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Mindset

Jul 24

468: Upgrading Your Confidence and Courage at Work with Bill Treasurer

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Bill Treasurer says: "Boredome is a clue that it's time to move back out into discomfort."

Bill Treasurer shares practical wisdom for conquering fear, taking risks, and finding your courage.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The key first step to finding courage
  2. Approaches for taking on more wise risks
  3. How to fill up each of the Three Buckets of Courage

About Bill:

In the past two decades, thousands of executives across the globe have attended Bill’s keynotes and workshops. Benefiting from the concepts first introduced in Bill’s bestselling books, participants come away with stronger leadership skills, improved team performance, and more career backbone.

Among others, Bill has led workshops for NASA, Accenture, Lenovo, CNN, Hugo Boss, SPANX, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bill’s insights about courage and risk-taking have been featured in over 100 newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, NY Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boston Herald, and more.

Resources mentioned in the show:

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

Bill Treasurer
Pete, I’m really delighted to be here and I’m looking forward to our time together.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. Me, too. And I want to go back in time a little bit to hear the story of you were invited to join the Metropolitan Opera in New York when you were 11 for singing. That’s impressive. What’s the story here?

Bill Treasurer
You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever spoken to anybody else about this. I mean, my mom knows it. But when I was 11 years old, I had a buddy who was already in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera and he was a good singer, and he and I would sing like John Denver songs together and such. And he said, “You know, you ought to come with me down to the Met because they’re looking to put people in their chorus for a Russian play that was going to be on Broadway or at the Met.” And so, I was like, “All right. Why not?”

So, I took the train down and I did a test run with the person playing piano there with him and the other people in the chorus, and got word, afterwards they called and said that they wanted me to be in the chorus. And then it became a decision, like, “Do I want this as my track? Do I want to sort of pursue singing operatically or do I want to go outside and play baseball with my buddies, and stickball and run around in the dirt like we had been doing up until that point?” So, I had a decision to make and, ultimately, I decided that the showbiz life, at least the operatic showbiz life, probably isn’t for me. So, I declined the opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, imagine you must be pretty darn good at singing. I imagine they’re pretty selective even amongst 11-year-olds.

Bill Treasurer
I got some girlfriends in college.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you also play the guitar, that seems to be key?

Bill Treasurer
No, it’s interesting, I would sing when other people were playing guitar, but what’s really kind of, it truly is interesting, is that by the time I was 11 and a little bit later, I literally would sing John Denver songs with my buddies, and the most popular John Denver song that we would sing back then was the sing-a-long “Country Roads,” right? “Take me home, country roads, to the place I belong, West Virginia.”

And then, fast forward a little bit later, it’s actually where I ended up going to college. And I’m not from West Virginia, I’m from the suburbs of New York, but somehow singing that song so many times ended up plopping me into West Virginia. And, in fact, the very first football game at West Virginia University that I attended that fall, it was the opening of a new stadium. And who comes ala helicopter, lands at the stadium, and sings “Country Roads” but John Denver. So, it’s a nice sort of closure to the story.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s quite poetic. It’s all meant to be. Well, so I want to talk a little bit about courage with you. And you’ve been working with this for a long time so much so that you’ve updated your book Courage Goes to Work after over 10 years. So, tell us, what do we need to know about courage going to work?

Bill Treasurer
Well, you know, the interesting thing is if you look at courage and you start studying it, as I did when I started writing the book, and I’ve started birthing my own business, and then it gave birth to the book, is this idea that courage is a virtue. And I’m not the first one to say that. In fact, if you rewind far enough, Aristotle called courage the first virtue because it makes all the other virtues

And throughout history, other great giants have talked about courage as being one of the premier, if not the premier of virtues. In fact, the Catholic Church calls it one of the four cardinal virtues. So, outside of work, courage has always been a preeminent virtue. And my question became, “Why would it be any different in the workplace?” Because a lot of workplaces are bastions of fear, but fear is the primary means of motivating people to get things done, sadly still, even in the 21st

And so, that becomes the right opportunity for the demonstration of  So, my whole contemplation in the book Courage Goes to Work was, “How do we take courage and apply it in the workplace not just outside as a virtue, but as the premier virtue of business and leadership?” So, if you think about it, Pete, to be a great business developer or salespeople, salesperson, means to knock on hundreds of doors in the face of rejection over and over again. That takes courage.

To be an innovator means to draw outside of the lines, experiment, make some mistakes, forward falling, to be an innovator. The greatest innovations almost always start out as blasphemy to what was before. So, to be an innovator takes courage. And then, finally, to be a leader means to render bold decisions that some people are going to disagree with and you’ve got to withstand the turbulence of that disagreement. Leadership takes courage. So, courage is essential to so many of the operating systems that make organizational life work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, certainly. So, it’s critical. And then, tell us, why is it often missing?

Bill Treasurer
I think that for many of the reasons it’s missing outside in the world and so much of it has to do with fear and what do we do when we face, or fail to face, more accurately, fearful situations. What’s interesting in the things that I’ve learned and research about courage is that courage isn’
t the absence of  In fact, John McCain wrote a book called Why Courage Matters. It became an international bestseller.

And in the book, he says, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s acting despite the fact that you’re afraid.” So, if you think about that, it means that courage is fear-full, not fearless. You’ll see these bumper stickers on the back of trucks “No Fear. No Fear.” You know, no brains. That’s not courage. Courage, in fact, is fear-full but it’s acting despite the fact that you’re afraid, and moving through it with that

So, I think a lot of people walk away when they’re fearful, they get paralyzed, or they fight, flight or freeze. But what my work is suggesting, and a few others like John McCain, is that if you work through your fear, that’s the discovery of courage. In fact, you can’t be courageous unless the presence of fear is there. But the trick is to not run away from it, it’s learn how to contend

Pete Mockaitis
And so, what are your top tips for learning how to contend with it?

Bill Treasurer
Well, the first thing is, know what you want. I know that you’re based in Chicago. There’s a playwright in Chicago, his name is Ambrose Redmoon. He’s got another one of these quotes, he says, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the decision that you’ve got something more important than fear to get done.” So, the first thing is what I call the contemplation of the holy question. The four most important words that you’ll ever learn in the English language, “What do you want?” What do you want?

If you can answer that with precision, and it may start with first identifying what you don’t want, but figuring out the condition that you want, that you don’t yet have, in other words, identify a worthwhile goal, then that sublimates fear when the goal becomes more

And so, the first thing you’ve got to do is decide is, “What is that thing that is so important, that I don’t yet have, that courage will become the activation that will sort of help me take the steps forward to get that condition that I don’t have.” So,

So, it’s critically important that you have a goal that is really compelling that motivates you to move forward, and courage becomes the activation that sort of helps you close the gap between where you are today and that important goal that you want to get to. So, the first thing to do to activate your own courage is have a worthwhile goal to put your mojo, your courage mojo, to work

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Sure. So, once you got a worthwhile goal, what’s next?

Bill Treasurer
Well, the other thing is it helps to understand what I call the theory of least regrets. Understand that any risk, any big move that you’re considering comes with two risks. There’s the risk of action, but then there’s also the risk of inaction. And sometimes the risk of inaction is more dangerous but it happens over a lengthy period of time so it’s harder to

So, one key question to ask yourself is, “What will I regret the least? Taking this risk, doing this courageous thing, and maybe wiping out, or not taking this risk, and never knowing if I could’ve been successful had I done  You know, a lot of bar stools are warmed by the seat of a person, right now, everywhere in the country, who’s staring at the TV screen and yelling at the bartender, talking about how they could’ve been a contender, but they didn’t. They didn’t contend.

So, the idea is that the risk we regret the most are very often the ones that we didn’t  So, as you’re getting ready for a risk, to contemplate, “What is the thing that I will regret the least, maybe wiping out and trying it, or not wiping out but not trying it and never knowing if I could’ve been successful?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, we got the theory of least regret. And what next?

Bill Treasurer
Sometimes it’s good to objectify the subject of experience of a risk. So, a lot of times we’ll do this  We’ll do the pro and con list, and, “Hey, here’s the credit column. I might get this if I do this thing, and here’s the debit column,” and whichever one has the most on it we sort of go with.

But a better way to do it is what I call the worst-case grid. And you simply draw an X-axis and Y-axis and a scale ranging from 1 to 10 on both axes, and then say, “If this big move, this giant leap that I’m considering, doesn’t work out, what is the degree of badness? On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is

So, for example, I decided at one point to leave Accenture. Accenture is a great company. I had a six-figure job, I was well networked. If I had stayed there long enough, I would’ve moved into a senior executive, at the time partner role. But there was something unsatisfying about the experience of staying there. So, I decided to leave and start my own business, Giant Leap Consulting.

The degree of badness, had it not worked out for me, it’s not going to be death, right? For most people, whatever the big bad move, the big scary thing that you’re considering doing, that’s requiring courage, generally, is not going to be death. And death would be a

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess I’m thinking my scale is bigger. I’m just thinking like the annihilation of humanity because it’s just your death, right? You’re just one life. I mean, if you’re working in a field like military, law enforcement, even food service, or transportation, you know, you can kill hundreds or thousands with your poor decisions.

Bill Treasurer
You know, I suppose if your big risk is that you’re going to put a new drug on the market that hasn’t been well-tested, I think that could be the case. Actually, it’s my understanding, this may be mythology, but it’s my understanding that Jonas Salk, who gave us the polio vaccine, that he first injected it to himself and to his own children, right? So, had that not worked out, people wouldn’t call him the hero that he ultimately became for helping eradicate polio largely.
So, the degree of badness in my case, had I left Accenture and had it not worked out, my wipeout would’ve been I would’ve had to have lived with my in-laws, right? So, my wife and I. I wouldn’t be in a soup kitchen, but if my business hadn’t worked out, for a little period of time, we would’ve had to go and live with my in-laws, and that’s not a 10, right? Like, that’s probably a 7.

So, as you consider the big bold move that you’re thinking about, first of all, identify what is the degree of badness. In my case, it was a 7, having to potentially live at my in-laws’ house. But then you also have to factor in the  And so, I looked at it, and said, “Okay, had I left Accenture and my business didn’t work out, the truth is I had worked with other entrepreneurs, I had taken night classes at Emory University, I already had a graduate degree, I had been in the workforce for over 10 years. All of those things lowered my metaphor to go high dive,” so I was able to look at it and say, “You know, the probability is probably a 2 or 3.”

So, then you just times your degree of badness, in this case 7, times your probability grid 3, and then you come up with a numeric value. For me, if it’s going to be below 50, as a numeric, as a number, I’m probably going to do the thing. If it’s above 50, I’m going to be at least more hesitant and more calculated, but probably I may not even do whatever the thing is. But the cool thing about the worst-case grid is it gives people an actual way of rationalizing and objectifying a subject of experience of taking a

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I suppose is there a corresponding sort of positive tone that you’re bouncing that against?

Bill Treasurer
Thank you for saying that. So, oftentimes, in my workshop, so in my courageous leadership workshop, I’ll have participants think about what is the next courageous move that they might be wanting to take. A good way to think about is to ask yourself, “Where am I playing it too safe in my career?” And that starts to point in the direction of their next courageous move. And then, after they do that, I’ll have them work through the worst-case grid. Most people like it because it’s a way to be very thoughtful and objective about it.

But then I’ll make sure that they close it by doing the other. Let’s flip it upside down and say, “Hey, what if this actually works out? What if I start my own business and I get to work with really cool clients and talk to really cool podcasters like Pete, and get to write books and such? That would be ideal. That’s—What’s the best case?” And that becomes, on a scale of 1 to 10, a 10 is sort of the life of my own design. What’s the probability? Same thing, I’ve got to put it through a probability factor and say, “You know, how much do I believe in myself?” So, it’s worthwhile to do it as a positive instead of worst 0-case grid, a best-case

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. So, I want to hear about a term you use, “comfeartable.” What does that mean and how should we think about it?

Bill Treasurer
So, I talk about it in the book that I think that sometimes we get into a low-level condition of dissatisfaction, a sort of a low-level dissatisfaction and, over time, we become tolerant of it. And, frankly, I think that many people get a low-level toleration of living in a constant state of fear and we become used to it, and we become a bit numb to it, we become comfortable with our fear, what I call

And when you’re a leader of people who have sort of grown apathetic and are no longer challenging themselves, and no longer willing to experience discomfort, then stagnation happens, and individual and organizational growth is thwarted. So, this idea that one of the enemies of management, in my opinion, is being “comfeartable” and having a number of employees around you who may have grown comfortable being in a low-level fear situation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, if you find yourself in such a spot, how do you shake it up?

Bill Treasurer
Well, I think that leaders can do a couple of things to sort of shake it up. The first thing is they’ve got to jump first. They’ve got to be role models of courageous behavior themselves. They’ve got to show their workforce that they can be the first one up and off whatever high-dive platform they’re asking other people to jump off of. So, being a role model, and ask yourself as a leader, “When’s the last time you had sweaty palms and did something that was exciting and scary at the same

The second thing is that you’ve got to create safety as a leader. Create safety. Physical safety, of course, right? We all want to work in a work environment where we don’t think that our lives are going to be threatened. But we also, as leaders, have to create psychological safety where people feel that they can voice their true opinions about things without you chopping their head

The third thing is a leader has to help people learn how to harness fear. So, the whole discussion that you and I had about moving through fear instead of running away from it, and learning to become comfortable with  Ginni Rometty is the CEO of IBM. She has a wonderful quote that she said at Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit. She said, “Comfort and growth don’t co-exist.”

So, you, as a leader, have to ensure that people recognize that, “Look, discomfort is part of it. It’s part of how we grow and progress, so learning and acquiring new skills and taking on new challenges that, in fact, make us uncomfortable is how you’re going to grow as an individual but how the organization is going to grow

And then the fourth thing, as a leader, to be modulating between comfort and discomfort. You’ve got to nudge people out into discomfort where they start getting their own sweaty palms, but you’ve got to let them stay there long enough to acquire new skills and then, as they start to acquire those skills and become too comfortable with them, you’ve got to move them back out into

As it relates to modulating discomfort, if you’re up for it, Pete, I can share with you a story about how that worked in my own life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Bill Treasurer
And it becomes actually the genesis of my business, and it became the genesis of my exploration into the whole idea of courage and why I think courage is so important. But if you rewind far enough back in my own career, before all of it, like I was not a great athlete growing up. I wasn’t a great runner. I’m not very tall. I’m 5’7 1/2”. I’m not built for football. But I found springboard diving. Some friends were jumping around the pool one day, doing back dives and back jumps, and girls were looking at them, and I thought, “Whew, figure I’ll try that.”

And I did a back dive, and I pulled my leg around, and I did a back somersault, and none of my friends could do it. So, I got good on the low board as a one-meter springboard diver. Fast forward, colleges started to dangle scholarships in front of me. I grew up in Westchester, New York and I won the Westchester County diving championships three times, so colleges took an interest in me. But all those college coaches would say, “Bill, you’re a great low-board diver. We’re very interested in you. We do have some scholarship money, but tell us about your high-board list of dives.” I never bothered to learn high-board list of dives because I was, and am, petrified of heights.

So, I had a coach who said, “Look, do you want to try to get a scholarship?” I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” So, he would take me down to Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.

Pete Mockaitis
I have been there. I had spoken there.

Bill Treasurer
Had you been there? Have you?

Pete Mockaitis
It’s lovely. The gals.

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, you’re right. It is the gals.They’ve got a lot of Irish there in that part of New York. And so, Iona, to this day, it’s the only place that I know of that has a diving board, even to this day, built on a hydraulic lift. So, he could take the diving board and move it from one meter to one and a half meter. Now, I’m really uncomfortable, and I’m doing screaming belly whoppers, and I don’t want to go to practice, and I’m upset with him for making me do this. I’d get welts on the back of my legs.

But after a hundred dives, my heart starts to stop racing, and after 200 dives and 50 practices, it starts to get better. After like 300 dives, I started to get, oh, bored. Boredom’s a great clue. Boredom is a clue that it’s time to move people back out into discomfort. And what do you think my coach did at that point?

Pete Mockaitis
He gives the handy hydraulic lift to increase the height.

Bill Treasurer
You are a smart podcaster, my friend. Exactly. He moved it to two meters, and now I’m back to the heart racing, I’m upset with him, welts on my legs, etc. But through this process of modulating between comfort and discomfort, he would push me out into discomfort long enough where I could acquire new skills. And once I acquired the skills, I’d settle to that place, and I’d start to, eventually, become even bored, and that became the clue to move it

So, the long arc of the story is I ended up getting a full scholarship to West Virginia University. But, after that, I became a world-class high-diver and a member of the U.S. High-Diving Team, diving from heights that scaled to over 100 feet, travelling at speeds in excess of 50 miles an hour, into a small pool that was 10 feet deep, and I’m a high diver who, I already told you, is afraid of heights. So, this was the discovery of my courage.

Pete Mockaitis
Hotdog. Well, that is a nice metaphor there because you can see kind of very mathematically, as well as viscerally, “Oh, a little bit higher. Ooh, I feel that. A little higher. Oh, I feel that more.” And so, that’s there. And I suppose you could think about your own courage challenges in that kind of a way with regard to what’s a tiny step versus a big step, and all the steps in between? And maybe you can give us an example there. So, let’s say not sales because I think it’s almost too easy. I want to make you work for it, Bill. Let’s say in the workplace, it’s a common thing that people fear. And what would be the equivalent of the one meter, the one and a half meters, and then the 30 meters?

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, so good question and you’re right, by the way, this metaphor. It actually became the metaphor in my business Giant Leap Consulting. But now the whole business is about, “What high-dive are you facing and how can we help you take whatever personal or professional high-dive will move you forward?” And so, an example that I can think of is I did a 360-degree feedback with a group of leaders that I was working for. It was a cohort of about 25 people. And one of these leaders got some terribly harsh feedback, that he was a hothead, that he was ill-tempered, that he was dictatorial, like really scathing stuff.

And it slapped him upside the head as a 360-degree feedback will sometimes do with some people. And some people reject the feedback, they’re like, “Well, this is a bad time,” or, “You don’t understand I inherited the worst team,” and come up with excuses. But this leader really took it to heart. There’s an old saying that Gandhi said, he said, “The truth only hurts if it should.” And it did hurt him.

And it became, “What are we going to do? You just got all of this feedback about your leadership. You want to be a better leader. The company is investing in you, putting you in this leadership program. You’re managing huge consequential projects, some of it $50 to $100 million worth of project revenue that you’re managing. What are you going to do?”

And so, working, we decided with his boss that this person would get sort of extra attention, and we did a lot of one-on-one coaching together. And what it came down to was he was so fixated on production that he wasn’t making one-on-one time with his own direct reports, not about giving them direction for their jobs, but he wasn’t making any relationship-building time at all.

He was atypical, and I don’t mean to be stereotypical, but he was sort of engineering minded. It was all about production, it was all about the work schedule, it was all about the work breakdown structure, it was all about the P&L, and it had very little to do with the building strong relationships and interpersonal chemistry of his team so that he would have some goodwill and loyalty around him. He didn’t. He had people who wanted to go work for other people.

So, he had to sort of take emotional risks of being willing to focus on his own people and treating them in a more respectful and humane way, and worry less about production, and worry more about investing in emotional relationship. I know that sounds squishy but here’s how I know that it worked. It’s about five years later, I was leading a similar leadership program, in fact it’s the very same leadership program, but it was a different cohort going through it. And three of those people, out of the 25, were people who reported to him now.

And to a person, they were telling me what a great leader he was, what a great mentor, how much he developed them, how much he was so interested in his fair treatment of them. It was like an entirely different person. But the courage for him was the willingness to be uncomfortable in terms of not being fixated on P&L and production, that stuff was always going to be there, but to invest the time in the development and the attention-giving of his own people and building relationships with them. And it made all the difference. It made him whole. It made him sort of more emotionally-attuned and aware.

Pete Mockaitis
And the fear there it could show up in terms of, “Oh, my gosh, if I spent this time talking about this mushy relationship stuff, it’s like we’re not spending time making it happen, churning out production,” so it’s kind of scary. Or, “Boy, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Are they going to cry even if I really start listening to what’s going on with their lives? And I don’t know what to do with that.” So, that can be fearful there.

Bill Treasurer
Exactly. If I invested time, and I become interested in this person’s career and what they want to get out of their career, and what they want to get out of my time being their leader, and, hey, maybe even what’s going on in their own life if they want to share any of that. I might actually have to care about this person. They’re no longer just a “resource.” It’s a human being that I’m in relationship with, and now I care about, oh, man, if I care about them, I’m going to be obliged to them in a different way than I am if I’m just their “boss.” So, you’re right, it comes with a certain risk.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s hard to fire them, too, when you care.

Bill Treasurer
It’s hard to be hard, right. It’s hard to be tough. But I think what it does is it changes the equation. So many people in leadership roles it’s all about results, right? Like, if you don’t get results, you’re not going to stay a leader. We see it with professional coaches, for example. If you have enough of a losing streak, you’re going to get replaced. So, I get it, results matter.

But I think that we have to put the equation and make sure that it’s the treatment of people as the means to the ends of getting the result. But too many people, like this person, focused on the result, the result, the result, the ends, “Give me the ends. Give me the golden egg. Give me the golden egg. Give me the golden egg,” and cutting open that goose to get the golden egg instead of the treatment of people which is the means to getting the better production.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And when you treat them you want to be clear that they don’t feel like they are means to the end alone, and that’s sort of like what they are to you. But, yeah, understood in terms of people are that which make it happen, so folks need to be treated well in order to see that occur. Now, I want to make sure we have a moment to talk about you’ve got a concept called three buckets of courage, and I know those are pretty interesting. Can you tell us about this?

Bill Treasurer
Sure. I think that when we think of courage as this big ambiguous topic, and we think, “Oh, man, courage. That’s huge. That’s for heroes. That’s for people with the machine guns charging up the hill in the theater of war. That’s for the person standing on the moon. That’s the person saving somebody’s life, or running into a burning building.” And that’s true. Courage has its place for heroics. But I believe that there’s a more tempered everyday experience of courage that’s accessible to all of us, and it helps to break down the idea of courage so that it’s not so ambiguous. And I break it down into three different behavioral buckets that I call the three buckets of

The first bucket of courage is the courage to try something you’ve not done before. It’s the courage of first attempts. It’s the courage of action. It’s the courage of initiative to cross this threshold and do this thing that other people may be doing, but for you it’s the first time. And because it’s the first time, there’s a degree of unknown across the threshold. So, I call this

You can think of the first time you drove a car, for example, when other people are on the road driving a car. But, for you, it was a petrifying experience. Or, the first time you moved into management, and you now had direct reports reporting to you, and it’s a foreign experience to you. You can draw from the experiences of others, but for you it’s the first time.

That’s different than the second bucket of courage. The second bucket of courage is the courage of vulnerability, emotional exposure, the courage of relationships, and I call this trust courage. It’s the courage entrust others and assume some degree of risk that they may betray you. Because when you entrust somebody, there’s always a chance that they could betray you, and then your judgment gets

So, for example, in the workplace, delegating a consequential, meaningful, substantial task to somebody, without pulling it back from them, and without hovering over them like a helicopter parent, but building up their skills and entrusting them so that they can be self-sufficient and self-reliant to do this task. There’s always a chance that they mess up and it becomes a reflection on your judgment. But this is the courage it takes to build relationships. And I find that the higher you go up in the organization, the less often you see the trust courage that’d be because I think that we become jaded over time because of betrayal.

The third bucket of courage is the one that we often think of when we talk about courage in the workplace. We think of the person with the shaky voice, standing up to authority, or getting the direct message when it’s really hard for them to do so. We call this the courage of the truthteller and the bucket, as the third bucket of courage, is tell courage. It’s the voice of assertiveness and truth-telling. We want people and we want leaders, especially, to be honest. But, as you know, Pete, we do a lot of socially-appropriate

When your spouse says, “Do I look fat in this dress?” Honesty, we say we want it but it’s kind of hard to give. Somebody raises their hand at a townhall meeting, “Are there going to be more layoffs?” And we’re told we’re not allowed to say. Honesty is a hard thing, so it takes courage to be the honest truthteller, knowing that the risk you assume is if you tell the truth, you might be excluded from the group and no longer belong.

So, each one of these buckets – try, trust, and tell – has some risks attached to it which is why it involves courage.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I like that because they really are different phenomenon in terms of you may well find that you are ready to try anything, but you really are slow to trust. Or, you’ve got the audacity to sort of tell people what you think, no problem, but you’re worried about kind of doing something totally different outside of your world. So, I think that’s a really handy way to think about it in terms of what they share is this notion of courage and breaking out of the comfort to do something. But they all also have their own sort of nuances or flavors. So, tell me, do you have any pro tips in terms of each of these three? Like, if you want to be more courageous in each of the three buckets, what should you do?

Bill Treasurer
Yeah, that’s a good question, and you’re very perceptive. You’re right that each one of these, you can see the distinction between them, but you also see the reinforcement. And you’re also right that we tend to be stronger in one of those buckets than the others, and that’s great. That’s the area where you could give people mentorship, for example. But if your bucket is low in any of those areas, you’re likely to give people advice that comes from fear because your own bucket isn’t full in that particular  And each one has strengths and weaknesses.

So, in terms of advice, whatever advice that I would give people, would be to start small, right? Like, no high-diver goes up and does a 100-foot jump one time without doing a thousand jumps from one foot. So, I call these leadups, so start  So, for example, if you wanted to demonstrate try courage. A small way to do that, so doing something that breaks routine, breaks habit, a willingness to go to a different restaurant at lunch. Don’t go to the same haunt that you go to all the time. Take a different route to work. Break up your routines in small ways and it would give yourself mental permission to do so in larger more substantial

Trust. When it comes to trust courage, one thing you can do is sort of fill in the blank to this question, “I will trust you when…” When is it? What is the criteria with which you give a person  Some people are like, “I’ll trust you right off the bat. I always presume trust. And then if you screw up, then I will have a hard time trusting you.” Other people are like, “I will trust you after you prove to me you can be trusted.” And they’re sort of they’ll prove it, people need evidence.

But at least be conscious to know what is the criteria with which you will give people trust or withhold trust because it allows you to understand, “Is your standard too high? And would you maybe need to lower that standard so that you can build relationships quicker with

And then, for tell courage, to have the courage or voice or assertiveness, one thing I often suggest for people in lower-level positions who are struggling with a boss who might be dominant, is to go to your boss, or maybe even during your annual review, and say, “Boss, I just need to know. Do you need me to sort of agree with everything that you say? Do you need me to be a yes person? Do you need me to be a brownnoser?” And I’m telling you, 95% of bosses are going to be like, “No, I don’t want you to. Do not. You absolutely need to push

Pete Mockaitis
Bill, thank you so much for asking. Yes, please. Not all of these disagreements and critical thinking I have to do everywhere, it’d be so refreshing if you can just tell me what I want to hear constantly. Ah, that’d be nice.

Bill Treasurer
Right. So, this tip is all about establishing a ground rule with your boss that you won’t be a butt-kisser, and a brownnoser, and a yes person, because they don’t want you to be. They’ve, in fact, clarified that but then you’ve got to go a step further and say, “Great, boss. I’ll tell you what, I will honor this commitment. Can you do me a favor? Give me some coaching right now. When I need to disagree with you, how can I do that in a way that would be receptive to your

And then that person will give them advice, “Listen, don’t do it when I’m getting ready to walk into the board meeting. Don’t do it when you see 50 items in my inbox,” and they’ll give you some coaching so that when you fast forward six months from now, and you actually have to disagree with your boss, you can say, “Hey, boss, remember when we agreed during my performance review that you didn’t want me to be a yes person, and you gave me some coaching on how to give you feedback that you might need to hear, I’ve got some things to say to you right now that will honor the commitment that we made to each other.” So, it’s basically setting a ground rule where you’ve got permission to tell the truth to your

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Well, tell me, Bill, any key things you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Bill Treasurer
I think, for the listener, there are a couple of good old tiny questions to ask yourself, “When’s the last time you did something for the first time?” It’s a good question and it’ll allow you to think, “Hey, am I extending myself enough?” The other one, of course, is, “Where am I playing it too safe?” So, sometimes it’s like the thought experiments, there’s a few key questions like that that can help your listeners orient themselves to are they extending themselves enough.

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

Bill Treasurer
Well, I do like that quote from Gandhi, right, “The truth only hurts if it should.” I like that because it keeps me accountable to giving harder messages that I might need to deliver to my clients and/or to myself, right? Like, sometimes somebody will give me feedback, and my instant response is wanting to defend myself or to find something wrong with that person who gave me that feedback. But if I just sort of sit with that quote from Gandhi, “Yeah, you know, that hurt. Why did that hurt?” And then I start to think about, “What is the truth of what they said and why does it hurt me?” So, I like that quote. That’s a good quote for me.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Bill Treasurer
I’ll tell you one of my favorite books of all time. So, I do a lot of leadership development, designing, developing, and delivering comprehensive leadership programs. Some of them are two years long, these leadership programs. And I think that a lot of people in the practice of leadership development deify leadership too much. They put it on a pedestal. And I think it’s really important that practitioners of leadership development also be heads up about the dangers of leadership put in the wrong hands.

And one of my favorite books on this is by Stanley Milgram who did the famous Milgram studies, the shock studies, I’m sure you’re familiar with them. And he wrote a book called Obedience to Authority, and it shows you how willing people are to capitulate to authority figures with very small actual authority over them. They’re willing to sort of cede control to a person who tells them to do something if they’re wearing a lab coat, and don’t actually have leadership authority over them. It’s just a fascinating book about how quickly people will capitulate to authority figures.

And a quote in there about the banality of evil, or the topic of the banality of evil, that evil often is not acting courageously. And it’s sort of a yawn, it’s the sin of omission, right, that they don’t do the things they ought to do because somebody’s telling them not do it. They’re just following orders from somebody who doesn’t actually have any control over them.

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

Bill Treasurer
Well, I was going to say the worst-case grid. I also like the five Ps. And the five Ps allow you to contemplate, “Should I, shouldn’t I take this risk?” And, again, rather than a pro and con list, it looks at five different things. The first is passion, “Am I passionate about it? Does it give me energy to think about this? Does it give me positive energy to think about this big bold move that I’m contemplating this courageous action?” So, passion is the

The second P is purpose, “If I take this risk, is it going to move me forward? That a big bold move shouldn’t be about compensation, what will this risk get me?” It should be about destination, “Where will this risk carry me or take

Then the third P is principles, “If by doing this thing, am I embodying or upholding some principles or virtues that I hold dear and say that I’m all about? If I take this risk, is it, in fact, a demonstration of this principle put to

The fourth P is prerogative, “Am I going to take this because other people are telling me to, because my dad was a dentist and he wants me to become a dentist? Or am I going to take this risk because I’ve thought about it, and it moves my life forward, it’s an exercise of my own free will, this decision, should I, shouldn’t I get off this

And then the fifth P is profit, “Do I stand to get something? If I do this thing, what is the potential or reward for my life that could be redeeming somehow?” So, if I put something through the five Ps – passion, purpose, principles, prerogative, and profit – I’m in a much higher probability of having a successful outcome to this courage action than if I don’t, or that if I only put it through a pro and con

And notice, by the way, Pete, that I put profit last. If you put that first, it skews your thinking on everything and you make the risk all about, “What can I gain?” and you start chasing the shiny

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

Bill Treasurer
I guess one nugget is it’s a quick story from a person that I got to work with on four occasions. She actually wrote the foreword to the original version of “Courage Goes to Work,” and her name is Sara Blakely, the founder of SPANX. And Sara tells the story of when she was a little kid, her dad used to sit down at the dinner table with her and her brother, she was about 10 or 11 years old, her brother was a little younger. Her dad used to ask her a simple question at the end of every week, he’d say, “Okay, kids, what have you failed at this week? What have you failed at this week?”

And she learned at an early age that if you’re not extending yourself, even occasionally to the point of failure, then it’s going to be hard for you to be successful. And I think that’s sort of a good golden nugget again about the importance, the wiliness to move and to discomfort because that’s where the growth happens.

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

Bill Treasurer
I’d point them to a couple of the websites. One is BillTreasurer.com, another is GiantLeapConsulting.com. And since we’re talking about Courage Goes to Work, guess where they can go to find that?

Pete Mockaitis
CourageGoestoWork.com.

Bill Treasurer
You are a smart man, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, Bill, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you all the best and much courageous adventures in your future.

Bill Treasurer
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me on. I hope that your readers drew some value from it and I really enjoyed talking to you.

Jul 03

459: How to Make Work More Sustainable Through Reinvention with Diana Wu David

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Diana Wu David says: "We really have to take agency over our own careers and our own job, and think about how to constantly improve it... the value it provides to us."

Diana Wu David shares how to future-proof your work-life with approaches for reinvention and re-framing.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Approaches for taking agency over your own career
  2. How to recognize the “treadmill of self-sacrifice” and get off it
  3. The right way to ask for what you want at work

About Diana 

Diana Wu David is a strategist, innovator, entrepreneur, and the founder of Sarana Capital and Sarana Labs. Her companies transform how executives work and prepare companies for the future of work, invest in Edtech and HRtech, and support innovative education initiatives across public and private sectors. Her diverse, global career includes assisting Henry Kissinger and leading executive education initiatives for Financial Times. A superconnector of people and a sought-after speaker, Diana lives in Hong Kong with her husband and their three children.  

Resources Mentioned in this Show:

Thank you sponsors!

Pete Mockaitis
Diana, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at your Job podcast.

Diana Wu David
Thank you, Peter.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’ve done a lot of research on you and I’ve seen you’ve had a cool variety of experiences. But I want to go way back to your youth where you did some barrel racing and rodeo parading. What’s the story here?

Diana Wu David
So, it’s not an interesting story for where I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, but now that I’ve spent 20 years living abroad, most people can’t believe that I was in the rodeo parade and I used to ride horses and do barrel racing. In Hong Kong here, now, I’m surrounded by a lot of people who like horses but are very much into dressage and show horses, so it’s a very unusual thing to be a rodeo queen in Hong Kong.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is funny to just imagine. And just so we’re on the same page, what precisely does barrel racing refer to?

Diana Wu David
You get on your horse and they have actual barrels, and it’s like a slalom. You race around the barrels as fast as you can on horseback.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds a lot of fun to me.

Diana Wu David
It is. It’s very fast, and I have had some brush ups against the fence and so it’s dangerous, but it was super fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like a good time. I grew up in Danville, Illinois, which is the central part of the state, and it was quite common that I would have friends showing cattle for these kinds of things, a fair, so respect.

Diana Wu David
I’m glad I have your respect. It’s a good way to start the podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we’ve reminisced about our past, so let’s segue into the future. Your book Future Proof has a lot of good stuff in there. Maybe, could you start us off to get the intrigue flowing? What was, maybe your most surprising and fascinating discovery as you were researching and putting this together?

Diana Wu David
I think that the most surprising discovery is that I was thinking people who I interviewed were looking for some kind of work-life balance, but instead what I found is that they were incredibly ambitious to live life on their terms. So, many of them went off to do something a little bit offbeat or entrepreneurial. Many of them started side hustles. A lot of them are still in their jobs but just approaching things a bit differently. So, they’re super ambitious, they’re not taking a step down, or really focused on balance so much as living life on their own terms.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, it sounds like if they weren’t pursuing balance, then they were going after something with gusto and experiencing some imbalance and being fine with it.

Diana Wu David
Oh, they were just so excited to be successful on a broad basis, and oftentimes that meant learning, that’s sort of insatiable curiosity.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. Well, so that’s surprising. And what would you say is sort of like the main theme or big idea within the book Future Proof?

Diana Wu David
I think the main idea is that we really have to take agency over our own careers and our own job, and think about how to constantly improve it, not just the job as it relates to the value it provides to the company, of course that’s important, but even the value it provides to us.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good. And so then, what are some things that we tend to overlook when we’re not looking at things that way?

Diana Wu David
Well, I think there’s a sense that we’re sort of narrowly-focused, so we’re looking for companies or positions to provide for us and we’re dumbing from one to the other, looking for things, but just re-focusing on yourself as a person. One of the huge drivers of this has been the idea of disruption but also longevity.

So, if you’re looking at a career over a hundred-year life, you’re definitely going to outlast your job function. You’re probably going to have multiple careers. And based on the SMP lifespan of a company now being 12 years, you’ll probably outlast your own company. So, it’s about looking at yourself and thinking about, “What are the narratives? What do I need to learn next? What do I need to do to be flexible to build my skills? How can I frame this in a way to learn from it and still be super excited and add value?”

That’s something that I think has been lost a little bit. There’s a sense of going to a company, “Oh, we give them our blood, sweat, and tears. And they give us money and they should be giving us more.”

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So then, it sounds like there’s a little bit more kind of onus and responsibility upon the individual worker to really take stock of what’s most important and to proactively assess and evaluate whether a given opportunity is going to deliver on those means and with an eye toward the future as well.

Diana Wu David
Absolutely. And those change all time. I think sometimes it will be balanced. And I remember in my own life when I had super little kids, I wasn’t insanely ambitious to spend all my time at work and progressing, but as that changed, my priorities changed. So, it’s a longer life, pace yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right. And so, you got a great turn of a phrase, which I guess would be the counterpoint to that, you say we’re pacing. You used the phrase, “The treadmill of self-sacrifice.” Can you unpack that a little bit in terms of what does that look like in practice and how do you know when you’re on it and it’s a problem?

Diana Wu David
That’s a great question. I think that you can feel it when you’re treading along. And it was the basis of my TED Talk, and also a sort of personal genesis for the book that after many years at my company I just felt like I wasn’t learning, and just going in every day, and you just feel that weighty sense of burden. And I think it was a turning point for me when it was maybe the third restructure at my company, and I just felt a little bit lost and sort of a “What’s the point?” feeling.

And I remember also that the HR director had said after we had to let some people go, I had to let some people go, and she said, “Well, you know, it’s really up to you.” And I was incredibly offended that this family feeling in our company had been disrupted by somebody telling me I needed to sort of pull my pants up and take care of myself.

And she got me a coach and I told my coach about all the injustices that had been foisted upon me, and how much I had invested, and how I just needed to have her help me find a new job. And the coach said…

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m being paid by the company.”

Diana Wu David
Well, you know, that’s in a separate conversation. I do think that the coaches, who are really good, can help you find a different way and help you be happy and awesome at your job. And this coach did that. She was like, “Look, you’re not going to quit, and I’m not going to help you. You’re going to turn this situation around.”

And I hated her. I’m still not sure I like her to this day. But she said, “If you’re really at that point, if you’re ready to just quit,” she said, “A, you have an opportunity to turn this around, to really learn from this, to figure out what you want and advocate for it. And the reality is, if you still want to quit, you’re still in the same place. Nothing to lose.”

She said, “And, furthermore, you’ve got such a bad attitude that nobody is going to hire you anyway. They’re going to see it. They’re going to smell it.” So, I think, you know, you see engagement scores at companies, I think people get that, and it’s not just the sort of bad day that everybody has at work. It’s that sense of just, “Ugh.” So, that’s a treadmill of self-sacrifice.

And the reality is that, oftentimes, it’s just about a manner of re-framing and also learning, which I think, as women, we’re particularly bad at learning what we are, one, advocating. And the company doesn’t foist things upon you so much. It’s a negotiation. And if you’ve never had the conversation, then it’s really, you know, the onus is on you to figure out what you want.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful in so many ways. Like, when you said, “Ugh,” like I really know exactly what you mean. And I’m thinking about our transcriptionist, Jane, how she’s going to handle that one because it’s such an important word that we’re sharing here that makes all the difference. Because I know that sensation and I think that’s wise. It’s almost like, I guess I’m wondering, why do we put up with that? Why do we get there?

It’s almost like you’re making some assumptions that this is just what’s necessary, or, “I just have to,” or, “It’s right,” or, “It’s appropriate in order to be hard worker.” Could you go there for us maybe? Like, what are the assumptions or the inaccurate self-talk that’s going on that get us to assume, like, “Oh, this is just how it is and what I have to deal with”?

Diana Wu David
Well, I think in the case of a lot of the people I spoke to, they were very successful and we’ve done a lot of the right things, managed to get into a position. And, oftentimes, things start out well, but then they start to, I guess, misalign. So, I do know, for instance, that when I was growing up that my father used to say, in the very early years, “You can work harder than anybody else. Like, that’ll be the way you get ahead.”

And, often, there is that sense of status almost, we’re busy, “Oh, my job is so intense. Oh, I have to do all these calls.” There is definitely an aspect to that which, if you can let go is fantastic because you can actually put some boundaries in that make your life livable. I think that some of it is that aspect.

There is a story in the book, though, of Lale Kesebi who was a Globalcom’s head for a company called Li & Fung. They basically started out as a sourcing company and probably sourced, at one point, 80% of the things in your house for huge brands in the U.S. And she loved her job, as did I after the coach beat me up a little bit, and she said, “I love it. I definitely have so much that I put into it. It’s been great for experimenting, but I just feel like I have so much more to give.” And I think that’s sort of a better way to think of it. And figuring out for yourself how you can give all that you can, and also be recognized for it.

Pete Mockaitis
I really like that. I have so much more to give. And then that notion of, “Oh, boy, I’m really swamped. I’m working. I’m doing all this stuff.” It reminds me we had a previous conversation with Rahaf Harfoush who termed this kind of umbrella of statements, “performative suffering,” which I thought was a good turn of a phrase.

Diana Wu David
Oh, I love that.

Pete Mockaitis
In terms of, it’s like, “Oh, boy, I’m really swamped. Oh, I’m going to burn the midnight oil again.” And like that sort of a badge of honor or something that you should be praised and rewarded for, where there’s some sort of camaraderie effect, I don’t know, “Hey, we’re all doing this suffering together.”

So, I like what you’ve shared there with regard to just really having some thought to the situation and identifying what’s really important to you and taking a stand. So, could you maybe give us some examples of particular things that people that they need, and they kind of forget to ask for, and how they ask for them with great results?

Diana Wu David
So, yes, absolutely. After my coach told me that I was being a big, fat baby about my situation, she, herself, said, “Okay, write down all the things you want and what title do you want. Obviously, there’s a lot of volatility in the company. What kind of things would make your life more palatable? Is it less travel? Is it more? Is it a seat at the strategy table? Is it new projects? Within reason, I mean, start with the big brainstorm and then go from there, and think about how you can frame them in a way that’s attractive to the company.”

And that’s something that I did, and I was so surprised by how willing they were to negotiate and to open-minded it and think about those things. And I positioned it all from the benefits that they would get, but I completely transformed my position, did some of the things I knew needed to be done as well, and left thinking that it was the best job ever, and I still work there part-time. So, it really does come down to the individual.

I think that time boundaries are one. I think we foist that on ourselves, “Oh, I just have to do it.” You never say no. For example, me living in Asia, you never say, “Gee, I have three kids and I like to put them to bed at night. Can we do the call in a slightly different time?” And sometimes you can’t, but if you never ask, you’ll never get it.

So, Lale Kesebi, likewise, she was working in this huge position, and she decided that she would ask for a couple of interesting projects. And so, she had started to work on a case with a business school on some of their innovations, and that opened up all kinds of interesting opportunities to speak about the innovation they were doing across the world. And those are some of the little things that, they either allow you to set some boundaries, or allow you to continue learning and progressing, and just experiment a little bit so that you can, in that longer life and longer career, find what’s interesting, what inspires you, and new ways to progress.

Pete Mockaitis
There’s a lot of good stuff there. And I really like how you won’t get it if you don’t ask for it. And when you ask for it, you did so wisely and strategically with regard to framing it in the benefits for the organization. So, could you give us a couple of examples of, “Okay, here’s a need, and here’s how you ask for it with the frame of how that would be beneficial for the organization”?

Diana Wu David
Well, I don’t want to talk all about myself, so let me talk about one of the folks in the book. Steve Stine was a very senior executive search person. And, likewise, he was doing an executive search. He really wanted to have his girls go to a place in Bali, which is in Indonesia, called the Green School. So, he and his wife decided that’s what they wanted. He was living in Singapore, which is maybe four hours away, and Bali is kind of like moving to a fabulous resort that is not particularly your any executives.

And so, it was an ask, but he basically said, “Look, this is important to me, and I will do the travel to ensure there is no problem. I will ensure the Wi-Fi is fantastic.” And they said, “Sure. You’ve put in some time. Your relationships are great. And we’ll try it for a six-month period, and if it doesn’t work, then we’ll have to find something else, or you’ll have to live in Singapore, and your family can live there, and you can commute, or whatever it is.”

So, now, you really can be creative about it. He also later decided that his love for storytelling would be well-served by doing a podcast. So, he went off, A, did a course in mythology and storytelling, and then, B, launched an Asia Inside podcast based on all of his incredibly senior relationships, and it was great because he’s an executive recruiter, and he could have conversations with people that he wanted to keep in touch within his network without necessarily there being an active search going on. So, he also negotiated to have that with his company so that they understood the benefit it had both to him personally but also to the job.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s really cool, and I like that notion of, “Hey, we’re going to try it out for six months and see how it goes,” and you’ve actually delineated a few particular tools of experimentation, collaboration, reinvention and recalibrating success to improve careers. Could you maybe give us an example or a pro tip for each of these tools?

Diana Wu David
So, experiment is really about learning, and I think that people find themselves kind of locked into whatever they’re doing and feel like an experiment is either, “I have to quit my job,” or, “Move to a new town.” But I think that working the muscle of experimentation, on taking small bets, and understanding the feedback that you get, and using it to learn, is really an important thing for future of work. You have to be constantly trying things out.

And as a corporate entrepreneur, and somebody who’s been doing disruption work since 1995, it’s an innovation tool. It’s sort of taking the small bet, seeing where it goes, pivoting, going on. And you can do that in your own career like Steve did and like Lale did.

And reinventing is really about thinking about what your story is and what kind of adjacencies you can have. So, if you look at companies, Netflix started as a company where you would have a VHS tape, and it would be sort of mailed to you, or a DVD mailed to you through the mail. And now, look at them, they’re a content producer, they’re streaming.

So, thinking about how you can take all of your core assets, and skills, and talents, and character, and think about adjacencies, “How could I reinvent? What if my job changes or my company changes, what else could I do?” And this is very much about also thinking, “I am not an accountant. I am Diana, and I’m good with numbers, but I’m good with people. And what else could I do with those unique things? I live in Asia, so I have Asia experience.” It’s sort of collecting all of your assets, and thinking about how you can package them for new things.

Collaboration is something I feel strongly about because I think that people are not trained in this, and we’re all about our network now, being strategic, being culturally sensitive. And I say that from outside of America where I have spent the last 20 years running teams of people with two people in Singapore, and somebody in China, and somebody in Japan, and different countries, and my boss in the U.K., and my other boss in the U.S., so virtual cultural networks and working.

And, finally, focus, which is sort of the fourth key in terms of the actions in the book “Future Proof” is just, what’s your story? What’s your priority? And really making time for that.

Pete Mockaitis
I want to hear a little bit more about collaboration. You say we’re not really trained in it, but it’s really important. What are some of the key things when it comes to collaborating that most of us could do better?

Diana Wu David
Well, I think that many of the people on your podcast are in the U.S., and I think that a lot of times it’s an assumption that everybody on is sort of coming from the same place. And I found over the years that that can be very different. And so, a lot of it is taking our social graces and applying them online, or on teleconference, you know, conference calls, or Zoom, or video conference, so part of it is just getting to know people.

I’ve studied a lot of teams and companies, and many of them have tried to make time for watercooler chat, or one-on-one getting to know you, or “What’s the rhythm of your life?” And that’s something that’s becoming ever more present. And I find, as an American living abroad and working abroad, that we tend to be very efficient and very direct.

And so, in my early years, not to apply my foibles to my entire nation, but this drive for efficiency was always about, “Okay, who’s next and what do we do? And, okay, are we done? Can we check that off?” And I do a lot of work with boards now, and I see the same thing where we’re just rushed and we don’t make time to form some of those personal relationships with our teammates, think about walking a mile in their shoes, setting clear expectations, and really putting effort into bringing everyone together in a team to get something done.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, do you have any particular, I don’t know, icebreaker questions? But are there any kind of particular questions or conversations or activities or things that just are really great for getting to know people in that way to boost collaboration down the line?

Diana Wu David
I think asking, “What are you excited about right now?” is a good one. Because, at this point, for instance, if you’re calling a business process outsource center in India, and you ask somebody, “So, I just went to Hawaii, I had this great trip. Where is your next vacation?” Maybe they don’t have a vacation. There’s sort of a lot of things that take a step away from your own experience.

And so, that one I feel like allows people to really talk about what their passion is, and it could be anything. And I use that in person as well because I think that the perpetual networking, “What do you do?” which implies work is all.

Pete Mockaitis
Are you useful to me?

Diana Wu David
“How can you be useful to me?” is maybe less interesting than what people are excited about.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. What are you excited about right now, Diana?

Diana Wu David
Turning the tables! I am really excited about the course that we’re about to pilot. A lot of people, I mean, this book is me having 80 coffees with people saying, “What should I do, Diana?” And me thinking, “I don’t know. Let me ask some other people, and I’ll put it in a book, and I’ll send it to you.” And the next one is people saying, “Okay, so I see the book, but I don’t know how to get started. Can we sort of get online together and really go forward, and work some of these things through in a collaborative manner?” And so, we have a beta course for future proofing coming up soon. And I’m having a great time putting things together and working with people to find out what’s useful to them.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Thank you.

Diana Wu David
Yeah. What are you excited about?

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s so funny. I guess I’m just thinking about the short term. As we speak, I’ve got a Sufi steak going right now. My wife and I, we’re going to celebrate that we found a great nanny when my wife returns to work after her maternity leave period, and that was quite a search. And we’re thrilled and we have chosen to celebrate in this way. So, we’re going to, short term, that’s what I’m excited about.

Diana Wu David
So, you can smell the steak you’re cooking.

Pete Mockaitis
So, there’s that, you know, and I’m excited about just the growth of the podcast in terms of it’s really going places. And we’ve got a survey going out at AwesomeAtYourJob.com/advice to get all the more useful feedback on who would be the best guest in episodes to be even more on target for people. And I’m excited to reach out to former guests, so you’ll be getting an email from me, Diana. Like, “Hey, who’s really a great person to interview?” I’m excited about we have more staff to be able to process all the thousands of incoming pitches and really find the true and the best fits.

Diana Wu David
I think what you’re doing is amazing. I wish you started this earlier.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too.

Diana Wu David
It’s great. I mean, really, nobody teaches you in school, and I think that’s part of the issue is sort of they teach you how to be awesome at specific tasks, math or even coding. But nobody teaches you how to be awesome at your job, and that is a totally different thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you. I’m honored and I appreciate it. So, yeah. Well, another great thing about that question is it just puts me in a great mood, right, because I’m thinking about those things. And then you can relate to some of those things and so we are more bonded as a result. And it’s a heck a lot more fun than, “What do you do?” It’s like, “I run a small research training company called How to be Awesome at Your Job that helps develop the universal skills required to flourish at work.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s cool. We might talk about that a little bit.”

Diana Wu David
Cool.

Pete Mockaitis
But there’s more of an emotional visceral stuff going on with like the steak and the nanny and the growth trajectory.

Diana Wu David
And it’s like the exchange.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Fun. Well, thank you for that. Well, let’s see, so you have a boatload of tools and suggestions for transforming your career for the better and being future proof. But if you haven’t already covered, I’d love to make sure that we do get your take on what do you think are some of the actions, the practices, the tactics that really offer the greatest bang for your buck in terms of career satisfaction and future proofing per, I guess, minute of thought, attention, and effort?

Diana Wu David
I think that most of what I have distilled I put into a checklist from the book. So, I think that that gives you a huge amount because thinking about all the things you could do can be quite daunting, and this allows you to focus. So, I have that on my website at DianaWuDavid.com.

And going in to ask yourself questions about, “Now, where am I lacking? And what do I already have? And what are some of the things that I could do to kind of close that gap?” I think is probably the best bang for the buck. So, it really does go through and talk about your family life, and your relationships, and what kind of professional relationships you have that you could either go to in a crisis or with a problem, or to celebrate. I think that that kind of audit is just quite useful to take on a yearly or a quarterly basis, and then the tools that you might use can follow.

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

Diana Wu David
I think that people can really change the way that they approach work by just reframing what the opportunity is, and by really finding the things in their job that may not be part of the job description, but that really jazz them, and that may change over time. So, even though the strategic part of my job had changed and become little bit old, before, I remember one of the evolutions was realizing, “What is it?”

Ask yourself, “What is it that gets me out of bed in the morning?” And for this particular moment in time, it was my team. And even though my big job description said, you know, X15% growth, topline operations, etc. for the P&L, I thought, “Yeah, the team is it. Making sure they progress in their lives and professionally for the next 12 months, or six months even, that’s going to be my focus. And the other stuff I know I can do, but my job now is to help them grow.”

And then when that is something that’s sort of taken care of, or we’ve progressed enough, maybe it’ll be something else. So, I think that reframing can allow you to perpetually reinvent within the same function, or same team, or same job. It’s not always about progress up a ladder.

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

Diana Wu David
So, this was from one of the interviewees, Emma Sherrard, who is CEO of Quintessentially Lifestyle concierge, and now has progressed into being the global chair person. And she said, “Yeah, all you’re saying is about don’t settle for the life you’ve been given. Work hard for the life you want.” And that’s like a motto now for me. It’s a mantra when I think, “Oh, I’m working so hard.” And I’ll go back and say, “Yeah, this is what you wanted. You got to work hard for it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Diana Wu David
One of the books that had the most impact on my thinking was The 100-Year Life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we interviewed Lynda on the show.

Diana Wu David
Yeah, I thought that totally changed the way I viewed my career, what I did, in what time sequence, etc. It really changed. And I referenced it quite a bit in my book Future Proof.

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

Diana Wu David
My favorite tool is SaneLater. I believe deeply in sanity and SaneLater basically delivers all of your emails at a preset time so that you don’t spend your entire day checking your email. So, at 3:00 p.m. every day, I get all my emails delivered, I go through them, and there you go.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I also use the SaneBox and I am an enthusiast just because there are so many newsletters that though they’re genuinely interesting and like I would enjoy reading them, but in a way that’s too tempting. I don’t want them popping up into my inbox because then I’m going to jump in and take a read, and then, it’s like, “Oh, shoot, I meant to be doing something totally different during this moment.” And so, now they’re kind boxed over to the side. Much appreciated.

Diana Wu David
It’s like having a giant bowl of M&Ms on your desk, all those emails.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And, now, instead I have a butler bring me the M&Ms at the appointed time.

Diana Wu David
There you go. In a small bowl.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And how about a favorite habit?

Diana Wu David
My favorite habit is writing. I think the good, the bad, and the ugly, it all gets resolved with a few minutes with pen and paper or on the keyboard. It’s just been throughout my life every morning.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a particular nugget that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers, listeners, folks you’re working with?

Diana Wu David
Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of fear about the future. And so, one of the quotes in the book that seems to get highlighted a bit is “The future of work is not a clarion call for our demise. It’s a magic portal to more balance and rhythm in our lives.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Diana Wu David
People like magic portals, what can I say?

Pete Mockaitis
You’re bringing back a lot of video game memories for me when you shared those. And, Diana, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Diana Wu David
On my website, DianaWuDavid.com, and they have the checklist up there, and also Future Proof, /futureproof has the information on the book, and two chapters that people can download for free.

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

Diana Wu David
Yeah. Based on that, conquer your fear of the future, be awesome at your job, and live your dreams.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Diana, this has been a whole lot of fun. I wish you tons of luck with the book, Future Proof, and all of your globetrotting adventures.

Diana Wu David
Well, Pete, it’s I think 13 hours ahead, so I’m already in the future. It’s already Friday morning. So, thank you. And I wish you a fabulous dinner, steak dinner, with your wife and a wonderful celebration.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Diana Wu David
You’re welcome.

Jun 17

452: Adopting the Habits of Elite Performers with Nick Hays

By Podcasts No Comments

 

 

Nick Hays says: "If you are intimidated by something, that is an excellent indicator that it's exactly what you should be doing."

Former Navy SEAL Nick Hays shares practical advice on how to elevate your performance and push yourself to unlock your maximum potential.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to conquer large goals by celebrating the tiniest of victories
  2. How to find gratitude in the most unpleasant circumstances
  3. How to tune out the “yeah, but…” voice in your head

About Nick

Nick Hays is former a Navy SEAL. His operating days came to an end when he ruptured a disk while preparing for an operation in Afghanistan. Disillusioned, broken, and without means to provide for his family, Nick was left without a purpose in life. After recovery, his training kicked in, and he remembered the lessons learned from the SEAL teams and put them to the test with professional athletes. He’s helped train the Miami Heat and helped the Atlanta Falcons to a Super Bowl. Nick holds a BA from the University of Maryland, a Masters in Business from the University of San Diego, and a post-graduate degree from Harvard Business School. He now resides in California with his wife, Ivy, and their three children.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

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

Nick Hays
Pete, thanks for having me, man. I’m excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, I’m excited too. Well, could we get started, perhaps, with a thrilling tale of your adventures in the Navy SEALS? And feel free to anonymize anything you need to.

Nick Hays
Yeah, there’s a lot of interesting stuff that happened, some high points and some low points, I think. One of the most impactful things that happened while I was in the SEAL teams was—and it was in my first platoon—I was one of those guys that needed an extra little bit of love, right? I don’t think that a young frogman is anywhere as cocky as he is right after he’s gotten out of training, and has done nothing yet. It’s the most cocky you’ll ever be, and I was no exception.

It’s a funny story. But I showed up to a morning meeting one time, we’re training for this mission, and everything is pretty locked tight as far as the schedule, and I show up a couple of minutes late. It didn’t sound like a big deal, but when you’re a new guy in the teams, if you’re 15 minutes early, you’re late, that’s kind of the rule, and I had broken that.

So, my platoon chief at the time, now a platoon chief is somebody who has the most experience in the group, he’s the person everybody listens to. Well, he told me, “Hey, stick around after this. It’s not a big deal, but I need to talk to you.” So, we wrapped up the morning meeting, it’s like 9:00 o’clock in the morning, and he tells me, “Hey, man, it’s not a big deal but, obviously, you’ve got to pay the man, a little bit of a punishment.” He goes, “I’m not mad but just make sure that you make up for it by grabbing a rucksack,” which is military speak for backpack, right, “and fill it full at 50 pounds, and run up the paraloft tower,” which is a five-story building. And he says, “Do that one time for every guy in the platoon because you made them late, so I think it’s just a good way to pay it back.”

Now, I’m thinking about this, I’m like, “There’s no way this guy is being real with me. That’s a tremendous amount of work. Punishment doesn’t really fit the crime.” I was angry. But kept my mouth shut, and I went downstairs and grabbed a rucksack, and put 50 pounds in it. And he knew I was doing it, he followed me down, and he was like, “Nick, you can’t do that right now, man, in place of your workout. You’ve got to do it after work. It’s not even a punishment.” And he was like, “Come on, let’s go hit chest.”

So, we actually went to worked out together, never brought it up again. The day goes on. At the time I was working with the SDV, it’s a miniature submarine so it’s incredibly technical work. There’s a lot to do before you ever even do your training mission, so it’s a full day of dive rigs and technical stuff. We, finally splashed in the water, the sun is going down, it’s like 7:00 or 8:00 o’clock at night because we’re training for a night dive. I’m piloting the SDV, cold, wet, miserable, all that stuff, thinking about this punishment that I have in front of me the entire time.

It was similar to like when your child gets in trouble and you tell him, “Hey, go wait in your room.” That was me waiting in the room just thinking about it. So, we recover, it’s probably midnight. Insult to injury, it’s raining. Just miserable. Now, I have to get all my gear ready to go, I have to freshwater rinse the dive rigs. We’re talking about another hour of work. Finally, I go and I grab my rucksack and I’m walking over to the paraloft tower, steaming mad. I could not have been more angry than I was in that moment.

And I saw something that I didn’t know what to take. I saw my chief, Jim, sitting over there by the door of the tower. So, now, I’m thinking, “Okay, does he not trust me? Is this an integrity thing? Is he going to be sitting here with a stopwatch, saying, ‘Hey, go faster’? Is this a beat session? What’s about to happen?” and I was livid, man. But as I got closer, I saw that he actually had a rucksack sitting next to him.

When I walked up to him, he throws the rucksack on his back, and he was like, “All right, man, are you ready to hit this thing?” And I said, “Jim, what are you doing, man?” And he said, “Oh, dude, we’re in this together. I’m your leader. Like, we’re in it together. Your successes are my successes, your failures are my failures, so let’s get this done.” And he takes off up the tower.

Now, I’m sprinting to catch up to him, mind completely blown about what had just happened. He never brought it up again. That was the only thing he said about it, and he ran every single flight of stairs with me that night. It took a very long time. When we were done with it, I gave him a hug, and I just told him how much he meant to me.

And, for me, that was the course correction that I needed. And what he did in that moment was he grabbed a hold of me. It wasn’t about being two minutes late, it wasn’t about some operational military plus or minus a minute, on time every time kind of stuff, that’s not what he was doing. He grabbed a hold of me and he said, “Nick, your mine. I’m going to mentor you.”

For the rest of that platoon, I made my gear look exactly like his gear. I kept my magazines in the same place. I kept my medical equipment in the same place. I emulated everything about him because I figured, “Hey, this guy has like seven deployments. Maybe I can save some time if I just listened to him.” And I had the value of a mentor moving forward.

Now, we went onto get medals together to do some pretty amazing stuff, like even before going up to doing a mission, he and I just kind of stepped aside, said a quick prayer, and we were still in it together that entire time. To me, that was the difference between being a good SEAL or a bad SEAL. Like, I needed a mentor to grab a hold of me, and say, “Hey, we’re running full speed and we’re doing it together.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s amazing because, well, one, just sort of makes a self-sacrifice and like on top of all the stuff to do that and, two, to sort of the intuition. Like, he clearly figured out that’s what you needed, and delivered in a powerful way.

Nick Hays
A hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. We’re still close friends to this day. I still run stuff past him. And, you know, what I learned in that moment wasn’t necessarily… it was bigger than needing a mentor then. It was a process that I knew I needed in my life. I knew that I was going to need a mentor moving forward. So, when I separated from the military, I was looking at this new mission, this new thing, I’m looking at business, I’m looking at all this stuff that’s coming my way. And I thought to myself, I was like, “You know what, I need a mentor.”

So, the first thing I did was reach out to as many people as I could. And I had some criteria. I wanted people that didn’t mind having hard conversations, people that would keep me in check. I knew what I liked about a mentor. I like someone that can push back and isn’t going to tell me, “Atta boy,” but instead is going to tell me how to be better. Like, it’s something I get from the special operations mindset, but you don’t want to be right, you want to be better.

It’s not, “Hey, this is the way we’ve always done it.” It’s, “How can we do it better?” So, I needed that in my life as I made that transition. And because of that, man, I have the same story, I saved a lot of learning curve costs, I had support when I needed it, there were multiple times when something that now in hindsight looks like I must’ve done something right, but really it was just my mentor, or somebody who loves me and cares about me, opening doors and making something happen, right?

I think it convicts me. Like, at any given point, you have to have a mentor and you have to be a mentor. You have to be a mentor at the same time, you have to give it back. And a lot of people say, “Hey, no, I’m too young. I don’t know enough,” all these disqualifying statements. But, man, I see my seven-year old daughter mentor my five-year old son all the time. All the time. And he needs it. It helps me out.

So, it might be somebody who’s just behind you. You might be in high school, in college, you might be a project manager on the job, or you might be C-suite. It doesn’t matter. You need to be mentoring people, and you need a mentor in your life. It’s a valuable lesson that I learned early, and I’m so thankful for that, man, because it’s helped me out tremendously.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in your book Elite: High Performance Lessons and Habits from a Former Navy SEAL it sounds like you share a number of these high-performance lessons. And I’d love to hear kind of is there a central theme or thesis that ties them all together?

Nick Hays
Right. Like, “What is it to be elite?” I named the book after a reason. We think about the SEAL teams and we think elite. It’s synonymous with it. We think about Harvard Business School, we think elite. We think about some of these professional sports teams, we think elite. So, what are some of the things that I’ve seen at all of those venues that everybody has in common?

And I think the central theme is this, like when you look up and out your window right now, every organism that you’re looking at, in fact, every organism on this planet is either growing or dying. There is no status quo. There is no staying the same. It can’t be done in nature. You’re either growing or dying. And the people who are committed to growing, to being better tomorrow than they are today, are the elite.

It’s not about having arrived, it’s about the process. It’s about the desire to be uncomfortable, to try new things, to push yourself, right? We consider ourselves kind of rock, we’re like the stone, and the only way that we’re going to become a statue, something that we would call elite, is to allow the hammer and chisel to strip away the rough edges, to strip away the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Now, that can come in the form of efficiency. It can come in the form of structure in your life and how you structure your relationships. It can come through being thankful instead of afraid. All these concepts are certainly within the book, but it all ties back to that central theme which is you must be committed to growing. And it’s going to be painful. Growing is always painful but it is better than dying.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s an interesting turn of a phrase there – growing is painful, but it’s better than dying. And that’s the only alternative. So, then I’d love to get your take on this. So, our natural inclination is to avoid discomfort, that discomfort is not something we desire, naturally speaking, for the most part. So, how does one make that shift, either globally or in one particular context or project?

Nick Hays
Right. That’s a great way to say it. You can’t play guitar without callouses on your fingers, right? If you want to get strong, you go to the gym. If you want to learn how to play a guitar, you need to build the callouses because that’s the only way that your fingers can withstand the pressure of the strings. It always starts with something small, but the small things lead to something big.

Kind of a common buzzword phrase out there is that thoughts become beliefs, beliefs become actions, and then actions become habits. So, we can’t start by looking at the habits. Yes, we want these things to be imprinted in our life, right? We want to be comfortable being uncomfortable, but the only way to get there is to start with a thought. You got to be thinking it. You got be looking for ways to challenge yourself.

Now, I tell you right now, man, if you’re intimidated by something, that is an excellent indicator that it’s exactly what you should be doing. If you’re a little bit scared, if you’re a little bit intimidated, that’s a great indicator that that’s something that’s going to lead to personal growth. That thought is going to become a belief, and that belief will eventually become actions. It’s something that I am constantly trying to push myself with every day. It’s never over. And I’m a young guy. I’ve accomplished a few things at this stage of life but, man, I’m young. I’m just getting started. So, when I look at them, I go, “Okay, what’s intimidating me right now?”

So, here’s me putting my money where my mouth is. The book is obviously an example of this, and I could speak to that as well coming out with the book and what that means, how challenging that is, especially coming from a special operations background, and it definitely makes you uncomfortable. But, now, the book is out, everything is fun, it’s good doing podcasts, I’m like, “I’m comfortable. I’m good. So, I’m like check. What can I do right now? What can I do today that’s going to make me better tomorrow?”

One thing that I started thinking, with the help of a buddy, he was walking me through this, he’s like, “Why do you like doing what you’re doing? What do you enjoy about being a public speaker?” And I said, “Two things. One, getting on stage is a way for me to kind of supplement the feeling I used to have when I was jumping out of airplanes, so I like that. It’s exciting. It gives me purpose and passion and all that. But, man, I always gauge the audience by how much I can make them laugh. It’s like the only feedback that you can get when you’re speaking, right? You can’t see the impact on someone’s face but you can definitely get their laughter.”

Pete Mockaitis
Especially if the bright stage light is going.

Nick Hays
Yes, exactly, and you can’t see anything and you’re hot. So, I’m looking at this, and he goes, “Dude, why don’t you do a standup comedy set? You like making people laugh.” When he said that, I got so scared, just the mere mention of that, grabbing a microphone, getting up in front of people with the sole purpose of being funny. Because I can fall back to motivation and structure and practices, and the fact that I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know the material, right? But this is something entirely different. And it set me off kilter, I was intimidated. And I said, “You know what, that’s a great indicator that this is exactly what I should do.”

So, I reached out to a buddy of mine who’s connected with a comedy club, and a really prestigious comedy club too, actually The Comedy Store in Beverly Hills. It’s like top notch, right? And this guy is a young comic, he’s just getting started, really great guy, and I hit him up on direct message, and I was like, “Hey, man, I want to do a set. What do I need to do here?” And he goes, “Oh, meet my buddy. He does the booking for the store.” I was like, “Okay. Well, I was expecting Poughkeepsie, not L.A.” But I reached out to the guy, and he was like, “Yeah, we’d love to have you on, this and that,” so I went ahead and booked my first standup comedy special, not special, like I’m going to get up there for 10 minutes.

But I had it booked within like 15 minutes of coming up with the idea, and now I’m on the hook. Now, I have to prepare, now I have to get out there and perform, and now I’m excited again. It just injects passion back into the routine. So, that’s me putting my money where my mouth is right there. And it’s tough, man. I’m nervous. I’m scared of it but, like I said, it’s an indicator that it’s exactly what I need to be doing for personal growth. I’m going to grow as a speaker. I’m going to grow as a person. I could bomb. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because my thoughts are becoming beliefs, and those beliefs are becoming actions.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s an interesting point you brought up there with regard to if you’re scared it’s a good indicator that it’s something worth doing because the scariness, the discomfort is associated with that growth territory unfolding. So, I’m wondering, is there any distinction between the type of fear or scary sensation that means, “Oh, yes, let’s do that,” versus, “No, this is wise, prudent, show caution, that you should not do that”?

Nick Hays
I love that. Yeah, you have to say it, right, because I always ask people, like, “Is fear good or bad? Is fear a good thing or a bad thing?” And most people will say, “Well, it depends,” and that’s the only appropriate answer. It depends. You consider the cavemen back in the day, and they’re looking around, like if you’re not afraid of the saber-toothed tiger—now, I don’t know if there’s saber-toothed back then—but, you know, the threat. If you’re not afraid of that, then maybe you’re not going to sleep in the cave, maybe you’re not going to roll a rock in front of it, maybe you’re not going to take precautions in your life and contingencies in your plan that are going to keep you from being destroyed.

Fear is good when it leads to positive action. But what if that same caveman was so petrified from the fear of outside that he stays in the cave and refuses to eat? Now, you have 30 days to live. Fear is bad when it leads to you being stagnant, stale, and immobilized. That’s when fear is a bad thing. Fear is a good thing when it causes you to build contingencies into your plan, and to hedge against possible threats. There’s a duality to it. It is both good and bad. And that’s something that you should always weigh when you’re trying to make these decisions, right?

“Am I improving my situation, or is my situation in decline? Am I growing or dying? Is this going to lead to an improvement or not?” And it’s that simple. So, when you’re afraid of something, ask yourself that, “Am I afraid of having this hard conversation with someone at work simply because I don’t like conflict? Or is there another implication here, something I need to be concerned of? Is there more to the story? What is the source of that fear?” And it’s simply because you don’t want conflict. Guess what? You got to do it. You have to have that conversation. The person is going to thank you for it. The relationship is going to grow. The company is going to benefit, right?

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you, yes. So, I dig what you had to say with regard to the thoughts become actions, become habits, become character, become destiny, or maybe I’m mixing from other sources. So, you’ve got a couple of little teasers in your book about how we can take control of our thoughts, become and to be tough, guard our mind. So, let’s just focus in on that. So, you’ve shared a couple tips there with regard to just one, recognizing and reinterpreting fear and being scared, so that’s great. What are some of your other best practices that you suggest for professionals who are looking to gain some additional control over their thoughts?

Nick Hays
Yeah, that’s really good. Intimidation, I think, can be a bad deal. Sometimes we want something professionally that we’re not quite there. Like, if I want to be a powerlifter and I want to jump under 300 pounds on the bench press, and I haven’t trained for it, I will be crushed by the 300 pounds. That’s the business professional who wants to be CEO, like, dude, you’ve got a long way to go. Don’t focus on the end, right?

One thing that helped me get through some of our training, SEAL training, there’s this portion of it, the selection process, it’s called Hell Week. So, in Hell Week, it’s a tremendous goal. You want to get through this week, it’s by far the biggest crucible on the road to becoming a Navy SEAL. And during that week, you don’t sleep for like five and a half days, you’re putting on somewhere close to 200 miles, you’re lifting logs with your buddies, running with boats on your head, getting like close to hypothermia by sitting in the water until you’re just freezing cold, and people quit all the time. People quit all the time.

And sometimes I’ll ask people, “Hey, what day do you think? If it starts on Sunday and ends on Friday, what day do you think they’re going to quit?” And a lot of people say, “Oh, like Thursday.” But, no, man, I mean, it’s upfront. On Monday, when you’re looking at Friday, that’s too far away. You’re already too miserable. You’re going to start telling yourself that you can’t make it. If you focus on the end, the outcome, instead of the process of how you’re going to get there, it will undermine you.

So, one of the tricks that they actually taught us while we were there, they actually gave us the answers, which was cool, was to make bigger things small, right? So, if I’m looking at the end of the week, it’s not going to work for me, but how can I break that down into smaller more attainable segments that I can actually deal with mentally? One of those tricks was, “Hey, think about your next hot meal.” They feed you really well in that program. They feed you really well because you’re burning so many calories. So, if I can just think, “Hey, I just got to the next meal.” Now, it’s going to be nice and warm in there, I’m with my buddies, we’re telling jokes, get a little bit of reprieve from the action, right?

But there’s times when that next meal is too far away. It’s too far away. I need something better. Like, if I’m sitting there in the water and I’m just feel like I’m dying in the water, I could tell myself, “Hey, I just have to get to the next evolution. If I can just get to back on land when we’re running around and everything else, then I’ll warm up. My body is going to warm up.” And it works.

But sometimes, still, it’s just not enough. Like, log PT is a portion where you’re lifting telephone poles up over your head and stuff and it’s pretty crazy. Well, at times, your shoulders are so full of lactic acid and you’re just dying, and you’re thinking, “Man, I can’t lift this thing one other time.” Well, you can break it down even smaller, and say, “Hey, they can’t work shoulders forever. They’re going to have to work legs soon or we’re going to experience casualties, right? All I have to do is get to legs. Get to legs.”

You could break that all the way down to, if you’ve ever done an intense mountain climb, like one more step, one more step. Break it down to a level that you can actually accomplish than what you’re trying to accomplish, because then, mentally, you get a win, and then you get a win, and then you get a win, and now you’re a winner.

It doesn’t matter how far away this goal is anymore. Man, you’re a winner and you’re crushing this thing, right? I think that’s one of the best things that you can do. So, how do you apply that to your professional life, right? Kind of like, okay, you’re writing a book, “I want to be a published author, so how do I accomplish that?” It’s too much. It’s too much to look at. If you look at the end, at the outcome, instead of the process, it’s going to lead to fear and you’re never going to put pen to paper. You can’t do it. You have to break that down, and say, “Hey, here’s what I can do today that’s going to ultimately get me to my goal.” Break it down in smaller and more attainable goals.

Like, “Hey, all I need today is to write for an hour. That’s all I have to do.” That’s like taking one more step, right? And then you get a win. You made a mental contract with yourself, and you kept it. If I said, “Hey, I’m going to write for eight hours a day,” and then I learn a thing or two, and I’m like, “That’s not how inspiration works,” I can readjust. It’s important. Stay there for eight hours, don’t lie to yourself. But once you check that box, say, “Okay, I’ve got to reassess. I think at three hours I felt pretty good, so I think I can accomplish three hours.” So, you adjust that goal. But now you’re still moving towards…

Like, I didn’t know how painful it would be to go through a developmental editor during the writing process when I started writing, and I’m glad that I didn’t know that because that was, by far, the most painful part of the process. When you develop this baby, and then hand it over to someone, and their entire job is to rip it apart, it’s painful. It hurts your pride. You’re going to try to get the person fired. It’s rough, man, but that’s exactly what the book needs. That’s taking the stone, putting hammer to chisel to the stone and removing the rough edges. That’s exactly what’s going to create the statue that you’re looking for, the elite image that you’re looking for.

But you can’t think about that when you’re freewriting. You just have to free-write. And then once you’re in the developmental editing process, check, I can break that down into smaller and more attainable goals and just chuck up a win after win after win. We could apply that to any scenario in business or in your home life, in your professional development, in your personal development, in your physical development. It just works.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, that’s really inspiring and transformational, I think, if you can really digest and internalize that. And so, I guess what I’m thinking, in order to make that really count such that, okay, you took one more step, therefore you are a winner, like you have accomplished the goal of one more step. I think that there’s also a mental thing that can occur, it’s like, “Well, yeah, but that wasn’t really much of anything. It was just one more step.” So, how do you like genuinely, I guess, celebrate, or commemorate, or make real and present to yourself on the inside that, “Yeah, that was a real victory and it’s worth something, and I’m more of a winner as a result of that even though it was tiny”?

Nick Hays
I’m so glad that you said that, that is the perfect question, especially for me because that’s something I struggle with daily. I don’t have that figured out. I do it to myself all the time and here’s kind of how that thought process works for me. I’ll be like, “Yeah, I made it through SEAL training but I got rolled back. I couldn’t even swim. Yeah, I became a Navy SEAL, but I didn’t really get to do exactly what I wanted to do, so I ended up contracting and doing more of that.”

“Yeah, I contract but then I got hurt pretty quick, ended up busting my back up and had to get a surgery. But, yeah, I went to business school, but at the same time it was kind of a hybrid, didn’t even have to take my GMATH, no big deal. Yeah, I worked with a professional sports team, they went to the Super Bowl, but they didn’t even win. I mean, they didn’t, you know. Yeah, I went to Harvard but, I mean, really, come on, you know. I don’t even know how they let me in there. Yeah, I wrote a book.”

And by the end of it, and you start looking at it, like, “Dude, I did a lot of amazing things. Why am I disqualifying everything that I’ve done mentally? Like, how do I just sit back and resonate in the fact that none of those things came easy between every bullet point on that resume. The resume looks sick, right? But I just know myself so well, and between every single one of those bold bullet points came a thousand failures, a thousand setbacks, me talking trash to myself and listening to that little demon sitting on my shoulder, right? All these things.”

And I can take joy and pride in the fact that I didn’t let that stop me, and I just kept moving forward. See, that’s taking a process that resulted in the success and celebrating the process. And, now, I can apply that process further in my life. I’m pretty much quoting Carol Dweck right now in that book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. I know I’m not supposed to talk about other people’s books when I’m talking about mine, but I’m a reader and so I do it all the time.

But, yeah, she’s talking about the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset. When you can celebrate a process instead of the outcome, then your identity is built around finding new ways to do things, not having done everything a certain way.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really dig that. And I think what’s so fun for listeners, if they’re hearing the, “Yeah, but…” and just laughing at how absurd it sounds, it’s great because I recognize some of myself in that. I remember I did a triathlon and, first, it was like, “Yeah, but it’s just a sprint, it’s not a triathlon. It’s not a real triathlon.” And then I did a full Olympic distance triathlon, I was like, “Yeah, but my ITB Band was hurting so I was walking during part of the run, so I didn’t really do a triathlon if a part of it was walking.” And it’s just like, “Well, time out, like that’s nuts.”

Nick Hays
It is nuts.

Pete Mockaitis
I did all that prep, or it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I wrote two books but I self-published them, so that doesn’t really count,” and all these things, “Yeah, my podcast has 7 million downloads, but I just had lucky break randomly getting some iTunes rankings for no discernible reason early on.” And it’s sort of like it’s nuts, and I’m trying to kind of pinpoint the specific absurdity or fallaciousness, if that’s a word, of it. And I think it’s kind of like it sort of discounts all of your efforts and attention and labor and gives 100% of the credit to the opportunity or the exception, like you didn’t have to take the GMATH, whatever. I’m sure that the program that you did assumed that you were super awesome already and, thus, the GMATH was unnecessary, so it still counts. So, I don’t know, I’m just thinking real time here, how’s that rubbing you?

Nick Hays
Yeah, I’m thinking about it too, and I think it’s important to recognize that any given moment in time, we kind of have two selves, there’s two selves. There’s your experiencing self and your remembering self. The experiencing self is always reading and reacting and moving forward. That’s the person that’s looking out the windshield, driving the vehicle, “I see red lights in front of me, I break.” It’s constantly reading, reacting, and moving forward. And then you have your remembering self, essentially the rear-view mirror, right?

For some reason, when we’re experiencing something, we’re constantly taking information on board because it’s necessary for survival, and then we put it into action immediately. But then, when that moment gets categorized into the remembering self, we go back and we pull out the information again that’s going to lead to our ultimate survival.

So, for some reason, that can lean us to go negative with some things because we want to learn, we want to grow, we want to challenge ourselves. And I think, one, knowing that that’s what’s happening I think can set you free, and then, two, figuring out how to combat the specific enemy there and that little disqualifier that says, “Yeah, but, yeah, but.” If you know that that’s coming, you can take proactive stance in your mind, like, “No, I refuse that. This was something that worked out well.” And say it to yourself and practice it, right? Practice that and, eventually, that thought will become a habit.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that, “No, I refuse that.” That’s a good one. And we also had a great tip from this Stanford psychologist, BJ Fogg, who was talking about tiny habits, and how it’s so important when you’re doing little something to celebrate. One way or another, you’d just be like it could be dorky, or cheesy, or corny, give yourself a high five. Sometimes I will say, “Flawless victory” like on a Mortal Kombat video game,” and to just take a moment to feel good about what happened, just reinforces that so you’re all the more likely to do it as opposed to beating  yourself up for, “I said I was going to write for an hour, but it’s really only 56 minutes because I had an urgent phone call.” It’s like, I don’t know, to whoever beats himself up, I encourage you to be forgiving. The science is there that you’re better off that way.

Nick Hays
Yeah, the world’s mean enough, you don’t have to be mean to yourself. Like, you deserve better. You deserve better. And I think thankfulness is really, really the key. Like, going back to when I was in Hell Week, I remember using that as a tool to where the sun is going down, and you’re sitting there in the cold water, knowing it’s going to be a long night, well, I wanted to be a SEAL my entire life. And I remember smelling the air and feeling the wind and just thinking, “Man, I’m finally here. I’ve been trying to get here for so long, I’m so thankful, man.”

I was so thankful that I didn’t have room for the negativity to creep in. It made me resilient. And I think that’s something that we can practice for the rest of our lives, is when you start feeling those disqualifiers, instead maybe look at it through a different lens, and say, “Man, I’m so thankful that I have that experience. I’m thankful that that person stood up for me when I needed it. I’m thankful that my body didn’t fail me and I was able to get that done. I’m thankful that my ITB Band gave me some trouble because now I can adjust my training and be better. Like, good, I’m glad that happened. Let’s move on.”

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Well, I’m particularly struck by your ability to summon the gratitude and thankfulness right there in the moment. That’s pretty cool in terms of you saying, “I’m finally here.” And so, that’s really nifty to hit that, and I wonder how you can sort of systematize that. I’ve heard one person suggest you ask the question, “What’s great about this?” when you’re in a pickle, and that can sort of reorient your attention to things that you can be grateful for like “You’re finally there.”

And I guess you could say that even if, geez, I’m imagining terrible scenarios, like what if my kids were in the hospital like fighting for their lives, right? I guess you could be grateful that you have those children, that you have formed such a loving bond, that this matters a lot to you. And I guess it also speaks to the power of the imagination and visualization right now because I’m kind of tearing up because this is completely fictitious scenario that I am dreaming up. But you can find that gratitude just about anywhere.

Nick Hays
Well, I love your level of empathy there to where you put a face on it, and there’s someone out there who’s going through exactly that, and who needs to hear it. So, yeah, it’s good to understand the gravity of a situation, and, “Hey, if this works.” We’re talking about beating ourselves up even when things are going good. But, yeah, what if legitimately life happens to you? What if you’re on your back and you don’t know how to get up? What works then? If it’s this hard when everything is good when you’re in the meadow, how do you handle the mountain top? How do you handle the climb? How do you handle the brutality of the environment?

And I went through a situation that made me really think about some stuff, man. When I was contracting, working overseas, I loved it. I loved it. I was having a great time with it. I was exactly where I wanted to be. My schedule was pretty ridiculous. I was doing my two months on, two months off. So, me and my wife bought a 35-foot RV and we started cruising around, just everything was good, man. And then life happened to me, and I hurt my back. I ended up having to get a L5S1 fusion and I would never work in that capacity again.

I came home, the doctor told me that things were changing, and I had to go into surgery, and it took a solid two years to recover. They advertised six months; they’re lying to you. I lost my physicality. I didn’t want to be addicted to opioids so I got off those within a few weeks. But then I started drinking, so I was masking it with drinking. Now, nothing bad happened, I was able to pull away from that too, but, still, I’m sitting here. I lost my physicality. I looked terrible. I lost my purpose in life. I lost my passion. I had no vision moving forward, and I had to completely redefine myself.

Life gave me a couple of heavies. And there were some other stuff, that I won’t get into, at the time that fortunately didn’t involve my family. That probably would’ve been the kick to the groin that could’ve taken me to the floor, but my wife was there for me, and there with me, and we kind of suffered together. And I didn’t know what to do, and that’s kind of the best thing that ever happened to me.

Like, now when I’m looking back, it’s kind of like when I talk a lot about mountain climbing obviously. But when you’re climbing up a trail and there’s all these switchbacks, sometimes you can talk trash that you won’t make it. Like, “What are you doing? It’s right there. Why don’t we just go right there?” And you’re following these bends and switchbacks, you’re like, “Man, I don’t get it.” And then you get to the top, and you look back, and you see where the trail had made mud, you see that that switchback kept you from that chasm, you’re about to walk off a cliff, and it saved you time and pain.

That’s how it is for me looking back at that scenario specifically because there’s a saying, right, like, “That which I love will destroy me.” I think it applies really well to veterans because it’s a lot of fun belonging to a tribe, having a brotherhood, a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose. It goes a long way. And I don’t think that I would’ve seen it. I think I would’ve stayed with it. But because it was taken away from me, I have a better relationship with my wife, around more for my kids, enable to imprint on them. I’ve started going a different direction professionally that is really next level. I’m starting to see, like, “What can I actually accomplish? What can I do even if my identity has changed?” It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

And I was fortunate that I was able to redefine that purpose, and said, “Okay, what was it that kept me going? What was it that I enjoyed about what I was doing?” And it always came back to this, to empathy, the desire to help others be better, the desire to teach. I actually loved being an instructor. When I was an instructor for a little while in the military, I always really enjoyed that stuff, and I said, “Okay, well, that’s something that I can look forward with. How do I develop that?” And then a buddy of mine actually reached out to me and was like, “Hey, do you want to join me on this? Let’s go talk to a company.”

So, I went and talked to a company. Like, four weeks later, I was working with the Miami Heat basketball team. And I was like, “Wow, I can actually do this. This is something.” And it injected me with that passion, with that fire. I was able to redefine my identity but stayed true to the purpose that had been consistent the whole time. Life happened to me, and I said, “You know what, I’m done with that. I’m going to start happening to life. This is my turn now.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. Nick, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Nick Hays
Man, I don’t know, I feel good. This is fun. I like the authenticity. This is great.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Nick Hays
Let’s see. Speaking of authenticity, I love John Madden, a great coach, John Madden. He used to say that “If you want longevity in this league, first you have to be authentic.” Now, he was talking about football but I think that works in any context. If you want longevity, if you want to play the long game, you have to be authentic. That’s where you need to start. Man, there’s more to it, right? But that’s where you need to start is that authenticity.

And, for me, I’ve really taken that to heart because now that I’m kind of getting more in public and stuff, keep in mind, my job used to be the silent professional. I used to lie to my neighbors about what I do for a living and now, all of a sudden, I’m in the public eye, doing talks, like writing books, and all the stuff. It’s weird for me. And that’s my commitment is to be authentic and to tell the truth, to be myself, and not try to paint up an image that I should do because it worked for somebody else. I think that’s something that we can all take and put into our lives. Like, “How do I discover my authentic self and then how do I unleash that out in the world?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And how about a favorite book?

Nick Hays
I have a lot of favorite books. That’s probably the hardest question you could’ve asked me. I think one of the books that’s had the most impact in my life was Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. He writes about the Spartans at the hot gates of Thermopylae, and how the 300 Spartans and their support were able to stop a Persian army of about two million for long enough for the country to unite. Obviously, spoiler alert here, but we’ve all seen “300.” Leonidas actually, the king, gave his life and that rallied the rest of the city states to join up and go to war together, and they crippled one of the most powerful empires in all of history.

And the way that Steven Pressfield writes it, it really shows what brotherhood looks like. It shows what a team should be. The fact that when you’re sitting there in the failings, which was their alignment when they would meet the enemy, the shield of the person next to you is what’s protecting you. Your shield is protecting the person next to you. Your shield isn’t for you. Your shield is for your brothers and sisters, for your teammates. That’s such an impactful lesson that you see time and time in that book. I highly recommend that read.

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

Nick Hays
My AirPods.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good.

Nick Hays
Seriously, I’ve been plagued by wires. I spend a majority of my time, professionally communicating, and so a lot of it is on the phone and having the ability to be somewhat mobile with that. We’re so lucky to live in a time that you and I can connect from other sides of the world. You can keep people close to you regardless of the proximity, and I take full advantage of that. I’m one of those people where you can text me, sure, but I’m probably going to call you back. I like discussing. I like speaking.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with your audiences?

Nick Hays
You know, going back to the mentorship piece, I think that’s something that everyone can see upfront. The story opens them up and they see it and practice at the highest level, and this is a great opportunity for me to kind of hit that again, and say like mentorship, you’ve got to find one, you’ve got to be one. In addition to that, I’ll take it even one step further, but the way you organize your relationships and your friends really does matter.

And one thing that I highly recommend is, yes, you have your close circle of friends, right? That group needs to be small. It’s a small group. But then, of course, you have your network, your expanding circle, right? But there’s this circle in between, that somewhere in between, or I like to call that as my personal board of advisors.

So, what I’ve done is I’ve looked for people that are as different than me as possible, and then a few people that are very similar to me, different sexes, races, anything that could be a potential silo, international, whatever it is. Like, people that I really trust and connect with that are operating at a really high level, and I ask them, I make it formal, and I’ve built this cabinet. If the president needs one, then maybe I should be doing it, too, right?

And I built this cabinet so when I’m working through something, I can bounce ideas off of people that’s going to give me a 360-degree approach to it, and it always illuminates stuff that I don’t see. Different than mentorship, but having a cabinet, having a personal board of advisors that is as diverse as possible in every sense of the word takes your game to the next level, a hundred percent.

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

Nick Hays
Yes, so on all social media, I’m NickHaysLife, EliteTeams.com that’s my company, I’m available for speaking and all that stuff. So, yeah, feel free to reach out. You can DM me too, I’ll get back to you.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Nick Hays
Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right now, in this moment, there’s something that you could do that’s going to make you a little bit more resilient. I don’t know what that looks like, but whatever is intimidating you, whatever you’ve been holding back from, embrace that truth today. Get out there and make that happen so that you can celebrate a win. And then move into tomorrow looking for another win.

Pete Mockaitis
Nick, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing the good word and good luck on your adventures.

Nick Hays
Pete, thank you so much, man. This is fun.

Jun 03

446: Making Fear Your Friend with Judi Holler

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Judi Holler says: "Scary things don't get less scary, but you will get stronger. Keep going."

Judi Holler makes the case for exercising your bravery muscle and making fear your friend—one challenge at a time.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The small things we do each day that slow our long-term progress
  2. Why technology is a great servant but a terrible master
  3. How to deal with fear when it never goes away

About Judi

Judi Holler is a keynote speaker, author, and a professionally trained improviser and alumna of The Second City’s Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois. Judi is a past president of Meeting Professionals International, Chicago Area Chapter, and was named one of the 40 under 40 in the meetings industry by Connect magazine in 2015

Judi’s book on Fear, titled “Fear Is My Homeboy: How to Slay Doubt, Boss Up, and Succeed on Your Own Terms”, was recently endorsed by Mel Robbins calling it: “relatable, relevant and most importantly ACTIONABLE!” Fear Is My Homeboy came out last week.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

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

Judi Holler
I am honored to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fun. Well, I am honored to have you here. And I think we’re going to have a lot of fun digging into some cool stuff. But I got a real kick out of your fun fact, which is you do some karaoke performances from time to time, and you’ve got a go-to “Caribbean Queen.” What’s the story here?

Judi Holler
Okay. So, Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” is always my go-to karaoke. I have a few. I have a bag of tricks. But, you know what, listen, I always loved karaoke. Who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Who doesn’t want to be Beyoncé for just a minute? And I can’t sing to save my life, so karaoke, it’s just a great way to sort of play rock star, crack people up, improvise, which we’ll talk about later, and improv background, and just be goofy.

And so, Billy Ocean really kind of became one of my favorite songs because nobody sees it coming. It’s super old school. I’ve got a thing for yacht rock and like old R&B, and my mom used to like clean the house to like Lionel Ritchie and Billy Ocean, and so I kind of grew up listening to that song and I know all the lyrics, so it’s just great because no one sees it coming.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s really fun and what that reminded me of is that song, I remember when I was a kid, all the time there’d be this TV commercial for an ‘80s compilation CDs called “Totally ‘80s” or something like that.

Judi Holler
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, my buddy Ronnie and I like knew every word to this commercial because it was on so much. And our favorite part was when they show you one sample and move to the other, they didn’t really transition very well, so it was like, “Everybody wants to rule the…” “Caribbean Queen.” And I was like, “Do they want to rule the Caribbean Queen because that’s what it sounds like when you splice it together?” Oh, you brought me back, so thank you, yeah.

Judi Holler
That is amazing. Oh, yeah, Billy Ocean, it’s just old school, so there might a lot of people listening and they’d have to Google it up to find out who the heck he is. But that’s why I love it because no one sees it coming and, yeah, like ‘80s R&B.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m wondering if you’ve ever bumped into any Caribbean women, like, “I’m the Caribbean Queen”?

Judi Holler
Well, you know what, okay.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, in the bar or so when you’re there.

Judi Holler
Totally funny caveat to that. My husband and I honeymooned in the Caribbean, and they had musical performances in our hotel lobby, and we got to know the band because they were there a couple nights in a row and I’m not a shy sort of person. And I said, “Hey, do you guys do any Billy Ocean? You got Caribbean Queen?” And they were like, “Well, yeah.” These were American performers. And so, I’m not kidding you, we have a video footage of me doing “Caribbean Queen” in the Caribbean, the Caribbean as they say it, and it was just epic, and it was just amazing and people were kind of clapping, also awkwardly wondering what was happening. It was just magic.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s lovely.

Judi Holler
So, there you have it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it sounds as though you have, indeed, lived out the title of your book, Fear Is My Homeboy because it seems like you have befriended those sensations that, “Oh, I don’t know if I wanted to go up there and do that, and everyone is going to be looking at me, I don’t know.” So, could you sort of share with us kind of what’s the main idea behind this book here?

Judi Holler
Yeah, so the big idea behind the book is this, if I could have one page in my book, literally, one page in my book, it would say, “It doesn’t get easier. Scary things don’t get less scary, but you will get stronger. Keep going.” The big idea is that when you choose courage over comfort on purpose, almost every day you will start fearing less, which is how you pick up momentum, which is how you get stuff done, and it’s how you start succeeding in and outside of work the way you really want to succeed.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, yeah, that sounds great and I’d like to have some of that. So, maybe could you give us a little bit of a picture here when it comes to what are some of the ways that we frequently choose comfort and not courage to our detriment, particularly in a career context?

Judi Holler
Yes, so I really believe it’s all the small stuff we don’t do every day that ends up holding us back in the long run and really leads to regret. And I’m sort on a mission to remove the word “regret” from the dictionary because we’re too brave, we are too busy dancing with our fear. This means we’re getting stuff done.

And the main reason we’re not leveling up personally and professionally is because we’re afraid. We’re afraid to raise our hand in the sales meeting. We’re afraid to speak up in a meeting. We’re afraid to sit in the front row, or go for the promotion, or ask for the raise, or to promote ourselves, to talk about ourselves online, to toot our own horns.

So, I’m on a mission to stop that, and I think there’s a lot of unique things you could do to get uncomfortable every day to sort of mix up your routine to make sure that you’re staying in the driver’s seat of your life and not your fear.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s really interesting is that what this makes me think about is sort of all the little ways that we choose comfort instead of courage. And it’s like, in a way, I think I may have become, at least temporarily, a little bit less courageous than before only because I’m married now, you know. And my wife is awesome, and our kids are awesome. But there was a period of time in which I was, you know, meeting a lot of people and asking for a lot of dates, and I kind of got into a groove where I didn’t have that momentum such that I felt kind of bold and able to kind of ask for and do all kinds of things because I was in that regular habit.

Whereas, now, I’m kind of settled in and mostly working from home. And so, it seems like it does take me a little bit more of a push to think, “Okay, I’m going to send that email to ask for that opportunity. All right, we’re going to do it. Okay, I’ve put this off a couple of times, now is the time.” And it seems like that’s crept in a little bit more, which would follow your theory, that I’m kind of had fewer moments of choosing courage on a day-by-day basis and all kinds of other contexts.

Judi Holler
Well, think about it like this, Pete, like you just nailed it. Here’s the deal. If we don’t work that fear muscle, we will not work the fear muscle, just like when we go to the gym. We go to the gym and it’s hard at the beginning, right? But we keep going and we keep showing up and then we get stronger. And when we don’t go to the gym, we get weaker, right?

So, I look at it that way, like we have to be working that brave muscle. And so, when you’re not dating, and you’re in a relationship, right, you’re not out there doing that scary thing anymore but you, and I can bet my bottom dollar, doing all kinds of other uncomfortable things to move your life and your business forward, and that’s the real big idea.

We have to be doing something every day. Maybe it’s just something as simple as taking a different way home from work, right? Or, asking for a discount in a coffee shop, or just like taking a selfie of yourself in public to get better and not carrying what people think. But we have to work the brave muscle and, I tell you, this is how we fear less.

We shouldn’t be chasing the unrealistic goal of fearless. Because if you really think about it, if we were fearless, we would never pay our taxes, we would never go to a doctor, we’d walk down alleys at 4:00 in the morning by ourselves, at night, we would eat poisonous foods on purpose. Like, the goal shouldn’t be fearless because fearless could be dangerous in some situations.

So, the goal should always be brave. And how do we fear less? Well, the way you get to the other side, the way you fear less is by working that muscle, and you have to use it or you’ll lose it, so doing those small scary things every day. And sometimes, maybe some days, it’s a big scary thing. Maybe you’re leading a toxic relationship tomorrow, maybe you’re literally moving to a new city, maybe you decided to quit smoking. There are big things you could do for yourself as well, but it’s all those little small things that add up over time that really end up causing a lot of the problems, so we’ve got to work that fear muscle.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love it there, you provided a few examples in terms of little things you can do every day to work that muscle, from asking for a discount in the coffee shop. And that came up with Jordan Harbinger, and a little bit of Ruth Soukup as well in those conversations. So, loving the reinforcements.

Judi Holler
So cool.

Pete Mockaitis
So, what are some other key things you recommend as means of working the fear muscle? You call it, is it the fear muscle or is the brave muscle?

Judi Holler
I guess you can say it either way. There is no wrong way to work that courage muscle, or fear muscle, or bravery muscle, whatever that looks like for you. I could give you an example of someone, and this could apply to your audience if you’ve got someone who’s leading a team, or maybe there’s someone in your audience and they’re working for someone else. I bet you have a little bit of both.

I have a client, who lives and works in downtown Chicago. She’s leading a team of about three or four people. And so, remember, the idea is to get uncomfortable, to mix up our routine. And so, she found herself really overwhelmed, and really stressed out, and exhausted and crabby and irritable. She just wasn’t succeeding the way she wanted to succeed. She wasn’t leveling up.

So, she started a fear I proposed in my keynote. I work primarily as an author and a keynote speaker. And one of the things I proposed in my keynotes is this idea of fear experiments, doing something small and scary and brave every day to advance yourself and get stronger. And so, I told her about this idea, and she said, “Okay, I’m going to try something on my own. I really need to get in front of my schedule.”

And I talk a lot about focus. And this can feel scary because it requires us to do things we’d never done before in our schedule and in our work lives. Most of us sit down and we literally, the first we do, maybe sometimes before you even get out of bed is we open our iPhones and we look at our email. It’s what we do, right? Or we’d check out social media.

So, she says, “I’m going to do a fear experiment, and I’m going to take the first, I’m not going to look at email until 9:00 a.m. every day. No emails.” So, she’s getting up at 7:00, she’s not looking at that phone, she’s not looking at her email, but she’s taking the first 60 minutes of her work day from 8:00 to 9:00 to move one small thing forward for herself or for her work first, and she started small with that first 60 minutes, just that first hour for a day. And you can even go as small as 30 minutes.

And what happened for her is she immediately started triggering momentum in her life because she started actually moving things forward which made the dopamine in her brain happy and it gave her confidence to keep going. And so, she saw it, she said, “Oh, okay, if I can do this in 60 minutes, what could I do if I did 90 minutes, if I grew this?”

And she didn’t look at email for 60 minutes, she didn’t take a phone call, she didn’t sit in meetings, again, advancing a goal before she was fine to the rest of world. That 60 minutes grew to like, I said, an hour and a half to 120 minutes. And today, most days, because there’s no perfect world, no perfect day, she doesn’t look at her email until noon.

And let me tell you, she is working in corporate America, she has a boss, she has a team, but she started small, bird by bird, and it took guts because she did not ask for permission. She just took the action and monitored her results because, after all, you are the CEO of you. And let me just tell you, Pete, what she did in a year.

So, because she started with this hour, and then it grew to like a 120 minutes, I don’t think she got to noon until like the second year of doing this, but in her first year of just protecting that first 90 minutes of her day, she lost 50 pounds because she started going to the gym in the morning, she read 19 business books. She was reading zero books. She reduced her staff turnover by like one person left in an entire left. They had had a really bad problem with turnover.

She got the certification that she had been trying to get for a long time. She grew tradeshow revenues at that organization by 25%. She watched like over, I could get this number wrong, 45 or 50 TED Talks. And she found herself happy, healthy, and this really bled into her personal life, so she was leveling up at work, leveling up at home, she got herself a promotion, she was making more money. And watching all these talks and reading all these books gave her a lot of great information to be able to have cool conversations at work, with her leadership, at the dinner table, at the networking event, sending them an email, to clients.

So, again, she started small but that took courage. It took her getting uncomfortable, literally not looking at her email, to open up a whole new door. I mean, she got a promotion on a video.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I love that example, too, because when we talk about fear, I think sometimes it’s natural to think about big, dramatic, scary fears, like, “Oh, I’m terrified of public speaking,” or heights, or you can sort of fill in the blank there. As opposed to, I don’t imagine she was terrified of not checking her email but it was uncomfortable. It was a little bit uneasy, like, “Oh, what if there’s something really important, and someone is waiting for me, and they’re like, ‘Hey, what’s the deal? How come you didn’t get back to me?’” As well as it’s a habit, it’s a groove that you’re in, so it just feels kind of off when you sort of reject that and don’t engage in it the first few times.

Judi Holler
And here’s the kicker, and this is new data, we are spending 6.3 hours a day on email. A day on average. The average worker is spending 6.3 hours a day on email. And you wonder why we’re not getting anything done. And we wonder why we feel stuck and irritable, and overwhelmed, and I’m doing air quotes here, “crazy busy,” right?

So, if we want to get out of this cycle of suck, we have to have the courage to try something new, to break a pattern, to flip the bad habit, and the more you do it, the better you get at it, and you’re going to start seeing results which welcomes momentum into your life party, and that’s really where all the magic lives.

It’s some staggering stuff, 55% of us are checking email after 11:00 p.m., 81% of workers are checking email, work email, on the weekends, 59% of us keep up with our work email while on vacation, you know what I mean? So, we wonder why we’re overwhelmed, and irritable, and crabby. We’re not turning off the machine, right?

When you hit the pause button on human beings, we actually start. It’s the opposite. So, we’ve got to be getting in control of this, and it takes courage to break some of those habits that are important. We need to be engaged. We need to be connected, certainly. But how do we make sure that we’re the boss? Technology is an incredible servant but a terrible master.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, intriguing. So, all right, well, that’s quite a case study in terms of tremendous results possible when you just sort of unplug a little bit from the technology. Sort of reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer stops drinking.

Judi Holler
Oh, my gosh.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, geez, all these phenomenal things.

Judi Holler
That’s hysterical. Perfect analogy.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s good. All right. So, anyway, I think we talked about a few things to sort of challenge yourself and to grow the muscle. I’d love to hear a few more things. So, that’s a great idea, is maybe you start with a few minutes away from the technology and maybe in the morning, and it’s high leverage there. What are some others you’d recommend?

Judi Holler
So, I would say it’s looking for, you know, and I think you’ve got to think about it mentally, too, because you’ve got to, I believe, when you’re managing fear and working with fear, knowledge is power. So, understanding, this is a big thing for, I think, everyone to understand. If you want to get better at fearing less, you can make more bold courageous moves in and outside of the workplace, you have to understand all of the sneaky ways that fear shows up. Fear is a trickster. It hides on purpose to trick you with the number one goal of getting you to stop, right?

Because if you keep going, if you do these new things, you become a version of yourself your fear has never seen before, and so fear doesn’t know what to do with that. So, understanding, I think, for me it was really big. I have a background in the improv theater, and I started to realize all of the sneaky ways that fear showed up to get me in my head as an improv performer. So, self-doubt is fear. Self-sabotage is fear’s way of stopping you.

Let’s not forget about procrastination. Just understanding, when I understood that procrastination is a way that fear shows up to stop you and block you is a powerful thing to get. For example, I was trying to finish a really meaty chapter of my book, and I was putting it off because I was afraid to sit down and do the work. So, I found myself for, literally, about 60 minutes, 45 minutes, organizing all of the drawers in my desk. I was on a deadline. I needed to finish this chapter of my book. But, boy, my office was clean, right?

And then I realized what I was doing. I was procrastinating instead of sitting down to do the work. So, the reason I shared this is because understanding that procrastination is sort of one of fear’s best friends is really a good thing to know so that you can move through it, right, and say, “Oh, hello, fear. I see you. I appreciate you. Do you ever take a day off? I don’t know if you do, but right now I don’t need you because I’m in control. I’ve got work to do, so have a seat on the other side of my desk and come back when I’m done, right?”

So, that was an a-ha moment for me, understanding that that’s just one of the many sneaky ways fear shows up. Perfectionism. Excuses. If you have someone on your team, someone in your life, that is making excuses for why they can’t do the thing, instead of getting frustrated and upset and trying to control, ask them what they’re afraid of because nine times out of ten there’s a fear on the other side of that excuse, you know, blame, gossip, jealousy, all of those are fear-based behaviors. So, just a few ways that fear mentally shows up. And I share them because we’ve got to be aware. Awareness holds our power.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’d love to get your take then, when it comes to this procrastination story, so you were avoiding writing a chapter of your book, and instead organizing your desk. So, what exactly was the fear there?

Judi Holler
Oh, my gosh, the fear of impostor syndrome creeping in, doubly fearing that, “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough.” It was a chapter that’s been, it was meaty. It was the chapter that is now chapters three and four. We actually ended up combining it into two chapters. But I was just afraid to start because I knew that if I sat down to do the work, I would have to sit down and do the work, and I would probably face a few things that I wasn’t comfortable with in building out and beating out that chapter. But a lot of it was impostor syndrome, worried that I wasn’t good enough.

And, by the way, once I finished the chapter, oh, my God, we’re moving forward, we’re moving forward, we’re putting a book out into the world. And so, there’s that. So, it was probably a combination of things mentally for me. And I think we all find our own internal demons, but there’s always usually something there. There’s always usually a reason. Anxiety. You know, you’re anxious and feeling fearful because maybe you feel that what you have isn’t good enough or whatever that may look like. But there’s usually always something living there.

If we’re procrastinating, okay, what are we afraid of? What is it? For me, it was about not being good enough, of not being smart enough, of not having a good chapter.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. So, now, but you were not aware that that was what was going on at the surface level, it sounds like, at first.

Judi Holler
At first, I wasn’t, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, how did you get to that level of awareness?

Judi Holler
Well, in my research, and in really studying all the different things I was studying about fear, and then realizing that fear’s job is to stop you and to block you, and that self-doubt is a way it does that. Certainly, we self-sabotage, and procrastination is a form of self-sabotage. And that’s when it clicked, I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m sabotaging myself here. My office can get cleaned anytime, right? So, what am I doing here? It’s just busy work.”

And I, still to this day, do it. My husband always says, “You know when you’re stressed out,” because I’m either doing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, mopping something, sweeping something. I do an activity, right, when my mind is filled with stress about something else. So, just understanding that stressors are triggers, right, to stop us from really sitting down and do the work.

So, I’ll give you a hack. If you’ve got someone listening that finds himself procrastinating, or not able to start something, what I did, and I write about this in my book, is I set a timer for 10 minutes because I believe so much in the magic of momentum. Because once we get a little juice, it helps us move forward.

So, I set a timer for 10 minutes, and I do this sometimes with working out as well when I don’t necessarily feel like it. I set a timer for 10 minutes, I say, “Okay, let me just do 10 minutes of the thing. And if I hit that 10 minutes and I don’t feel like it anymore, then I am not in the right mental space, the energy, the vibe isn’t right, and I stop the work. But if I have caught a vibe, and I feel good,” and nine times out of ten you will because you just welcomed momentum into the party, you just keep going, and then you keep going.

So, I find just even it’s the starting, that’s the problem. And sometimes 10 minutes can get you out of a funk. Just sit down to do the work for 10 minutes. Go sit on the bike. Go for a walk anywhere. If you’re not feeling it after 10 minutes, stop. And if you are, which most times you are, keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now, I want to dig a little bit into your mindset and your title Fear Is My Homeboy. So, how do you think about fear in terms of befriending it as oppose to dominating and destroying it and you’re subjecting it to your fiery will of superiority? So, it sounds like that’s a different kind of a feel in terms of fear is your friend versus fear is something you were to punish and minimize. So, how do you think about that?

Judi Holler
Certainly. And here’s the deal, we have to work. I dance with my fear. I work with my fear because I realize that in my community, we call ourselves fear bosses because I’m the boss of my fear not you. Fear is never going to go away. Fear isn’t going to go anywhere. But I choose to dance with my fear. I choose to work with my fear. And in our community, we’re called fear bosses. This means we’re the boss, not our fear. So, I call the shots. And fear isn’t going anywhere.

So, fear, well, they’re very different for you at the age of 20, they will for you at the age of 50, what you fear, the things you fear, what keeps you up at night. And men and women, we internalize and externalize fears very differently. So, I got really awake to this idea that we’re never going to be able to get rid of our fears. This idea, this notion of fearless that everybody is telling us we need to be. I go back to that because it’s unrealistic.

So, why am I wasting my energy, my precious energy, trying to outrun something I’ll never be able to get rid of? Let’s work together. And, yes, I may feel fear. I may be afraid about whatever it is that I need to go to do, whether it’s going to a doctor’s appointment, or it’s making a phone call, but I know, yes, I’ll feel afraid, and I’ll never not feel afraid of things I feel afraid about, but I know because I know that fear is my homeboy. That if I keep going, if I keep doing small scary brave things every day, I will get stronger, and those scary things won’t be as bad. I’m now actually start fearing less, that’s the big idea, right? We’ve got to work with it. We dance together. We dance with our fear.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, then. So, you just sort of given up the idea that fear will ever be completely absent.

Judi Holler
Right.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, in a way, yeah, it seems like fear is both your friend and your slave or colleague, I don’t know, if you’re the boss of it how you see that.

Judi Holler
What do they say? Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, there you go.

Judi Holler
So, there you go, right? It’s this idea like, yeah, fear is not the best thing to have around. It can really destroy so many beautiful things that can happen for you. Yet, keeping that enemy close is a powerful way to get to know it and dance with it a little bit. So, that’s an analogy that may help people sort of mindset to.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Well, so now, we’ve covered a lot of different potential things to do when it comes to fear. But I’d love to hear what do you think is just the most reliably outstanding, efficient, effective means of advancing when you are experiencing fear? Like, what is the thing you think is just the best?

Judi Holler
The thing. Action. Starting action. Action. Making the decision to go, and to do something, and to stop overthinking, and to stop self-doubting, and to stop overtalking. Just go do it. There are so many ideas and dreams and goals living inside of people all over the world and they’re waiting. They’re waiting for the right time, they’re waiting for, “Someday when the kids are grown. And someday I’ll have our money, and someday when I’m older. Oh, if I was only younger,” any excuses we make. So, starting is the hack, right? If you want a hack, that’s the hack.

So, momentum, again, I’m going back to that 10-minute timer. Just doing it, right, and propelling yourself into action. Mel Robbins has a great book The 5 Second Rule, right? That’s what the book is all about. It’s action. It’s starting. It’s momentum, right?

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. And so, what would you say, on the counterpoint to that, is sort of like the most frequently arising mistake? Folks, they’re trying to do the stuff you’re saying, but they are kind of flubbing it. What is sort of the obstacle that’s popping up for them?

Judi Holler
Yes, I have one. It’s probably the number one question I get asked, this idea of, “Listen, I want to be more brave. I want to put myself out there. I want to promote myself and take more risks, and all of those things. But I don’t want to look like I’m bragging. I don’t want to look like I love myself. I don’t want people to judge me or make fun of me or not like me.” We get so worried about what other people are going to think. We’re so worried about publicly failing, or embarrassing ourselves, or people not liking us.

And here’s the hard, real truth, and this is a massive a-ha moment for me, and this will help you manage fear, and I hate to break it to you, but people already don’t like you. People are already judging you. And people are already making fun of you. So, the question is, “Who are you living your life for? Who are you running your business for? Who are you living for? You or everybody else?” So, the number one mistake people make is worrying way too much about what other people think. They’re already talking, you might as well give them something to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s really interesting perspective. I thought you were going to say, “Hey, for the most part, people are just aren’t paying much attention to you and they don’t really care because they’re wrapped up in their own lives.”

Judi Holler
It’s true.

Pete Mockaitis
But then you took it in the direction of, “They’re already making fun of you.”

Judi Holler
Right. I mean, I’m not saying everybody is making fun of you every day, but people are already talking about you, right? Look, we can’t control that or stop that. And people don’t care about you as much as we think they do, but we’re already being judged, right? It’s already happening, so live your life. That’s the point, right? Live your life.

Pete Mockaitis
And I really appreciate that when it comes to I think I’ve had an a-ha moment recently because we had a previous guest, Mindy Jensen from the Bigger Pockets money podcast. We talked about sort of money things. And she was just making a point how she just doesn’t care at all about what other people think with regard to her money decisions or if they think she’s a total cheapskate or whatever in these certain ways. And what I found interesting is that folks are going to judge you no matter what you choose in terms of like, so, it’s funny. We have two kids and we don’t own a car yet, right? So, hey, you’re in Chicago, so you know it. It’s not so essential especially when we’re really close by a Brown Line stop.

Judi Holler
Love it.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s on the list. We’re going to get to it pretty soon.

Judi Holler
So good. So good.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I sort of thought people judge me or imagine me to be foolish or, I don’t know, a bad dad, or broke, like, “Oh, Pete’s business must not be doing very well. He can’t even scrap together to get a used minivan or something.” So, whatever. And so then, I sort of just imagine that to be the case, I was like, “You know what, I’m fine. We’re going to wait till the time is right, till we get just the right vehicle.” And then I mentioned this to someone, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to get a car pretty soon, that’s long overdue.” And then that person said, “Why do you need a car for? The train lands right there.” That’s like, “Wow, you just judged me in the opposite way. I assumed everyone else is judging me.” Therefore, my assertion is that people will judge you good or bad whatever you choose.

Judi Holler
It’s so true.

Pete Mockaitis
Therefore, that’s not a useful or valid or helpful decision-making criterion, they’re going to do what they’re going to do.

Judi Holler
Correct. It’s a waste of time or energy. We can’t control people, places, or things. So, all we could do is control ourselves. So, when we take action, the courage to take action, and just to trust ourselves, I mean, that’s what the improv theater is all about, just really trusting ourselves. So, I love that your guest said that, like, “I don’t care what people think.” I learned that so big and clear in the improv theater at The Second City because there is so much power in looking silly and not caring, and just doing you. And it’ll inspire other people to want to do that as well.

And that’s what need more of in the world, to get a little woo-woo here. We need more people being themselves and doing things that light them up, right? So, yeah, it’s like a brave movement. We love watching people do brave things and be themselves because it makes us want to do more of that ourselves.

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

Judi Holler
No, I think that’s it. Like I said, if I could have one page in my book, it doesn’t get easier. Scary things don’t get less scary but you will get stronger. I think a big consequential mistake people make is they do one brave thing and then they stop, and they think that, “Okay, now I’ve done it. Now, I’ve got that brave thing going.” That’s how we miss opportunities and end up with a mediocre life. We’ve got keep going and it’s just consistent action little by little every day. We don’t need to do big scary things. We can start small and just still be very effective. So, that’s it in a nutshell.

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

Judi Holler
Yes. I would say I love the Steve Martin quote, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” Love that.

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

Judi Holler
I would say, ooh, this is a good one. I recently read a study that showed, it was on happiness and laughter, that babies laugh about 400 times a day, and adults, we laugh, about 4 times a day. And that just certainly made me sad but it inspired me to bring more joy and laughter into my life. And I think joy and laughter is coming back into the workplace. And if we’re not having fun, what’s the point? We’ve got to sit at that fun table because we’re not laughing. We’re not a baby anymore, I get it. But laughter, for 400 to 4, how do we increase that laugh factor every day? And I loved that study.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you know, that is intriguing and I have thought that to myself, it’s like, “I would like to have some more laughs.” And, from time to time, I make a discovery, like, “Oh, my gosh, the TV show A.P. Bio is hysterical.”

Judi Holler
So good, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
And then I binge all of those, it’s like, “Okay, now what do I do?” So, what do you do to bring in more laughs every day? I mean, you got your whole improv posse but outside that, yeah.

Judi Holler
You know what I do? I tell you this is brand new and I love this idea. I actually need to put it in my newsletter because it’s such a fun little hack. Because of this study, I have started watching on Netflix Stand-Up Comedy Specials, and I’ve been watching a lot of like “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” with Jerry Seinfeld, and those were like 15-20 minutes long. And I’m telling you, I watch about five of those “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” the other night while I was eating and making dinner because it’s all kind of in the same room. And I didn’t look at my phone once. I even forgot about my email. I forgot about the book launch. It was just so lovely to just sit there and laugh.

And so, that’s an easy thing someone could do. Just start like watching comedy specials and just let yourself laugh at the world because there is a lot of serious stuff going on, but if we’re not having fun, what’s the point? So, that’s a way to start laughing more.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that is fun and I’ve turned on the Spotify Comedy originals in there as I’m like taking a walk or whatever. And that’s great, yeah, because you don’t really need to look at it, you know. You can mostly listen to the Netflix Comedy Special, maybe you pop on some Bluetooth headphones.

Judi Holler
Correct. In your car, yup. Or, your, not car, your iPhone.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, you just mix your ingredients.

Judi Holler
Totally.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. So, how about a favorite book?

Judi Holler
Favorite book, oh, my gosh. That’s a hard question. I have so many, but what I would say for this audience, I think what shifted me in a professional way, from a professional perspective, which really just changed the way I work, it’s a book called Essentialism by Greg McKeown.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, we interviewed Greg.

Judi Holler
Oh, God, that book changed the way—you know that client I was telling you about, the first 60 minutes of her day, those ideas inspired a lot of those changes that she made and I made, and we just really all started working together to get in front of it and living like essentialists. So, that book is a game-changer. If you haven’t read it, go get you some.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about favorite habits.

Judi Holler
That’s definitely it, but I would say I use a goal-focused planner. I use a planner called the Volt Planner by a company called Ink and Volt. It is the number one tool in my business from a productivity standpoint that helps me living work like an essentialist, so I couldn’t live without it.

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

Judi Holler
Yeah, I think my book comes out May 28, but there are a lot of folks that have had advanced copies, and one of the retailers are shipping early, and I think the quote that’s kind of getting tweeted a lot, and shared a lot, and have come up a lot even on podcasts is this one, “You can be a victim or you can be a badass. The choice is yours.”

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

Judi Holler
I would point them to, first and foremost, my website which is JudiHoller.com from a social media perspective. I am most active on Instagram, so @judiholler on Instagram, certainly on Facebook. And then I think those are the best ways to get in touch with me. And we’re doing a little freebie. I’ve got a little gift for your listeners. Do you want to share it or do you want me to share it?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yup, tell us.

Judi Holler
Okay. So, if you want to get to know a little bit more about me and kind of test drive my book without buying the book, we’re going to give you chapter one, in the beginning of the entire book, for free. And I’ve also included a couple of downloadable freebies. Most importantly, most specifically, my secret weapon which is my morning planner page.

And the way you get it is you text the word BRAVE to the number 474747, and you’ll get texted a little link, you click it, and then all of the downloadable freebies will be sent to your email once you enter your email.

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

Judi Holler
Just trust yourself. Trust yourself. What you have is good enough. And in the improv theater, we’re not trying to find the best thing, but we are always looking for the next thing. So, it’s all about momentum and moving the scenes forward on stage, you’ve got to do that for yourself. It’s about doing small things every day that are going to move your life forward. This is how you achieve results, fear less, and, of course, make fear your homeboy.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Judi, thanks for this. Good luck with the book and all your adventures.

Judi Holler
Oh, my gosh, thanks for listening.

May 20

441: Understanding Fear to Overcome It with Ruth Soukup

By Podcasts No Comments

 

Ruth Soukup says: "Action is the antidote to fear"

 

Ruth Soukup shares the seven Fear Archetypes so you can better understand and conquer your particular fear.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to identify your Fear Archetype™️ and use that knowledge to conquer your fear
  2. How to seek out honest feedback
  3. How to develop courage to take the first step past fear

About Ruth

New York Times bestselling author Ruth Soukup is dedicated to helping people overcome fear and create a life they love. Through her blog, Living Well Spending Less, which reaches more than 1 million people each month, she encourages her readers to follow their dreams and reach their goals. She is also the founder of the Living Well Planner® and Elite Blog Academy®, as well as the author of five bestselling books. Her practical advice has been featured in numerous publications and news programs, including Women’s Day, Redbook, Family Circle and Fox News. Her Do It Scared® podcast launched on April 30, 2018 and her next book, Do It Scared®: Finding the Courage to Face Your Fears, Overcome Obstacles, and Create a Life You Love (Harper Collins) will be available in May 2019.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

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

Ruth Soukup
Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into your wisdom and in particular, I understand that you identify as a Harry Potter nerd. What’s the story here?

Ruth Soukup
That I do. I am a Harry Potter enthusiast I have to say, that probably does make me a huge super nerd, but I’m going to own it. I’m going to own it. I have read all of the books probably at least ten times each and that last one, number seven, which is my favorite, I’ve probably read at least 30 times. I just could read them over and over again from start to finish without stopping.

So thankfully, my 12-year-old daughter has actually inherited my love of all things Harry Potter. We get to now nerd out together. This summer we were in London and we went to the Warner Brothers’ studios, where they filmed all of the movies. My poor husband and my younger daughter had to bear with us as we nerded out to an epic proportion, but it was really, really great.

If you ever have a chance to go, I would highly recommend it. To see just the level of detail that they put into every movie and the sets and everything was so worth it, whether or not you’re a Harry Potter fan.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s impressive. Now you called yourself a Harry Potter enthusiast. I’ve heard the term, which I hadn’t heard before, a Potterhead. Is that common nomenclature?

Ruth Soukup
I’ve never got into the communities online. I kind of I guess maybe that’s my inner outcast coming out. I’ve also sort of just been independently nerdy, so I don’t know what the correct terminology is for that. But I would say Harry Potter super nerd would be an accurate description.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Understood. Cool beans. I’d also love to hear how you’ve applied some of your nerd-like enthusiasm for researching and getting some intriguing insights in your book, Do It Scared. Could you kick us off with what would you say is the most surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made while doing the work on this?

Ruth Soukup
That’s a great question. With Do It Scared I was really wanting to look into this question of why does fear hold us back. In my communities I see so many people, and women especially, who feel like they’re sitting on the sidelines of their own life, who are just afraid to jump in and there’s all these things holding them back from going after their goals and dreams wholeheartedly. It was a real problem.

I had so many people coming to me and saying, “I wish I could do this, but I just can’t.” I wanted to know why. I wanted to know why fear was holding us back and, more importantly, if there was anything that we could do about it. We ended up doing this gigantic research study surveying more than 4,000 people. I hired a whole team of researchers and psychologists to help me dive into the data.

But one of the most surprising things that we discovered was that all fear is not created equal. By that I mean there’s seven very, very unique and distinct ways that fear plays out in our lives because it’s a little bit different for everyone. We call these the seven fear archetypes.

Basically, what that means is that some people are afraid of making a mistake, while other people are afraid of rejection. Some people are afraid of authority or have an unhealthy fear of authority. Other people are afraid of being judged or letting people down.

How that fear plays out in your life really makes a huge difference in how it’s holding you back, but it also makes a huge difference because once you can identify how fear is holding you back, you can also start to do something about it and to overcome it. It was really, really fun research to do, but also really exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
So you’ve already listed out some of these archetypes here, so fear of making mistake, fear of rejection, fear of authority, fear of being judged, fear of letting folks down. Is that five of seven? What are the other two?

Ruth Soukup
Let’s see. There’s the fear of not being capable and the fear of adversity. I believe that would bring all of them. They each have a name. The fear of making a mistake is the procrastinator archetype and that’s really another name for perfectionism. That one is actually the most common of all the archetypes.

Then there’s the people pleaser, which is the fear of being judged or the fear of what other people will say and letting down people. That is the second most common one. They go on from there. If you want me to keep going, I can keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s do it. Yeah.

Ruth Soukup
Yeah, so the next one after that is the rule follower. The rule follower is an unhealthy fear of authority. It’s just sort of this deep-seated fear of ever coloring outside of the lines or doing anything that you’re not supposed to do even though you don’t always know who’s telling that you’re supposed to do it a certain way.

You just sort of have this feeling all the time that there’s certain things are supposed to be done a certain way and if you don’t do it right, you’re going to get in trouble, whether that’s accurate or not.

The fourth fear archetype is the outcast. That is the fear of rejection. The funny thing with outcasts is that they tend to reject other people before they can be rejected. They’re so afraid of rejection that they reject others first as almost like a proactive way of not being rejected.

A lot of times outcasts will appear on the surface to be fearless, but the truth is that they’re very afraid of being rejected by other people, so they sort of put up this armor to protect themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
You say outcasts, I just can’t stop thinking, Hey ya.

Ruth Soukup
That’s true. Different kind of outcast. Different kind of outcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Let’s hear the rest. Let’s hear the rest.

Ruth Soukup
Yeah. Then there is the excuse maker. The excuse maker is afraid of taking responsibility, also known as the blame shifter. The excuse maker is the one who never wants to have anything pinned on them. We can probably all think of somebody in our life who is like that, where just cannot be pinned down, won’t take responsibility for their actions. But where that comes from is just a deep fear of taking responsibility. They don’t want to be held responsible.

There’s also the self-doubter, which is the fear of not being capable. A lot of times for the self-doubter that will play out in hyper criticism towards themselves and others. If you’ve ever known anyone who just seems like they are never happy, never satisfied, always nitpicking people that might be a sign of a self-doubter in your life, somebody that’s a self-doubter. Or if you find yourself doing that a lot, that might be your main fear archetype.

Then the final one is the pessimist. The pessimist is usually someone who has had a lot of adversity or hard things happen in their life and they’re therefore most afraid of pain or adversity or of hard things happening again. That makes them just sort of stuck and not want to try.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. That’s a nice run down there. Your assertion is that we tend to have one of these that is the most dominant for us.

Ruth Soukup
Yes. Most people have one that is more dominant than others. You might have two or three that are all fairly dominant and they sort of interact and play together. But there’s usually at least one or two. We all have traits of all seven of the fear archetypes, but sometimes some are far less prevalent than others.

But the way that they play out in our lives is really relevant because if you don’t know the way that – what your underlying fear is, you don’t know how it’s affecting you. But once you do know, once you’re able to identify that fear in your life and start to see those patterns of behavior and to start recognize the negative self-talk that happens in our heads without us even really realizing it.

So much of this stuff happens subconsciously. As soon as you shine a light on it and start to see it in your life, that’s when you’re able to start overcoming it and start creating solutions that will allow you to move past it and not be held stuck anymore.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you maybe illuminate, what is some self-talk that shows up and that we might not even recognize because it’s just there in the background all the time? Any key words and phrases that pop up a lot?

Ruth Soukup
Sure. Well, again, that is different for everyone, but I’ll give myself as an example for this one because I actually had this happen to me fairly recently. Like I said at the beginning, I’m the outcast archetype. My deepest fear is rejection.

That has been something that really, I’ve started to recognize recently, probably in lieu of all of this fear studies that I’ve been doing. But I’ve started to really see how the outcast fear archetype is playing out in my life and how that fear of rejection holds me back in certain areas of my life and of my business.

Specifically I have an online business. I have an online company. I have always sort of approached my business from a I-don’t-need-anybody-else standpoint of “I’m going to grow this by myself. I don’t want to ask for help. I don’t want to ever be dependent on anyone else.” Yet, as my business has grown, I’ve really seen ways in which that – being unwilling to reach out to people and to ask for help or to ask for favors or to ask people for things has held me back.

Even to pitch someone to say, “Hey, I see you have this podcast. Can I be a guest on your podcast?” or to promote myself in that way. That’s always been really, really hard for me. What that really is is a deep, deep-seated fear of rejection. I reject everyone before they can reject me.

And it was funny I was with – I have a mastermind group that I call my truth club. I was with them maybe a few weeks ago. They, of course, know that my archetype is the outcast, so as good friends should do, they definitely called me out on it and were really pushing me and really challenged me to stop hiding basically behind this fear of rejection.

They challenged me to – we were specifically talking about media and PR and pitching yourself to different media outlets – so they challenged me in 24 hours I had to pitch myself to 20 people and that I knew were going to reject me just to get used to the idea of being rejected. It was terrifying to me, absolutely terrifying and yet, because they are my friends, because I believe in accountability, I took their advice and I did it and I did the challenge.

You know what? It was so incredibly freeing to finally sort of break through this fear that rejection was the worst thing that could ever happen to me because as it turned out it wasn’t that bad and as it turned out several of these people that I reached out to actually said yes and not no even though I had been sure that every single one of them was going to say no. It was just a really good lesson for me.

This is something I work with on a daily basis, but it was still a great lesson for me that when you know what your fear is, then that’s when you can start to create solutions to overcome it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’ve got me thinking now. It’s like well, here you are on my media outlet. It’s like how did this happen. I guess your publicist, Ashley, at NardiMedia.com was the emailer. I guess that’s another strategy. You can do a little bit out outsourcing.

Ruth Soukup
That has been the strategy that I’ve used is to hire a publicist to do it for me so that I don’t have to personally be rejected, but that’s where my friends were calling me on it. They said, “No, it’s better if you start making connections yourself. You have to start doing it yourself.” I’m like, “Oh, I don’t want to,” but I did.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you for sharing that. It’s really resonating as I’m thinking – this is always sort of my game as a podcaster it’s like it’s for the listeners, but it’s also for me. It’s like which follow up question am I going to ask? Is it the one that serves me or the one that I think is going to serve the most listeners? Usually I give it to the listeners, but for now I’m trying to zero in on mine.

I think about when I’m not reaching out – because I’ve done the same thing. It’s like I would like to be on more podcasts. I’ve seen it results in great growth for my show and it’s fun. I haven’t made a lot of requests and I think it’s part of the procrastinator perfection thing.

Ruth Soukup
Well, that makes sense because that’s a very common fear archetype.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. I say things to myself like, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe after my show is at six million downloads that will sound more impressive than five million downloads when I make this request.” It probably is already fine in terms of packing a punch, like “Oh five million downloads, Forbes, New York Times, blah, blah, blah.” That will probably pack enough credibility/authority/power to get over that hump.

And yet, I sort of wonder. It’s like, “Well, I don’t know. I should probably research their show more because I don’t like getting irrelevant pitches, so I should really know it intimately, but how intimately. Is listening to five episodes enough or is that not nearly enough?” So yeah. Well, hey, it’s the most common archetype. I’ve maybe got it, so hey, double win.

Ruth Soukup
Well, yours could be like maybe a combination of a little bit procrastinator and a little bit outcast in the same thing. Those two can really interplay together because the procrastinator is most afraid of getting it wrong, making a mistake and not having things be perfect. You always feel like there’s a little bit more that you could be doing.

Procrastinators a lot of times, in fact a lot of times people will realize that that’s their archetype but they’ll think, “I never thought of myself as a procrastinator. I definitely have thought of myself as a perfectionist.”

But what perfectionists will do is they will try to get so far ahead of things and so far out ahead of a deadline so that they can be tweaking up until the very last minute because it’s never quite right or they’ll avoid doing things at all because they don’t want to make a mistake or because it won’t be perfect.

[15:00]

It sounds like you’ve got a little bit of that going on, but also a little bit of “Hm, I don’t want to take the chance of putting myself out there because they might say no because I’m not good enough.” That’s a little bit of your inner outcast coming out too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I hear you. I think when it comes to rejection in this realm, I don’t think it would hurt my feelings too much, like “Aw,” but from a business opportunity, it would be like, “Oh, dang it! Did I blow it? If I worked it a little bit better or differently, could I have nailed this and now this door is closed to me and I’m bummed because I did it wrong and if I had done it right, then this door wouldn’t be closed to me.” I guess I don’t feel like a loser.

I’ll tell you, it is great therapy to be rejected. I remember my first book collecting dozens of rejection letters, just, was very nourishing to the soul. It’s like, “Oh hey, this doesn’t hurt so bad after all.”

Ruth Soukup
After a while you start to get used to it, but yeah, it takes a little while. Well, we do have an assessment that you can actually go and take the assessment and discover what your archetype is.

You can find that at DoItScared.com if you’re interested in figuring out what exactly – because sometimes it can be a little hard to nail down and that’s where the assessment comes in and helps you really hone in on what your top one is and the premium assessment will actually show you where you rank on all seven of them so you can really see what your top ones are and how they interplay together.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. You are bringing back some memories in terms of fear. I remember at Bain & Company that was sort of an expectation. They called Zero Defect Analysis, which means you’re not allowed to make mistakes, which is terrifying, like that’s in your review.

Ruth Soukup
That would make things really terrifying for a procrastinator slash perfectionist.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, what, we’re not allowed to make mistakes. I guess, over time it became clear, you’re not allowed to make a mathematical or factual error that the client catches. It’s sort of like, take a moment to double check your stuff and don’t get caught being wrong, which is still a high bar, but not as terrifying as it originally felt when I said, “Excuse me, what is the standard here exactly?”

But it was good lessons in terms of sharpening some skills. But yeah, it was spooky for a little while as young associate consultants are getting up to speed on that skill set.

Ruth Soukup
Yeah, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, well memories. Now, let’s see. We’ve got some of these particular archetypes mapped out, the lay of the land, the diagnosis, and so I’d love to hear – I’m sure that there are sort of particular prescriptions for each of these, but because that may take a while, could you maybe share with us some of the universal prescriptions, like-

Ruth Soukup
Universal prescriptions.

Pete Mockaitis
That help everybody.

Ruth Soukup
Yes, yeah. Well, one of the most important things that you can keep in mind when you’re talking about fear is first of all that figuring out what your fear is matters so much because that’s where you can start to identify it and start to see where it might be holding you back. But when it comes to overcoming it, the most important thing that you need to know is that action is the antidote to fear.

If you want to start to overcome your fear, the first thing that you need to do is take any step, any step at all in the right direction towards whatever it is that you want to go after, towards facing your fears.

Back to the example that I gave you, the action that I took was my friends said, “Hey, your outcast fear is holding you back. You are afraid of rejection and you’re not putting yourself out there, so what you need to do is go pitch yourself to 20 people in the next 24 hours even through you know you’ll be rejected.”

My choice at that point was to say, “Whatever, you guys are full of it and I don’t care because I’m not going to do it,” because literally it was terrifying to me. It was panic-inducing fear of just the thought of that. As they were confronting me, I was standing up. I was pacing around the room. My arms were crossed. There was yelling going on. I did not want to do this.

My choice then was to ignore them completely and to not do it and to sit in my fear or my choice was to take action and to actually do that thing that they were challenging me to do. I took the action. What I realized is that once again, action is the antidote to fear. As I took the action, that was the cure, taking a step, doing the thing that you’re afraid of.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” That is it. That’s the answer most of the time to fear is to just – sometimes it just has to be the tiniest step in the right direction. Sometimes that’s all you can do is the tiniest step in the right direction, but just taking that step will give you the courage to take the next step and then the next step. Courage is like a muscle, so the more you exercise it, the stronger it’s going to get.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and that’s interesting when you talk about fear and how it manifests you said that you were terrifying and panic inducing. I guess – I don’t experience that much when it comes to stuff, but I think my fear can show up as kind of discomfort and resistance. It’s like, “Eh, I don’t really know about that just yet. There’s probably something better/different/alternative a little later.” That’s interesting.

Could you maybe talk about sort of the flavors by which fear is being experienced because I think maybe if some folks are saying, “Hm, I don’t really experience that panic-inducing thing much. I guess I don’t have fear.” What would you say to them?

Ruth Soukup
Well, fear happens on different levels for different people too. It’s important to realize that too, which is one really cool thing about our fear assessment is that it will actually give you a measure of your overall level of fear and how much it might be impacting you. Some people score off the charts in certain archetypes, some people are fairly low in all of them and there’s one that’s a little more prevalent, but it’s still fairly low. In that case, you might not be experiencing fear in that way.

Now, for me, my outcast is off the charts and everything else for me is fairly low. It really, really depends on where you’re scoring for that. Like you said, it might just be a resistance or something where you avoid things because you don’t want to do them and you just think, “Hm, I don’t really want to do them,” and you’re not even necessarily identifying it as a specific fear in your life and yet it’s holding you back because you’re not doing it. You’re not taking that action. You’re not taking that step.

In that case, you’re probably a little bit luckier because if you’re not having that panic-inducing fear that’s really holding you back, then that’s a little bit easier to say, “Okay, I’m going to take this step. I’m going to take this action and see how it goes.” The more you’re willing to do that, the more you’re willing to take that action, the better the results are and the more you realize, “Oh, I don’t have to let this fear hold me back,” or “Oh, this really isn’t as bad as I thought it’s going to be.”

For you, as being a procrastinator slash perfectionist, the best thing that you could possibly do is to push yourself to make some mistakes and to be okay with making mistakes because every time you do something and make a mistake and it’s not the end of the world, it helps you develop that capacity and the ability to next time realize, “Okay, I can do this and if I make a mistake, it’s not going to be the end of the world.

If I put myself out there before I have six million or seven million listeners to my podcast, and they say no, that’s not the end of the world. I can always ask again and I can always ask again. It’s not that big of a deal. Depending on where you fall within your archetype and the level, it really depends on then what the solution and the cure is.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny, Ruth, when you say I can always ask again, that strikes me as a profound revelation.

Ruth Soukup
Really?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. It was like, “Oh yeah, I guess you can,” which is interesting. That kind of gets me thinking that another potential antidote here is just some of the conversation. You’ve mentioned you’ve got your accountability or mastermind posse, The Truth Seekers, The Truth Club?

Ruth Soukup
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And that helped out right there.

Ruth Soukup
And that is actually one of the universal recommendations also is to create accountability in your life, to put people in your life who will speak truth to you. That’s not always easy because there’s a lot of people who don’t want to tell us the truth, who don’t want to be confrontational and a lot of times we surround ourselves intentionally with people who will tell us what we want to hear.

Intentionally putting people in your life who will push back, who will give you the honest truth, who won’t always just tell you what you want to hear, but will actually push to make you better, that is so, so important.

It is one of the best things that you can ever do for yourself is to create accountability partners in your life or to find those people that you can really trust to say the things that nobody else will say to you because those are the people that are going to push you to be your best self and to push past your comfort zone into the place where you’re pushing past fear.

That’s also the place where all the good stuff happens, where you get to go after your biggest goals and dreams and actually create the life that you love.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, well, I’m all about doing just that, so great perspective there. Hugely transformative. I want to talk a bit more about the tiny step business. If folks are – I think that’s one great tactic right there. It’s like, identifying what’s the tiniest possible step. Then if folks are even scared to take that tiny possible step, what do you do? Is there any particular mantras or mottos or kind of power up tips?

Ruth Soukup
My mantra is definitely ‘Do it scared.’ Honestly, that sounds so simple and obviously that’s the title of the book. That’s the title of my podcast. But truly that mantra works whether you’re 10 years old or 100 years old. It really does.

I see it all the time because ‘Do it scared’ has been my own personal motto for so long. It’s been one of the core values of my company since I started my company and then it’s something that I really seen be embraced by the members in my community.

I see all the time in our Facebook groups, people say, “Oh, Ruth says ‘Do it scared.’ I’m doing it scared. This is my do it scared moment.” Even my daughter, we went a few weeks ago to one of those high ropes course things. She’s like, “Mommy, I was so scared, but I just kept saying ‘Do it scared, do it scared, do it scared’ the whole time. ‘Do it scared’ that’s all I could think. ‘Do it scared’ and then I was brave enough to do it.”

Sometimes you just need to chant that in your head. Really what that means is that courage doesn’t mean that you’re never afraid. Courage is taking action despite your fear. It’s doing the one thing and then doing the next thing. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself that over and over, “I just have to take this one step. If I can take this one step, then I can take the next one.”

I think sometimes also we think that we have to have everything all figured out. That is especially true when it comes to these creating goals and dreams for our lives or having these goals and dreams in our head that we were too afraid to pursue.

We don’t pursue them because we think we’re supposed to know every step along the way and that we have to have it perfect and that we have to – we’re afraid of what people are going to say about us or say to us or that they won’t understand or they won’t get it or that we’ll get it wrong. There’s all of these fears that come into play sometimes all at the same time, sometimes one more prevalently than others.

But really, we don’t have to have it all figured out all at once. We just have to take one step. Sometimes when you take that one step, the next step becomes more clear and then the next step becomes more clear after that. Before you know it, you look back and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did all of that.”

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. You also talk about developing core beliefs that help us overcome fear. I imagine some beliefs get shaped just by taking those actions over time repeatedly. Do you have any other approaches to go about forming and strengthening these core beliefs?

Ruth Soukup
Well, yeah, so in the book, Do it Scared, I talk about the principles of courage. There’s several that are really important. Some we’ve sort of touched on a little bit. One is there are no mistakes, only lessons.

That one is – for somebody like yourself, that’s a really important one. In fact, it sort of came out when I said, “What’s the worst that can happen? You can always just ask again.” That was a revelation to you to realize if it goes wrong the first time, you can always try it again. You can always try something else. There’s no time and there’s no mistake that’s so big that you can’t recover from. I feel like I’m living proof of that.

I actually talk about this quite extensively in the book, but when I was in my early 20s, I went through a terrible depression, really, really bad. It was my senior year of college. I ended up attempting suicide multiple times, ended up hospitalized for almost two and a half years, had multiple suicide attempts in that time. It was just really, really, really bad. As bad as you can imagine a depression would be, that was it.

At the end of it, found myself divorced, bankrupt, completely alone. All the people who had tried to be my friends along the way, I had either made them so mad or so frustrated that they had pretty much abandoned me, had nothing left. I had no money. I had no education because I had dropped out of school.

I literally had nothing and somehow from that managed by taking one step and then the next step and then the next step after that over a course of several years, ended up finding my way back to having, first of all, a normal life and then finishing school and getting married and having two beautiful kids and then starting a business that has now grown to be this seven-figure empire.

I really look at that as kind of the proof that if you think that – as badly as you think that you’ve screwed up in your life, I promise you it’s probably not as bad as I screwed up. And if I can go from that hot mess that I was 15 years ago to where I am today, then there really is hope for anyone on the planet. And that’s where it’s so important to just take one step and the next step and the next step after that.

I truly believe in my heart of hearts that there are no mistakes, only lessons and if you can start to adapt that mentality, then you stop fearing that you were going to make a mistake. That’s such a big fear for so many people is this fear of making a mistake, but realizing that every mistake you make brings you to the next point in your life and you can look back and go, “Oh, that was amazing. I learned from that. Now I can take it and do my next thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, tell me Ruth, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Ruth Soukup
Well, I want to make sure that you know that Do It Scared is available wherever books are sold.

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

Ruth Soukup
Favorite quote. I think I already shared it, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

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

Ruth Soukup
I’ve got to say – well, aside from this fear research that we’ve done recently, I really love the research that Jim Collins does in all of his books, but especially in Good to Great and Built to Last. Those are two of my favorite business books. I read them all the time.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite tool, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Ruth Soukup
Favorite tool. Oh my goodness, I think the Freedom app is pretty amazing. It keeps me focused on a daily basis. I don’t know if you’ve used that before. You can connect it on to all of your devices and then set the timer and it locks you out of all distractions while you try to focus.

Pete Mockaitis
How about a favorite habit?

Ruth Soukup
Getting up at four AM every day.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I have to ask about this in more detail. When do you go to sleep at night?

Ruth Soukup
Usually by nine.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, okay. That works out. Any naps in the day?

Ruth Soukup
Nope, no naps. I am not a napper. The only time I ever nap is if I’m sick.

But yes, I am a morning person to the core. Sometimes I even get up at three just because I feel like it. I really do like getting up early. I love having the time in the morning when nobody else is up and the whole world is just yours. I find that that’s my time to get my best work done and just have the quiet where no one else on the planet is crazy enough to get up that early, so it’s all mine.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you wake up without an alarm, just naturally at about that time?

Ruth Soukup
I use the Sleep Cycle app, which is another one of my favorite tools, but, honestly, I don’t usually set my alarm on the weekends and I still wake up that early.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, cool. Well, nice work. Now could you share with us a favorite nugget, something you share that really seems to connect and resonate and get retweeted frequently?

Ruth Soukup
My favorite nugget is “Action is the antidote to fear.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was totally already planning on using it as the pulled quote for our episode, so it’s a good one.

Ruth Soukup
There you go.

Pete Mockaitis
You have great taste. If folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Ruth Soukup
Absolutely. Definitely go to DoItScared.com. That’s where you can find out more about the book. You can find the podcast and you can take the assessment and find out your fear archetype.

Pete Mockaitis
Do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Ruth Soukup
I think that it’s really important to find out where fear is impacting your life so that you can be more awesome at your job. It truly is – it’s amazing once you start to identify those patterns in your life, how it sort of changes everything and can help you break through any of the resistance that you’ve been facing.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Ruth this has been a ton of fun. I wish you lots of luck and adventures as you do things scared and come out the other side. It’s been a treat.

Ruth Soukup
Thanks so much for having me. It was great to be here.