here, it boils down to a set of beliefs, kind of shaping how we see the world and ourself in it. Are there any just phenomenal core beliefs that just make a world of difference in terms of having that drive?

Molly Fletcher
I think, fundamentally, it’s recognizing that talent alone and our sort of isn’t enough to sustain high performance, to even potentially get to the best version of ourselves. Like, to me, talent is a fantastic thing, and we all have God-given talents. But, for me, I can tell you as an agent, there was a lot of athletes and coaches that had a lot of talent, but they didn’t get there or stay there, because talent isn’t enough. So, we need talent plus curiosity, plus discipline, plus mindset, plus energy.

Molly Fletcher
I think that they, fundamentally, recognize that it isn’t about a finite moment in time, that it’s an inside-out pursuit of better, not an outside-in pursuit. In other words, it’s not about pursuing an outcome, it’s about who we’re becoming from the inside out. And it’s not over indexing on a focus on an outcome or a moment in time, but rather on who we’re becoming in that pursuit of that outcome, of better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So then, I’m curious then, does that translate into some mantras, some convictions or affirmations or things that we return to if we’re feeling some drift away from these bedrock beliefs?

Molly Fletcher
Absolutely. I mean, I think when we think about that, I appreciate that question, I mean, one is it’s where obstacles, where some people might see an obstacle, if you’re living into dynamic drive, you see opportunity. You see what’s possible. I tell a story in the book about a baseball player I represented who went from a starter in the big leagues to a closer, then back to a starter, All-star Hall of Famer.

Now, in that moment, when the world thought he’s insane, “What is he doing? He’s too old. He can’t do this,” and everybody thought it was a gigantic obstacle, he saw it as an opportunity, so it was a shift. So, we’re walking into a meeting, we’re walking into a conversation, we’re stepping into some change, we’re stepping into a challenge that most people, and, traditionally, we might think is a complete and total obstacle, but when we recognize and shift the story that we tell ourselves to being an opportunity, I think it’s pulling back and saying, “You know what? I’m going to choose where my energy goes before everyone else in the world decides for me.”

And I think that’s so fundamentally important to recognize, is that if we don’t choose where our energy goes, other people will. I think another mantra, to your question, would be that most people overestimate talent and they underestimate discipline. I think about the key curiosity. Curiosity creates chances is often a mantra that I say. Curiosity can create choices, for sure, in our lives if we’re curious.

And I think when we think about resilience, what feels important to recognize is that resilience is about fundamentally recognizing the difference between being good and being terrific, being outstanding at whatever it might be in our lives, personally or professionally. It’s about recovering fast. I think about tough days we have, tough conversations, tough moments, tough meetings, tough phone calls. We have them. We’re all going to have them, and particularly if we choose to live into dynamic drive. We’re going to have hiccups.

What’s critical is that we recover very quickly, and part of that is going to that mindset key and shifting from what potentially is an obstacle into an opportunity. And, for me, through the lens of sports, I saw so many athletes miss shots they should make, putts they should make, spray, you know, their drive off into the rough, but what they do is they don’t let it unravel. They tell themselves the right script for them, and then they reset. So, obstacles being opportunities.

I think the other one, when we think about connection, Pete, that I think is important, that I share a story about a contract I negotiated for a coach who then changed his mind the next morning after signing six contracts and a record-setting contract. And the mistake was being too transactional that I made.

And so, I think when we think about connection, it’s keeping relational at the center, not transactional. I often say we want to be relational, not transactional. And in all the keynotes that I give, whenever I have a conversation with the leaders or the stakeholders before a keynote, I’ll often ask, “Are relationships important to the work that they do?” And, I mean, literally, I’ve done a thousand keynotes, and nobody says, “No, relationships don’t. This is not really that big of a deal for us.” Everybody’s like, “Oh, totally. I mean, relationships are everything.” So, being relational, not transactional.

I think the other one is that confidence, you know, when we think about the key and the principle of confidence. Confidence doesn’t come from being comfortable. Confidence comes from taking action inside of maybe a little bit of discomfort. That’s how we actually strengthen our confidence. In other words, we can’t sit in a corner and think our way to being and showing up in the world more confidently. We have to take action to do that.

Confidence comes from stepping out of your comfort zone into what I often call the stretch zone. So, those are a couple little mantras that I think are important to lean into.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. Well, thinking about resilience, tell us, you’ve got a cool vantage point, having seen a lot of athletes with a lot of resilience, how do we get there, to have that mental toughness to really keep on stepping up? They say that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And, it’s funny. I found that sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not. It’s like, “No, I feel like I was maimed by that. I feel wounded and harmed by that encounter as opposed to strengthened.” So. what makes the difference and how could we indeed get back up stronger?

Molly Fletcher
I would argue that it’s not even about getting back up, back to the watermark of where we potentially were, but actually better because of maybe that hiccup, that moment in which we needed to wipe off our knees. I think what’s important is, number one, as leaders, potentially who are listening, or parents, we often want to catch people before they fall and sort of save them from that.

But we need these moments where everything doesn’t always work out perfectly and we “fail,” but that builds our resilience muscle and gives us the confidence to keep pushing and stepping back into moments that are a little bit of a stretch. And I think we live in a world, particularly as a parent, where we sort of kind of shield our children from the falling and the skinning of the knees, and I think that they need to do that. And, obviously, I mean, if they’re running out in front, you know, there’s obvious moments when we want to stop somebody from something.

But there’s also moments where, “You know what, let’s let that hiccup happen, and let me be right there as a parent beside him to help him navigate out of it.” Or, as a leader, putting, you know, allowing somebody to have a little bit of a hiccup, potentially, in service of helping them strengthen and recover from that moment and show back up better.

I think we have to be intricately aware of the importance of everything not going swimmingly every minute of the day, and allowing ourselves to recognize the power and the confidence that’s created, the strength that’s created when we have to recover. Think about working out, right? It fundamentally is taxing the muscles when we go lift, but that is in service of them building up again and building and coming back stronger.

So, there are so many opportunities in our lives when we can step into that moment, ask that question in the meeting, like, push. You know, people often ask me, because I’ve negotiated so much, like, “How do I get better?” Reps. Like, work the barista at the Starbucks for, like, an extra shot of espresso for fun. Like, I negotiated a buy-two-get-one free kind of orthodontics thing for our daughters when they were getting braces when they were young.

That’s a safe environment to practice asking for what you want, and it might not work and that’s okay. But I think we strengthen that resilience muscle by stepping into the stretch zone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We want to try to do it in as many safe moments as we can, but we want to recognize that what happens as a result of that is we strengthen that muscle and we can come back maybe just a little bit stronger the next time, and the next time, and the next time.

But we have to tell ourselves that. I have a thing on my computer, Pete, I call it my smile file, and I just drag and drop like emails and notes and LinkedIn and all that. I mean, it’s just a blessing, and I’ll just drag and drop them from time to time into my little smile file. And after maybe a tough day or a tough moment or a tough meeting or a tough conversation, or anything, you kind of open that up and look at it, and go, “Okay, you know what? I got this.” Right?

And maybe it’s something physical on your desk. As an agent, athletes, they go to film to reset. That’s how athletes often will recover. They’ll go watch their best golf swings. They’ll watch them standing over a putt in a critical moment in training, they go watch their at-bats when they’re just crushing it. And they remind themselves, “Okay, yeah, right. Like, I got this,” and they get that in their head before they step back out to the next moment.

And I think we, as business people, we don’t really go to film, but what can we lean into that can help us reset? Sometimes it’s a smile file or something physical.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s beautiful. And as you talk about it, it’s funny, we had a guest who talked about having a humor first-aid kit, so I just assemble things that I think are funny, and that’s helpful for a mood pick-me-up, for sure.

Molly Fletcher
A hundred percent.

Pete Mockaitis
But the smile file, I like it, in terms of it’s generally me being awesome, crushing it, winning, performing well. Cool. And then I I’m thinking, maybe I’m overthinking it, Molly, but I think it could be quite powerful to have sort of subfolders in your smile file associated with kind of wherever the self-doubt is cropping up. It’s like, “Oh, I’m no good at sales. It seems like I’m always blowing the meeting when I finally get it,” or whatever it is, like, “I’m not good at speaking,” “I’m not creative,” “I’m a bad husband,” sort of fill in the blanks, you know?

Then to have, it’s like, “Well, time out, let’s review some film, or smiles, or let’s review some historical evidence. Yes, I had a disappointing outcome a moment ago, and let’s just put that in the context of, ‘Oh, yeah, there was that one time I closed that massive deal out of nowhere. Oh, there’s that one time I won over that person,’” etc., and it seems like that’s sort of not just a humor first-aid but a first-aid for any emotional mental wound of confidence that’s hitting you.

Molly Fletcher
A hundred percent. I mean, I think that’s great, I mean, I think to have those subcategories. I often will tell salespeople to pull back and think of, “What are the most, your top ten, top five sort of rebuttals, like pushbacks when you’re selling, for example? Go attach a story to that, that aligns with how you’ve actually created a positive outcome for an existing client, relative to what is often maybe a rebuttal or pushback that you get. And build up that story bank of great stories that you can then lean into to help offset what is, an often, common rebuttal.”

To me, that can be really powerful, too, is stories are such a powerful thing that we can use whether even if it’s externally as well, so we can preload those. And so, when you said those subfolders, it made me think of the way that I often think about that from a sales perspective, that can be a powerful thing to do, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good, that handling objections, like handling your own inner critics’ objections to your worth or competence.

Molly Fletcher
Totally. Yes, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Molly Fletcher
“When you ask for the business, you get advice. When you ask for advice, you get the business.”

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

Molly Fletcher
There was a study out of, I talk about this in Dynamic Drive, I want to say it was out of Princeton, but it was a really interesting study about the power of dopamine that it has on our pursuits. And so, essentially, it was recognizing the fact that when we acknowledge our effort along the way, and that we actually drip dopamine that helps us continue to pursue it.

And so, it’s just important that, as we set goals, that we don’t set them in isolation. And it proved it scientifically relative to the power of recognizing that, “Hey, I’m doing a good job. I’m on the right track. Things are tracking. Like, we’re going to do this. We’re going to get here.” It actually drips a little bit of dopamine that helps keep us motivated, because motivation, you know, it wanes, right? So, sometimes we can tap into that natural substance we all have inside of us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Molly Fletcher
The Alchemist was a book I read when I was young. And, to me, it was just an incredible story, really, of purpose. And that’s probably my favorite along with the Bible.

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

Molly Fletcher
I would say it is, essentially, my energy audit that I unpacked in the key, but it is a tool that ensures that I protect and create micro-breaks throughout the day and protect the things that really give me energy throughout the day because I think if we don’t carve out micro-breaks and other things that give us energy, it’s not sustainable to go back to back to back all day. We’ve got to make sure that we build in those breaks.

Pete Mockaitis
And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear quoted back to you often?

Molly Fletcher
“Be where your feet are,” is something that I often say about being present, and people seem to really connect to that. “Be where your feet are,” that we tell ourselves that when we need to really show up and be present.

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

Molly Fletcher
My podcast Game Changers with Molly Fletcher is awesome, or a place to start, or MollyFletcher.com.

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

Molly Fletcher
To me, that would be a final, I would say, that’s a really powerful call to action for people is to do an alignment audit. Identify the things in your life that matter most, rate yourself on how you’re doing in those things, and then, if there’s a gap on a 1 to 10 scale of greater than 2, that’s an opportunity to step into maybe some change, an opportunity to get better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Molly, thank you.

Molly Fletcher
Thanks so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Jodi, welcome.

Jodi Wellman
Thank you for having me here. I’m excited.

Pete Mockaitis
I am excited, too. I understand you say you’ll have about 1,822-ish Mondays left of your plans here.

Jodi Wellman
Well, I got to tell you, that number’s down by two weeks since you read that. So, I’m down to 1,820, but this clock is ticking down, and, yeah, big plans. I mean, that’s the point, right? It’s like, when we get a little bit granular with that math, that fabulous mortality math, it does make me and many others go, “Wait a sec, how am I going to spend that diminishing time?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, what are some of these big plans?

Jodi Wellman
Well, they’re usually bucketed. It’s funny you ask that because, in terms of research and then the way that I look at my life, they’re in categories. So, there are different domains of life. There’s the fun and recreation side of things, which can further categorize into travel. So going to the south of France in the fall, that’ll be exciting. And so, there’s a whole category around recreation. What are we doing with our leisure time?

And so, looking at starting new hobbies, I’m going to be getting more into trying to learn a new language. And so, really, I’m looking to either refine French or Italian. So that’s just one category, and so that’s a good start, I think, lest I bore you with the gory details.

Pete Mockaitis
No, I appreciate that, that’s fun. That’s fun. Well, lay it on us, you’ve been researching our mortality. Your book, You Only Die Once, a compelling title. Any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about us humans and our lives, our mortality, that professionals need to know?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, I definitely think so. So, we all know in the work we do, for example, that, oh, there’s nothing better than the power of a deadline. It’s like we will tend to procrastinate until we know that the strategy session is coming up on the 17th or we’ve got a big project due at the end of the quarter, etc. And it’s so true with our lives.

So having this distinct and, okay, fine, maybe a little bit morbid sense that we are finite is precisely the thing, by having that deadline that does kick us into gear to get on with, I say, the business of living. So, it could be the things we do at work, all of the initiatives we might just keep postponing, but also the things we do outside of work, all the joys and things we might do, again, for recreation, socially, etc., that make us more well-rounded when we come back into work.

So, the research is called Temporal Scarcity, and it’s this idea that whenever we have an asset, okay, like life, that we become heightened, frightenedly aware that it is temporary or rare. Our perception of its value goes through the roof. So that is why I get us to count our Mondays, and that is the heft in terms of empirical evidence behind how we do need to have, unfortunately, that rankling feeling of, “Ugh, scarcity” in order to take action and have that deadline, or else we’ll just float along the lazy river of life and have good intentions, maybe, but not really take as much action on them.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, a deadline is quite literally here, there will be a day in which we die, a deadline.

Jodi Wellman
You caught it.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, morbid, yeah, I mean, that’s how some people could react to it, but you seem to have a very different emotional energy vibe association to this. Tell us about it.

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, I definitely do. I mean, I’ve never been super scared of it. I recognize, and in doing research, of course, and working with groups and individuals that some people would much rather not talk about death than anything. Many people would rather public speak. We’re very afraid of dying in the discussion.

So, my openness to it and my mission in life, really, is to de-fang it, make it something that’s like, “Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, definitely. Nobody wants to think about the fact that we’re not going to be around much longer,” relatively speaking. And so, how do we use that and take a more amusing approach to accepting, “Yeah, it sucks to be us,” and yet let’s use it pretty darn quickly to move over to the life side?

So, I talk about the Grim Reaper. I love it. I love the whole topic of mortality because I know it’s a tool. It catapults us not to keep talking about death but to talk about life. So, I make the switch pretty darn quickly. It helps that I doodle, you know, the Grim Reaper and tombstones. It helps to lighten it a little bit, and I tend to give out the most ridiculous, hilarious prizes in my workshops, again, to create levity.

But it’s like a fact of life that we do a fabulous job of denying and deferring and avoiding, and I just say, “Guys, let’s just accept it. Let’s talk about it for a minute. Let’s do the math, let’s do the thinking, and then use a table. I’m curious, like, how does that motivate you to maybe spend your time differently because there’s so much power there?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so maybe could you give us an example of how a person walked through the math, they took a look at it, and then that transformed the way they approached their work, and their life, what they’re up to?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, I give so many examples in the book, and I do that because we do like to hear and learn vicariously through other people, right? So, there’s one leader I worked with who used to do, in the nature of his business, he acquired companies. And when he stopped and counted, not just his Mondays left in life, but his. Mondays left in his career, he didn’t really have formal retirement plans, but he had a sense about, “By this age, I want to be able to say no and say no a lot, unless it’s a really cool project.”

So, he did the math and he looked and said, “Okay, I do however many acquisitions, mergers per year.” And he did that and worked backwards and said, “Wait a sec. Like, I’ve been thinking, deluding myself,” because that’s what we do. I mean, this is what psychology is. We just try to fool ourselves into happiness. You know, we got to cope somehow.

And so, he was thinking, he knew he wasn’t going to live forever or work forever, but when he did the math and he realized, he really had five good deals ahead of him, like really good juicy ones that he loved to live for, it put everything else in perspective. And it helped him focus in on the kind of work he wanted to do, the kind of deals he wanted to negotiate, the kind of team he wanted along the way, because he was just dilly-dallying and having people around him that weren’t necessarily the lifers, as he now called them.

And so, it helped him prioritize, “What kind of work do I want to do? What kind of work do I not want to do?” because we all know sometimes that’s where the meat on the bone is. So, it can really help sharpen what our priorities are just by way of one example.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, then for our math, can you walk us through it? How might we compute that? Do I need to whip out an actuarial table? Or, what’s the sequence by which I arrive at my Mondays left?

Jodi Wellman
Right. It’s a lot easier than you think. Now, the good news is I have a page on my website called Resources that does the math for you, if you don’t want to waste your precious time in life doing math, but it’s pretty easy. So, if you identify as male, start with 78 years, that’s the average life expectancy, and then you minus your age, and then you multiply by 52 just to keep it easy.

Now, if you are a little more fortunate to have been born a female and you identify as such, then your average age is 83, and then you minus your current age and you multiply it by 52 weeks a year. And then if you don’t identify with either, just average it at 80 and minus your age, and again multiply it by 52. And I think you could probably add in a few Mondays just because you listen to How to Be Awesome at Your Job. I mean, I do think that that should buy you…

Pete Mockaitis
Life extender.

Jodi Wellman
It is. It is, at least a couple weeks, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Life giving. Okay. And so, then when you see that number, it’s like, “Well, shucks, here we are, we’re maybe 1,000-ish, 2,000-ish,” and then it’s even more real when we get precise like 1,822, like you had there. And so, you see that. And then what’s most people’s reaction to beholding this figure?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, it is usually a bit eye-opening, like, literally, eyes-widening, like, “Oh,” because we are used to the language of years. We’ve already rationalized, “Yeah, I’m going to live to about 80. My grandma lived to 90. Oh, shoot, but my Uncle Reg died at 71,” and you average it out somewhere. But when we talk about the weeks, and I’m super nerdy because that’s why I call my company 4,000 Mondays.

When you even think of it in terms of Mondays, which have a very different feeling than a Friday, you know, Fridays are slam dunks, like, life is easy. But when you think about it with a Monday, and you quantify and say, “Am I really doing the stuff that lights me up if I’m going to be waking up for just that many more Mondays?” that’s where it creates the eye-opening and wakeup call that I’m looking for people.

So, it does tend to create enough discomfort. I’m not afraid of a discomfort. I want people to feel just enough of the poke in the ribs to feel like, “Oh, I got to get on with this.” And this is the thing, Pete, and you know this from all the work you do and the research you do, and with me with my positive psychology background, I would love the idea that we could all just be motivated enough by the pursuit of something awesome. You know, the, “Oh, I want to live this kind of life and I’m going to go for it.”

And some people are intrinsically motivated enough to do that, but the rest of us, we need a prod, we need a nudge, we need something that is, unfortunately, just a tad negative, which is why I talk about scarcity rather than abundance in this context. And so, that is the eye-opener for people that we think, “Oh, I didn’t want to see it that way, but now that I see it and I hopefully can’t unsee it. What does it motivate me to do?”

And that’s where the conversation gets good. It’s like, “So now what? This precious life. This dwindling, diminishing existence you have. What do you want to…?” Throw that in. I mean, you’ve got to heighten the drama, “But what do you want to stuff it with?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jodi, it’s funny. This might be the most intense episode of “How to Be Awesome at Your Job” ever. It’s like, quite literally, life and death is all we’re talking about. But what you say really does connect. A friend of mine shared with me he had some family members with some health challenges. One was a child of his, which was very scary. And another was his mother, and he said, “Boy, just experiencing that really kind of made me think about what I want to be doing with my career, instead of like postponing my dreams.”

And so, he just like went for it, he’s like, “I’ve always had this cool business idea, and so I’ve got some people together. We made a pitch deck and we approached an investor. And then he’s in for a couple hundred thousand dollars or a few hundred thousand dollars for a few points of equity.” So, he’s got like a multi-million-dollar evaluation. It was like, “I just talked to you like a month ago. What is going on here? It’s amazing.”

And so, I’m proud and impressed and, just like that, I mean, he had the idea bouncing around his head for a long time, and then a few scary situations with family members’ health, the guy was, “You know what, let’s just see what happens. Let’s just go for it.” And then, wow, he’s off to the races.

Jodi Wellman
Oh, this story is profound, and I love it. This is the research that I do that just lights me up beyond belief that I hope to also shine that light on others. This is the wakeup call with this gentleman. And it takes a really unfortunate situation to see that light. Especially, because I talk a lot about the wakeup calls we receive personally. Like, if you get a health diagnosis that ain’t so hot, that usually tends to snap us to attention, and we want to live differently, and research is so clear.

I always love this phrase that psychologists, existential psychologists use, that when people have had a brush with death, they experience what’s called a roar of awakening. It feels so visceral, right? And so, whether it’s our own precipice moment with the great beyond, or whether it is because a family member or a dear friend, or we’ve had some very salient moment to realize, “Oh, gosh, like, we are mortal,” that can be the thing that catapults us.

And, ultimately, what it comes down to, and I think you even embedded the words in your anecdote, it’s like, “What are we waiting for?” We delude ourselves into thinking that we’re going to have time later, and I am getting to get all hot and bothered here, but we need to talk about it because I think we believe we’re going to have time to do the new initiative, or open up the New York office, or do the cool thing, or open up the spinoff business, or go to Prague, “We’re just going to get to do it later.”

It’s either in this category of when work dies down, we’ll, like, let’s all get laughed together at that notion, because we’re working hard at making work more productive and busier often, which is not about dying things down, another metaphor about dying things down. And so, we’re either waiting for that, lull, “Well, it ain’t going to happen,” or we’re waiting for retirement, which to me is like, “Don’t you dare.”

Yeah, plan a cool retirement, do that, too. But if you are deferring your existence for a later that just may not arrive, oh, honey buddy, I just want to take you, in somewhere between a hug and a throttle, it’s just like, “What are we waiting for? Don’t wait for your kid to get sick. Don’t wait for you to get thankfully in remission from a cancer that you just were trying not to think about. Don’t wait to get to retirement when, all of a sudden, your gout is so bad that you can’t even climb the Spanish steps that you’ve been longing to climb since you were in your early thirties that you just put off.” See, I’m getting all worked up, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
No, I hear you. Well, it’s heavy and it’s intense. And, in some ways, you’ve got something novel on your hands, like the math and the number of Mondays and whatnot. In another way, this is a very ancient wisdom concept, you know, memento mori. I think that’s Latin. I was a Latin student. That just means remember your death. Is that correct?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, remember you’re going to die. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Remember your death. And so, I know Ryan Holiday has done a fine job of, I think, he’s got a cool coin as well that says that on it. I think there’s a skull or something. Cool stuff from Ryan Holiday. So, tell us, what’s sort of like the ancient wisdom on meditating upon this? And what’s your new fresh stuff that you’re bringing to the table?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, it’s all rooted in the ideology that some call it stoicism as a philosophical endeavor. Philosophers, depending on their camps, for centuries have been extolling the virtues of remembering that you’re going to die, and in some cases, it was so that they could control the population for ways of being virtuous or for religious means. But being in tune with the end is not a new idea.

Just like with most of us, we all rationally know we have an expiry day. We don’t know when it is, but we all understand it. But it’s the reminder that we need to keep in mind and keep fresh. So, in more modern times, I referred a moment ago to some existential psychologists, and there’s a whole new branch of psychology called existential psychology, and it really is the study of our experience of not just the positive psychology side, which is a lot of my background around like what it takes to live the good life, but it’s also the nuances of how we will defer and avoid and deny, and what the cost is of that.

So, the more modern take on it is let’s just try to be open and honest with ourselves about it, and have conversations with our families, and our friends, and just like, for me, it’s like that’s the best happy hour ever. It’s just talking about a bucket list and holding each other accountable about, “What are you going to do?” “Did you book the trip?” “Did you book the online course?” “Did you set up the LLC like you said you wanted to do?” Because again, what are we waiting for?

So, it’s all rooted in the ancient times. And in the modern times, I think there’s not really a lot more we can do other than create a habit around talking about it and thinking about it and remembering it. So, this doesn’t just become a, “Huh, interesting conversation I listened to on your podcast that floats away.” We have to embed it into our routines, if you will, and that’s the stuff that helps make it stickier.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you give us another example? So, we’ve heard about a couple folks in the deal-making or entrepreneurial zone. Any other dramatic wakeups that you’ve witnessed?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, there was a woman I worked with three years ago, she was in her early 40s, and she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she ran her own company and it was an eye-opener for her. She beat it, and that was fantastic, and that had inspired her to come alive and start a foundation as part of her organization.

So, a lot of what this does is it instills this idea about like legacy thinking, which is really important I think for leaders, but not even just for leaders but people thinking about, “How am I showing up at work? And how am I showing up at life? Like, how do I want to be remembered?” So, for this woman, Christia, she felt really compelled as a result of having her life threatened in front of her, to say, “I want to start raising money for women with breast cancer who didn’t have access to some of the means that I had.”

Because she knew coming from the south side of Chicago, that she had a history where she knew other people were suffering in ways that her financial means were allowed her better access to some care and convenience. So, now the truth is, if I was just to fast-forward to take this to a different direction, but on purpose, is that she was re-diagnosed and, unfortunately, a couple of years ago she did pass away, and she was 42 when she died.

And I still work with the company, the fabulous team there that inherited the business from her. Her sister and her niece are running that company. They’re called Thank God It’s Natural, and they are phenomenal. But for Christia, it opened her eyes up to “What kind of business do I want to run? Where do I want to prioritize our operations? And where do I want to not focus?”

So, another woman, here in Palm Springs, where I’m currently based, also had a breast cancer experience for herself. She started a nonprofit that helps survivors. And the way she worded it is that, “I was given a second chance at life.” And she said that in her experience of sitting and doing something like 24 rounds of chemotherapy, I wrote about this as an example in the book and drew a doodle about it, I called it Shay’s Circle because she said, “I took a fresh journal page and I drew a big circle.”

“And I said to myself, ‘I’m making it through this cancer situation, but I’m going to be very thoughtful about the life I’m going to live moving forward, this second chance I’ve been given. What do I want and who do I want in my life?’” And she was very deliberate and wrote names of people, some of the priorities with her work, activities she wanted to focus on, things with her kids in the circle, and she was very thoughtful about, “And I will no longer…” and she had a couple names, and she had a couple of tendencies, like pleasing tendencies, saying yes to being on committees and all the things that we just do because we’re not conscious that our life is finite.

So those are extremes, people having had scares that did, unfortunately, take them, but also scares that did, I think, we learned from that. Like, my goal is for us to have wakeup calls without having to go through any of that drama of having a near-death experience because there’s so much gold from people who have been there or have been close. So, we can refine our priorities. I think that’s one of the biggest opportunities, in addition to being grateful for life. But we’re refining our priorities and the big businesses we work in and things we do, sometimes that’s key.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m fascinated as I just imagine the listeners hearing this, like, some people have already turned off this podcast and have asked out their dream guy, their dream partner or send an email to be like, “Let’s talk about this business that we’ve been picking around.” They’ve already taken the action. They’re so fired up. They’re inspired, like, you’re transforming them. Boom. Already done.

I think there’s others, and I’m finding myself in this boat a little bit right now. It’s like, well, you know, Jodi, I mean, I guess I’ve been quite blessed. I mean, in many ways, I’ve had a lot of dreams, and then I have realized them. It’s like, I’ve got a family, and they’re amazing. I’ve got a dream job, and then I got a job that was better than that dream job, and then I got a job that was better than that, better than that dream job. It’s like, I’m talking to fascinating people whose books I would just read, and this is turning into income, and then other entrepreneurial things are turning into income, and I’m working with cool people I like.

In a way, it’s like I don’t feel like I’ve postponed anything major, and yet I have a feeling there’s more for me here because I don’t, frankly, spend much time thinking, “Oh, I’m going to die soon.” I don’t do that. And as you’re saying it, it feels heavy and intense, like, “Yeah, whoa, for real, a limited number of Mondays. Okay.” But I’m not yet electrified to charge in any given direction. I was like, “Huh, these are pretty good. I guess I should just keep doing that.” What about this segment?

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, I love what you’re saying. So, I have quadrants like any good empirically based situation has quadrants, and so you are in…

Pete Mockaitis
As a former consultant, absolutely, they do.

Jodi Wellman
I know, exactly. You got the Bain in you, right? So, you’ve got widening your life with vitality is one dimension, and that’s literally the idea about, “How can I add more fun and interest and experience and cool stuff and pleasure and happiness?” Okay, so for many people who have really busy profound jobs, this is the dimension and, in fact, this actually is where most people in my research will identify as.

They’ll say, “I’ve got enough meaning in my life but I need more of this widening vitality. I need more fun. I feel like I’m not going out as much as I used to do the fun things in the restaurants, or going to a concert, or trying that new printmaking class, or the things that might feel kind of cool and make me feel more alive in a different way, rather than maybe the more one-dimensional existence I’ve been living, which is like rocking my business.” So that’s just one axis is widening your life with vitality.

The other one is deepening your life with meaning, and that is that sense of having a purpose, being connected to people, maybe something bigger than you, like in the spiritual realm. It’s defined as kind of doing good, as opposed to just feeling good. And so, when you mash these together, you’ve got four quadrants.

Pete, you are in what I call the astonishingly alive category, which I know, it’s a big word. I know, but here’s the deal, because why this is, is that you are, you seem to be, you’re living a good life where you’re plus, anywhere positive, even if it’s 0.10 on meaning, and plus on vitality, and so you’re in a good place. There are a lot of people out there, a majority, because, by the way, my research is clear, like 11% of people identify in the astonishingly alive category currently.

And so, most people are in that zone of like, “My job’s meaningful,” or, “Rearing my kids is meaningful, but I’m so freaking bored.” Or, it could be the reverse, which is, “I am having fun. Like, I’m out there. I am traveling. I’m on the yacht, but I go home and I feel like I’m an empty hollow shell. Like, what am I doing this for?” So, there are variations on those themes, but I don’t want to say now that there’s no fun for you, that you can’t do more with this.

Pete Mockaitis
“You’re done.”

Jodi Wellman
No, exactly. Cash in your chips. No, because here’s why. This is why you do this podcast. You’re in a good situation, you’re living life, and yet you are yearning to learn more. You want more. So, nobody I know who’s in the astonishingly alive category is just content to put your feet up and be like, “We are done here.” You want more, and so that is where I do think some of these exercises can be useful.

So, for you, counting your Mondays may not be resonant in a way that you’re like, “No, but I’ve done cool things.” That’s what we’re looking to get to, is that feeling like, “I killed it.” Like, if you got to the end, you’d be able to say…

Pete Mockaitis
So much depth, Jodi. Like, “You’re just going to die.”

Jodi Wellman
That’s where you’re at, like, “Okay, fine. I nailed it. Like, I lived this life. I extracted it. I did it.” You might be able to say that now, and yet, there are also things where if you did play the game with me about the deathbed regrets, or if you knew you had 18 months to live, what would be things that you would, all of a sudden, think, “Oh, I want to do that”?

Those are all just cues and clues to either yearnings or inklings that you might want to get moving on now, and I call them pre-grets. I know it’s super cheesy, but, like, if you identify a regret, you might be like, “Oh, man, I always wish that I had volunteered at that library,” or “I always wish that I had gotten back to playing the violin,” or fill in the blanks. There’s no shortage of examples.

That’s an example of like, “Hey, the good news is, last I checked, you still have a pulse, and if you really want to pick up the violin again, like, dude, it’s yours to pick up!” And then you just get to be the one to decide, like, “Eh, it was a passing fancy, no big deal. My life is great without doing that,” or, “Yeah, you know, I would feel proud of myself if I actually did pick that up,” or go and read to kids from 4: 00 till 5:00, Tuesday evenings, whatever it is. Those are opportunities, I think, to just add even more astonishment to your astonishingly alive life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And I like that notion a lot in terms of with the two axes. I’m thinking of a buddy he’s doing a lot of cool things. Like, yeah, he’s into drumming in a band. He’s brewing beer, and going to beer-tasting events, and like golfing and improving his golf. And then his mom said, this is like a very mother thing to say, she’s like, “Oh, you know, all those hobbies aren’t really a vocation.” He’s like, “Oh, that’s heavy, vocation.”

But, yeah, that sort of speaks to meaning, and there’s some truth to that, like all the fun and games with these activities can leave you feeling hollow and/or you might say, “No, I’ve got the dream family, but, oh, my gosh, when do I get to get out of this home and just be wacky”?

Yeah, so two dimensions, you can widen, have more fun widening your vitality, but you might feel hollow, or you can be super fulfilled, but, “Ooh, where’s the fun?” And that does remind me, yeah, I guess the things that are sort of left undone, I mean, some of them I’m just sort of pursuing, like, wouldn’t it be kind of cool to be lighter and stronger at 41 than I was at 21? Well, I’m on my path. I think we’re getting there and it’s sort of exciting to feel the progress from like a fitness perspective.

But then there’s also things that just sort of got left by the wayside, like, you know I always thought it would be cool to learn how to sing, and I’ve never really done that very well. Or, I’ve always been mystified by when I go bowling, which is rare, like one throw of the ball is a strike, the next is a gutter ball, and I don’t think I did anything different. Like, what’s behind that?

Like, I thought it would be fun to spend a day with a bowling coach for no reason, just to solve this plaguing mystery, but, like, though I may only go bowling three times a year for the rest of my life, and it doesn’t matter if I win or lose to me in the least.

Jodi Wellman
Right. This is the cool thing. You are giving examples that I think we, in our rational brains think, “But this isn’t really a thing, is it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, it doesn’t really matter.

Jodi Wellman
And we can call it corny. And that’s one of the things I notice actually in the workshops and work I do, is that people will feel the need to kind of explain away or say, “I don’t even know why I want to do this, but I do,” and it’s like we just have judgments about things. And I’m here to say there’s nothing that is too small or silly.

Because when you look at the span of your life, and remember, I’m the one that gets fanatical about calculating time, usually calculating it backwards, but every single moment of our lives is a little tiny fragment, whether it’s a five-minute or 10-minute, or a bowling excursion, or going out for Thai food, or spending time in a meaningful conversation with a colleague, they’re all just 30 minutes attached to each other.

And so, in our lives, we underestimate that if I was to take, “Hey, what if I did book a bowling guru session?” First of all, that sounds to me like it would be hilarious, and I’m always a big fan of having a good story to tell later. But that could be a thing. It’s a fun thing. Now, this is an example you could probably whip up, and this is what I do in workshops with people.

It’s like, “Get your list going. The things you might come up with first may not make your cut, or you may find it interesting today, and then tomorrow, when you’re seeing the light of day, or you’ve ranked ordered other things, you think all that, “Meh, you know what? I don’t really need to go to the Florida Keys, whatever.”

But at some point, when you have a working list, it gives you the actual solid chance to make choices about your life. Because right now, in the absence of having something that’s concrete, like your list of things that bring you joy, your list of things that would be cool to do, that again I like to organize them on those axes, about fun stuff, deep stuff, vitality, meaning. But now at least you have a menu to choose from about how to design your life.

And life will pass us by. We know this full well. We get to the weekend and, well, first of all, we’re always glad it’s the weekend. But we get through our weeks and they feel like blurs. It’s a very strong signal that we aren’t doing anything that’s unique or different with our time. And in order to even just create the perception of time slowing down so that your 1,822, or however many Mondays you have left, are well spent, it’s about being super conscious and saying, “You know what? I’m going to book that bowling lesson.”

Or, “You know what? I am going to go and plan that road trip that I’ve been talking about for ages.” Or, “I am going to finally schedule that team retreat that I’ve been dreaming about but I just like, am I an all talk no action kind of person? No, I’m going to just book it because it’s on my list, and I’ve said like this is something that I would feel really cool if I did. Would I regret it gravely on my deathbed? Maybe, maybe not.”

But the point is we need to start capturing some of these desires because, otherwise, they will float away and we’ll get focused on the things that are sometimes important, but mostly urgent, Covey style, and the next thing you know, it’s three years later and we’re not any younger. So, this is just really about getting deliberate with what it might take to make a life worth living.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah And, Jodi, I think as folks go through this exercise, they could have moments of inspiration, like, “Yeah, these are all the cool things I’d love to do.” And then disillusionment in terms of, “Oh, but you know, I got to pay the bills, and we got the mortgage, and the kids need these things. And I can’t just abandon my duties and responsibilities.” So, we get excited and then there’s a dose of reality and practicality that’s like, “Wah, wah.” So, how do you deal with those?

Jodi Wellman
How do we deal with that? I am fanatical about making sure that at least, like, do a list of 30 things, 25 at least have to be things that are very doable in a day or a week. So, it needs to be within your resource plan. Like, it can’t be, “Oh, you know what makes me really happy is when I am sailing around the Mediterranean.” Yeah, you and everybody, but that’s not going to be likely. Like, I’m looking for things that are actually very bite-sized on your list. Like, for many people, it’s that they go for a walk on a Saturday morning in the forest preserve.

Like, last I checked that was free. Okay, maybe you have to pay for parking. I don’t know what we’re talking, like five bucks. And sometimes I know busy parents are like, “Dude, when was the last time you had a Saturday morning free?” But I would still challenge you, and say, “Do you have 35 minutes to go and sneak that into your day?”

Identifying things that give you, again, small little bouts of joy. Like, for some people, it’s as simple as, I’m looking right now, of course, at a book. And this comes up a lot when I work with professionals. We read a lot of business books, as we should. They’re amazing. Lots of cool ones. Lots of great self-development books.

And yet, it is a real source of almost guilt but joy about people saying, “I would just love to read a fiction book for a change,” or, “I would love to read a biography, just something kind of mind-expanding.” And that is an example where, what if you read a chapter in the morning over coffee and your piece of peanut butter toast, and you just shook up your routine a little bit?Because we haven’t even talked about novelty, but like having variety in our life is one of the lowest-hanging fruit options out there to shake up our lives, and add just a little bit more, again, of that vitality because we just get into routines. And we’ve been trained by lots of really smart thought leaders that habits and routines are the way. And I’m going to challenge that because I think that it is because we get into the rut, and one of my favorite quotes is by Ellen Glasgow, “The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.”

Like, we will routinize our lives to the point where they’ve lost sort of the flavor. It just becomes, “I know what I do on Tuesday mornings. I go into the office. I nod at Marcy. I get my coffee. I do the report. I have a status update meeting at 2:00 p.m. and then I go home.” Like, the shaking things up even in ways that we will, again, underestimate the value of, like, going outside.

I just heard from somebody that was at a workshop. They decided to go and spend part of their lunch break walking to a little food stall because they were in a bit of a funk, like, “Let me go walk to a food stall, shake it up a little bit.” They got a taco. Again, we’re not talking about big bucks to live a life that feels really cool, and, like, “Oh, interesting. This is like a new area. I’ve never been here. There was a little bit of sunshine. And I got out, and I came back, and I have a new lease on life to attack my afternoon.”

And those are small things where, again, we’re not talking about doing the bucket list about you have to move to Paris, and you have to divorce your deadbeat spouse, and you have to make these massive plans, like change your career and go back to school. If you feel the urge to do those things, don’t not do them. But for most of us, it’s not about the grand sweeping gestures. For most of us, it’s about deliberate little tiny things that we can pepper our days with that will add up to a life that feels more lived than one that just, again, was like a glossed-over, zombie-version of the life that I think we all deep down really want to be living more alive.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jodi, this is powerful stuff. Tell me, any other do’s and don’ts or things you want to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Jodi Wellman
Well, definitely, the biggest do of all is do befriend the Grim Reaper. He will take your last breath away in the end, and so I understand the need to keep a distance, but he is absolutely the portal to living like we mean it. So do keep him close by, being aware, count the Mondays. And I’m going to reiterate what I just said. Like, don’t underestimate that small things matter and pick one small thing to take action on. We know this through every business adage we’ve ever found, every to-do, every self-help to-do. It’s like, don’t try and take on the world.

If you can blow your life up and start something. I know a client who said, “I’m leaving my job.” She’s in New Jersey. She’s like, “I quit. I moved down south and I’m opening up an Etsy shop.” That was a lot of life change in an instant, but for her, she needed to make a big signal to herself. But was it like that for most of us?

No. It’s like, what is one thing you can do by the end of this week that is going to make you feel just a little more alive? Is it making a new playlist? You know, is it pulling out the spice drawer and being like, “Oh, my gosh, when was the last time I used garam masala?” Or is it calling your old friend from college and being like, “Dude, we keep talking about getting together. When are we going to…? Okay, October the 9th? Booked.” Like, do a thing that makes you feel like you voted to live. One small thing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jodi Wellman
Oh, my gosh. Hunter S. Thompson, “Life should not be a journey to the grave in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow, what a ride!’”

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

Jodi Wellman
I’m always a fan of the research that reinforces death reflection helps us be more grateful. So not death awareness, which is just seeing a funeral procession go by. That does freak us out. But, actually, stopping and thinking, “Huh, I have this many Mondays left,” being thoughtful. And then what that does is it does make you more grateful for not just the experience of being alive but for the good things in your life. So, death reflection pays off in multitudes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Jodi Wellman
I would say anything by Irv Yalom. Y-A-L-O-M. He’s a psychologist that does really cool work. So, Staring at the Sun is a really good example. And it’s this idea about being willing to contemplate mortality.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite tool?

Jodi Wellman
I’m going to come back to count your Mondays and keep some sort of talisman nearby, they will be your reminder about your fabulous temporariness.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Jodi Wellman
No habit. Remember, habits dull the edges of our existence.

Pete Mockaitis
I love the multiple perspectives here. And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Jodi Wellman
This idea that sometimes the fear of death is rivaled only by the fear of living.

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

Jodi Wellman
Thanks for asking. I’m over at FourThousandMondays.com.

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

Jodi Wellman
Yeah, think about your legacy. How do you want to be described when you’re long gone? Not just because you died. Maybe you got promoted. Maybe you got moved to the fancy office in the Southwest. Go do that. How do you want people to think of you when you’re gone? Oh, and, yes, at your funeral. And that is the reverse way to engineer a life that you love and that you are proud to be living.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jodi, thank you. This has been very, very fun. Jodi, this has been aliveness-boosting. I wish you 1,800 plus joyful Mondays.

Jodi Wellman
I super appreciate it. Thanks for this time well spent.