Tag

Mindset

Mar 23

277: Keys to Exceptional Goal Achievement with (100% Bucket List Completer!) Danny Dover

By Podcasts 4 Comments

 

Danny Dover says: "If you want to be a person who lives an extraordinary life, then... take action that is extraordinary."

Fascinating achiever Danny Dover shares how we can unlock similar achievements in our own careers and lives.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How and why to set binary goals with zero wiggle room
  2. How to eliminate distractions, ruthlessly yet tactfully
  3. Approaches to rediscover your motivation

About Danny

In 2010, Danny Dover assigned a deadline of May 25, 2017, to his life. He was tired of hearing about other people’s exciting lives and decided to jump-start his own by taking steps to actually live as if the end was in sight. He tattooed his deadline on his butt and made the sole purpose of his life to complete his Life List (a list of more than 150 life goals). While pursuing his list, he inadvertently became a minimalist in order to gain the necessary focus to create a more meaningful life. This seemingly small change in mindset (which he later detailed in the book The Minimalist Mindset) dramatically changed his life for the better.

As of 2017, Dover has completed his entire Life List (which included living alone in the wilderness for a month, traveling to nearly 100 countries, mountain climbing in Antarctica, becoming a best-selling author, etc.)

Items Mentioned in this Show:

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

Danny Dover
I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, boy. Well, I think we’ll have a great chat here so I’m excited as well. First of all, I’d love to hear about the tattoo on your butt. What is the scoop here?

Danny Dover
This comes up more often than I had imagined before I got this, or when I got this. Okay, so if you rewind about 10 years of my life, I was in a really, really, really rough spot. I was dealing with depression among other things, and I realized, very frankly, that I had really no choice but to find a better life for myself or perhaps a better way to word it now, say building a better life for myself.

I knew I was a procrastinator. I knew that with depression I had very, very little motivation, so I decided that I need to make this thing very real, something very permanent, and something very important to me, meaningful. And so I got a tattoo with what I imagined, at the time, would be the deadline for my life, so this was May 25, 2017, and, again, I got this done about 10 years ago.

And very, very slowly I got started on rebuilding my life a little bit, on making some strides and, as I’m sure we’ll talk about, on working on a list of 150 goals that I have for myself before that deadline.

Pete Mockaitis
So deadline for your life, you mean, to do all the items on your list prior to that date?

Danny Dover
That’s correct. Now, you got to remember, I was in a real dire side of my life and so I was taking this very morbid direction and a very serious direction. But in hindsight, I can look back and say…

Pete Mockaitis
Hind? Ho, ho, ho, zing.

Danny Dover
Hiny-sight. That was exactly what I needed then, so it did the job. I came up with this idea that it seemed like a good idea to follow this general advice of, “Live as if the end is in sight.” But, of course, none of us know when that time is going to be. And so I said, “Well, what if I just picked a time…” or a date in this case, “…and have that be my trajectory,” and kind of draw a line in the sand or a tattoo on my butt, if you will.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s cool. And so, then, you had a healthy list of 150 life goals. Can you give us an example of a couple of them that were the most challenging and transformational?

Danny Dover
Sure. And I should give a little context on where this list came from. When I was in this little part of my life, I asked people around me what were some of the favorite stories from their lives, and some of these were accomplishments, some of these were people they’ve met, some of these were relationships they had. And I took their stories that they told me and made those the items on this life list.

So some of the odder ones, the more challenging ones, well, first, just this wasn’t specifically a bucket list then, but it was inherent to the list. I had to come up with ways of paying for this. And perhaps even more difficult, or at least equally difficult, I had to figure out, “How am I going to create a lifestyle where I can do these things as far as time goes?”

Because if you’re going to make money, that means you’re selling your time to somebody else, usually. And so I need to find a nice balance there where I could do these things. So let me give you some examples here.

So, visit every continent. These were more specific, but go to roughly about 100 different countries, get multiple patents, complete many, many meaningful tasks a year, and each of these had smart goals associated with them, so each of them were very specific, but in this list they’re not. Run a marathon, do astronaut training, go to the Olympics, Super Bowl World Series, create a profitable business, live in the wilderness alone for a month, so on and so forth, 150.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so good. Now I want to touch base on what you mentioned there with smart goals. So, that’s kind of how actually I got my start in speaking as I was presenting at this conference called HOBY, Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership, which I still do. It’s a lot of fun, very sort motivated, fun, high school sophomores assembling and having a transformational sort of a weekend experience.

And so I do talk about smart goals because I was a goal-setting enthusiast. Some people are a little down on smart goals, saying, “That’s actually not the optimal way to establish goals given our psychological understanding given dah, dah, dah.” But, hey, you’re a living proof, you had 150 of these and you knocked them all out, and all of them had a smart goal associated with it. Can you unpack, first, the acronym, and second why you think this is a good way to go?

Danny Dover
Well, perhaps, surprisingly I agree with some of the research that you just referenced.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Danny Dover
I don’t think that smart goals are necessarily the best way to do it for everybody, but I think the general concept, which I’ll talk about in just a second, seems like a better path than what I was doing before – smart goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Danny Dover
So, before it was smart goals, my goals were very broad and it wasn’t clear if I completed them or not, and there’s lots of wiggle room. With a smart goal, I don’t even know if I know the acronym off the top of my head, but I think it’s specific, measurable, actionable, I don’t know what the R is.

Pete Mockaitis
Realistic?

Danny Dover
Realistic, thank you. And timely or time-based. And I don’t care so much about getting the specifics and nailing it down, but what I care about is making a goal that fulfills these general accomplishments. It is binary decision, “Have I completed this or have I not completed this?” And there was absolutely no wiggle room. It is either a yes or it’s no. There’s no, “Well, maybe,” or, “Yes, but…” that doesn’t exist.

So what I’m really going for is a binary thing, and the tool that I used for that is smart goals but I’m not really religiuos about obsessing about making sure I hit each of those letters. As long as it’s binary I’m happy.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so I’d love it if you could maybe give us an example of how you binarialized – we’re inventing a word, Danny.

Danny Dover
Sure. I think you did. I guess you get credit for that.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s a joint creation. You made binary. Some accomplishments or goals are tricky when it comes to sort of like an emotional thing or about some happiness or like a relationship thing in terms of if you want to have a good or better relationship with a spouse or a great friend. So could you give us an example of maybe something that started fuzzy and how you made it smart or binary?

Danny Dover
Yeah. So let’s take chess, which actually ended up in the hindsight, hiny-sight, if you will.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Danny Dover
Ended up being one of my least favorite items I did on there. But, originally, when I wrote it down it was not a very good goal as far as being smart. It was, “Learn to play chess well,” I think is what I wrote.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Danny Dover
And in order to do that, and in order to make this binary, you need to add more attributes to it. So what I first did was researched, okay, “How is chess set up? How is it measured? What does the Bell curve look like?”

Pete Mockaitis
Those ranking are insane, bro.

Danny Dover
They are insane. Oh, yeah, some people… there’s a problem actually with this. I’ll go into it as kind of an aside. So in order to look at distribution of a chess players, you look at places like chess.com, or this was what I chose. But people who spend all their time playing chess for fun tend to be very good at chess, and so the Bell curve has shifted than what it would be for the average human being. So it’s actually made the challenge quite hard.

So there’s multiple chess ranking systems, there is, I believe, is Elo is how you pronounce it, and Glicko-2, too. So I chose Glicko-2, it looked like, for my research, that that was going to make more sense for my goals. I found what the center of Bell of curve was, I wanted to be slightly above average which would be well because I was taking into account this bias that the people who were on chess.com playing this were the ones who play chess all the time are like quite good, and so I wanted to beat the average.

And I believe the number was 1550 on the Glicko-2 is what I had to beat. I’d have to look at my notes but I believe that was it. So I played chess until I was able to beat 1550 on the Glicko-2, if I’m getting my numbers correct.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow.

Danny Dover
It was terrible.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, I was going to say that. I think that would take a long time based on my progress in the game of chess.

Danny Dover
Yeah, so chess is really interesting. I love it as an analogy, and I love it as a concept for explaining strategy. But what I found, for my personal taste, is that the way to get good at chess, which is just rote memorization, is trying to understand lots and lots of different permutations and memorizing that is just not a fun endeavor for me, not to say that it can’t be great for other people. Clearly, a lot of people get a lot of joy from it, but not for me.

What I thought I was going into was a game where you would get broad strategy, but what I found, to master it, at least my understanding from the teachers and mentors I worked with, it was more about memorization and then general rules based off of trends that you start to see. And that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, maybe that’s why I didn’t get that far. It’s like I learned the lesson.

Danny Dover
And maybe that’s why I didn’t get farther. I mean, any subject that we take in this kind of very quantitative way is going to be, there’s going to be lots of side cases.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And so I’m intrigued there, so then that’s the idea, is you’re shooting for, it needs to be binary such that there is no wiggle room. I know that I have to achieve it by this date or I have not.

Danny Dover
Correct. So it was 1550 on Glicko-2 by a specific date. I had the overall deadline on May 25, 2017, but when I went through each goal on this list, each of this list items, I signed a sub-date so a deadline that I gave myself earlier, so.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow. That’s so cool. Now, I think that others would suggest, I guess, the smart goals doubters would say, you know, “Hey, you need to be kind to yourself and not sort of put yourself in a position where the results or the performance is somewhat beyond your control. And you got to focus in on what you can do, your actions and the process.” What’s your response to that kind of vibe?

Danny Dover
It’s complicated. So half of me says, “That’s right. You should be kind to yourself,” and that not enough people are kind to their self in a meaningful way and for long periods of time. And I think you can cause a lot of damage by not being kind to yourself.

The other part of me says that, “If you want to be a person who lives an extraordinary life, then you’re going to have to take action that is extraordinary,” just by definition. And so I was a person who had given myself this big goal, this entire life list, and I said that I’m going to make this the meaning of my life, that’s why I was so serious with the tattoo, and so that is going to require extraordinary steps.

So, now, is that the right thing for every single person to do? No, but I think this general idea of trying to create some meaning or importantly, or worded better, choosing a meaning for your life, I think that is a really good idea and I think that does apply to everyone. Now the difference will be in the meaning that you choose and the execution you choose to pursue.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious to get a sense for, you said you made that the purpose of your life and it’s like sort of decided this is very important. And then you stuck with it. Like are there any sort of master keys that others who have fallen off the wagon for their goals can do there?

Danny Dover
Maybe. I hope that by discussing this topic, some other people will be able to skip some steps that I took, that ended up not being useful. So I spent a lot of time at the beginning of this journey, or really let’s say when I got about a third of the way through, because at the beginning I was doing nothing. I had no motivation. I barely get out of bed.

But as I slowly progressed, very slowly, I started doing more research on happiness, and how do you measure that, and what do you look at. And there were studies I read about measuring the different brain chemicals, which we can go to as an aside. I think they’re all kind of crazy. There’s different ones like measuring facial expressions and wrinkle depth to see how much you smiled, that kind of stuff.

And there’s all these kind of studies I read and there’s lots of other ways people went about it from like how do you act or you’re perceived by people or how you perceive other people, to kind of more psychological perspective. At the end of the day, I realized it just doesn’t matter. We don’t know. We really don’t know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about measuring happiness or quantifying happiness because it means different things to different people in different contexts.

So what I realized is that if I’m going to battle these very, very, very big problems in life, these big questions of, “Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?” I’m not going to find a binary answer. I’m not going to find something that’s like specific and measurable. I’m not going to find a smart answer to this.

Instead, what I’m going to find is that we don’t know. It just so happens that we’re here on this floating rock. You might as well just choose a purpose, just make your own decision, and what you’re going to find meaning, or what I found meaning from, as a result of that decision, is just pursuing it. Waking up every day and having a mission, even if it’s not the mission that was granted you by some extra like spiritual being.

Even if you have that choice, you made that choice, then you can find your own meaning in that, and that’s what happened to me. I think you can do that in lots of different ways. It doesn’t have to be a life list. But, for me, the key was just choosing something and fully committing myself to that decision. That’s what really made a big difference in my life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing and I guess I’m wondering. You didn’t waiver and decide, “You know what, actually there is another mission that’s going to be the thing,” and sort of back and forth, teeter-totter, wobble. It’s like, “Nope, this is the thing,” and it stuck. Any sense for what made it stick?

Danny Dover
Well, first, the push for me to make this big decision was just I didn’t really have any other choice. I mean, nothing was working in my life so I needed to make a bold change or I was going to be stuck or even worse. So I had a large reason to push me to do this.

And then the second part of it was, well, I had created this tattoo that I had told some people about and then I eventually kind of writing about this kind of a year later, maybe a little longer, and so I had public peer pressure in a positive way. So positive peer pressure and people reading this and asking me, “How is it going?”

And so put this out here and I had these feedback loops in place that kind kept pushing me forward. So were there days that I waivered? Sure. There absolutely were, but I had chosen this mission and it was very clear what needed to be done and it was a matter of trying to figure out how to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. Well, so then, I’m curious now, in order to do that it takes some discipline associated with prioritization and saying no to alternative things. What are some of your best practices there?

Danny Dover
Well, okay, this is a big topic. I’m glad we’re going into it. So let’s talk about, in order to answer this, let’s try to talk about high achievers. So we’ll choose one aspect of high achievers, and I want to be clear, there’s lots of different ways you can achieve things, but one aspect of that would be people who have a lot of money, so let’s say billionaires, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Danny Dover
And billionaires are unique not because – well, they are unique because they have a lot of money, but that’s not the part I care about. What they’re unique in is they have a lot of power. So I think there’s a lot of evidence that these people, in many cases, really are able to change the world. It seems like they are modern-day superheroes who are the people who have this much power. So billionaires being one example of that.

Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld has a funny quote on this, he said, “When men are growing up and reading about Batman, Spiderman, Superman, they see these not as fantasies. They see them as options.” And I always really identified with that. I always thought that was funny.

So if you look back like last year, there was something like Forbes, I think, I’m quoting this from. There’s 2,043 billionaires on the planet in 2017, and that number rises roughly every year by 200, it depends on how the stock market does. So we have 2,000 plus billionaires who are with us right now, and none of them are Batman. This pisses me off. What the heck is going on here?

Pete Mockaitis
That we know about.

Danny Dover
That’s true. Maybe Batman would be smarter and just not actually show us. So we do have heroes who are billionaires. We have Bill Gates who professionally, I dislike him. But from what his impact on the world with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is actually amazing. He’s probably the prime example of someone who’s saving the world.

We have someone like Elon Musk who’s trying to save the world by leaving it, or at least getting humans off of it. So we do have these people who are like superheroes in our modern world so it’s exciting and it’s interesting.

So what I did, trying to understand this stuff, was start to study them. So lots of autobiographies and biographies, and really, I like those kinds of book in particular because they’re based in the real world and they’re people who have the same limits as all of us, meaning time, but they’re still able to achieve things.

And what I noticed was that, yes, there are definitely specific factors that applied to each of them specifically within the context of how they grew up and all that. But, generally speaking, what all these people who I have read books about, had in common is they had luck which I define as opportunity times preparation. You don’t really get to control opportunity per se but you certainly can control preparation, so it’s the multiplying the two where you really get luck.

And then habits, which is, this is part of my long answer in answering your original question here. Habits, I think, are what superheroes and billionaires and other people who are successful in other ways are different than the rest of us. So I started looking very seriously into that, and there’s a whole bunch of books on the topic, and they’re fine.

But what I’ve started to realize and what I really ingrained in myself is that it’s habits, not ideas, that are the programming language of human beings. And so I took this and I very seriously studied this concept. So I studied artificial intelligence, trying to mine this a little bit, trying to understand what breakthroughs are being made there, and can I apply this to myself.

And I found one that I thought applied quite well. It’s this idea of recursive self-improvement. So this is stolen from the field of AI, but I try to apply it with habits. Recursion, if you’re not aware, if you don’t have a development background, is a method that calls itself. And so you can be very, very powerful in a very, very small instruction base, or very, very small amount of code.

So in a human’s life it seems like this would be a habit that calls itself. So a habit that improves on itself. The most straightforward example of this would be something like speedreading. If you can speedread, and you really could keep your retention high, then you would be better at self-improvement because you’d be able to input more information into yourself, and then you’d get better at everything essentially if you’re reading the right stuff.

So in this way it would be recursive in that it would be a habit that was making you better at self-improvement, so improving that self-improvement.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, so sort of like a loop of sorts.

Danny Dover
It’s a very specific kind of loop.

Pete Mockaitis
So you’re saying, if this is fair, you tell me, that it gets real powerful when – like the speedreading example – is that you are improving your ability to improve yourself and, thusly, there’s kind of a, I’m thinking like compound interest here.

Danny Dover
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
But there’s like a growing effect when you’re growing the thing that does growing.

Danny Dover
Exactly right. So like a billionaire is going to know the advantage of compound interest, right? That’s probably how they became a billionaire, at least in many, many cases. And so I wanted to apply this concept of compounding interest to people, to humans, so take away from finance entirely. And I realized that there’s certain habits, these ones I’m calling recursive self-improvement habits, that get more powerful as you develop them and they make other parts of your life better.

So speedreading is one kind of example although there are some problems here. The other ones that I’ve seen that I think are more beneficial are diet and exercise and, say, personal finance, friends, your network, your family, and things like focus. If you can get better at those core, I think other people, there’s like a Venn diagram here with what I’m calling recursive self-improvement habits, and other people call it like keystone habits.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. Okay.

Danny Dover
So there are these ones that if you can get really good at these then it makes everything else much, much better. And so I doubled down on this concept. So you would ask me, “Well, how do I measure these things. How do I prioritize things? And how do I persevere with these things?” Well, this is exactly how I prioritize things.

I take what I believe to be these recursive self-improvement habits and I draw what’s called the goal-map. This is cool. I’ve actually never talked about this publicly before so this is something I’ve actually been doing for years.

So what I do is I outline what are the most important skills that I want to be working on in my life and then every quarter map the projects that I am doing to those, and I realized that if my projects are not aligning with these specific habits then I’m not going in the direction that I want. So let’s do a concrete example of this.

For me, these are diet, exercise, personal finance, family and friends. There also could be something like, if you go through traditional like definitions I’ve read of job satisfaction, it would be something like autonomy or competence, relatedness, maybe creativity impact. I think these broad categories and then I map all my projects to them.

And if you have job, well, so anybody who has a job is going to have to do some projects that don’t align with these, but you can know you’re doing the right direction, you can know you’re pointing the right way if most of the projects you’re or most of the hours that you’re spending are building up these kind of recursive self-improvement habits. These ones are going to get better over time and superpower you, like they give you these superpowers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. That’s exciting. I’d love to dig deep into one of them. Let’s talk about focus because I think that’s highly applicable for professionals who have a lot of things coming at them from a lot of places. So how would you recommend starting to grow your capacity to focus such that it’s recursive and building on itself in becoming all the more awesome?

Danny Dover
Well, the most recent book I wrote, it’s called The Minimalist Mindset. It’s entirely about just focus. Focus is a very, very big topic. And funny enough, I think it’s one that doesn’t get enough attention even though we’re in a world where it’s very hard to focus and like there’s more need for focus than ever.

The way to become focused is to figure out what it is that you want to be focused on first, so prioritizing as we just covered. I use this tool called the Go Web but you can use any kind of prioritization system that you want and that works for you, and then being ruthless about eliminating distractions or anything that is not serving you.

So if you want to have extraordinary results, again, you have to really be persistent about being ruthless of eliminating any avenues you might have for failure. So this could be as simple as a clean desk. I mean, that’s the kind of advice I hear on like every podcast including yours. Your last guest, I think, spoke a lot about this and did a nice job on it.

But it’s also making sure you don’t have too many things on your plate, too many responsibilities. It’s about saying no and then consistently doing it which is hard. This reminds of a Steve Martin quote, “Perseverance is great substitute for talent.” I think that is a great way of looking at it. If you can just persistently say no to things that are not important and have an eye and understanding of what is important in your life then you’re setting yourself up on a very, very good path for potential success by however you want to measure that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to hear a few more things              that are great to eliminate, you know, one is clutter from a desk, another is many, many commitments. Are there sort of particular commitments or distractors that are particularly pernicious?

Danny Dover
Yeah, so this book I wrote called The Minimalist Mindset is a book about minimalism. And minimalism is usually applied to things, so this would be like having less clothes so that you don’t have to spend your creative energy picking out clothes in the morning, right? And that’s how minimalism is usually looked at, which is I think a good idea.

But I think the real beauty of minimalism is it applies to everything. So this could apply to your friendships, this could apply to your email, this can apply to your car, it can apply to anything you want. So I want to go give you an example that’s not the common one. So I’m going to avoid email just because that comes up in lots of podcasts episodes. Inbox Zero is a great way to do it. I’m looking at a tool called SaneBox. There’s a Cliff Notes version of how I got my email under control.

But let’s try to do something like priorities because that ends being the hardest one from a professional perspective. Let’s kind of dive into that a little bit. So what’s happening with a job, from my understanding, is that what you’re trying to do is trade time for money. And in doing so, if you’re working for somebody else, which almost all of us are, be it a client, be it a boss, then you are helping them achieve their dream rather than you necessarily achieving your dream. And you have to do this to start this when you don’t have a lot of leverage professionally because you need money and you need to pay your bills.

But I think it becomes very tempting to continue to prioritize all the things that your boss or your clients are prioritizing so that you can get more and more money so you can upgrade your lifestyle, so you can kind of go down this path. And, again, that works for everybody. But, for me, as a minimalist, I eventually got to a point where I had enough career capital, enough leverage where I could say, “You know what, I’m doing okay and I’d rather focus on these other things that I’ve already established as important in my life.” So, in my case, my life list.

So I was able to take these things that I had a focus on and then realizing kind of take a step back and be like, “Well, whose dream do I really want to accomplish here? Is it help my millionaire boss get more money? Or is it that I want to have more flexibility and freedom in my life, and in my family and friends’ lives?” And so I kind of took a turn there and started to persist in those directions, making things work that way. And that kind of is a rabbit hole as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I’d love to hear, as you’re being ruthless, as you’re saying no to things, any pro tips on how to do that in the kindest or best way possible?

Danny Dover
Yeah, this is a very hard thing, and I want to make sure that that part is clear, that saying no, I think people gloss over how difficult that is, but a lot of times it’s saying no to like your significant other or saying no to someone who has a lot of professional leverage over you, that’s very difficult.

The only ways I found to do this is to create scripts so that’s as easy for you and reflexive for you as possible. If you’re very clear on what the direction you do want to go in, it gives you this motivation to do these uncomfortable things of saying no to people you may really legitimately care about.

So for professional, I’ll do an email script, so I’ve written up a very polite way of saying no that says basically the idea is that, “Currently I have too much responsibilities on my plate. I want to make sure I give everyone my all with those. I’m happy to meet with you or I’m happy to work on your project…” whatever the context is, “…but it has to be after I finish my current obligations. I don’t like being this busy, and so I’m taking active steps to make sure that’s not the case going forward”

So I have a written out email that already says this. I’ve massaged all the wording so that this is crystal clear and that’s what I’ll send. And it’s just for me, it’s two keystrokes. I run a Mac and you can just build this. It’s built into the operating system to do shortcuts with texts. So I think I just typed in, “Nob,” so nob I think is the word and it does that on my email, and then I hit send. And then I go on the next thing.

If it’s a significant other, it’s a lot harder. It’s working with your family and your friends so they can understand what it is you’re up against and what it is you’re trying to achieve so they can understand why you’re prioritizing things you are rather than just saying no. It’s giving them a fuller understanding of the why you’re saying no and let them know that the no is a temporary no so you can pursue this other thing so that you can make everybody’s life – so this would be your friends, family – make everybody’s life a little bit better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very nice. So, let’s see, I had all these things I want to hear from you, and I think we’ve covered a good bit. When it comes to habits, you’ve focused in on here’s something that’s worth developing as a habit and we’ve said no to a lot of other things in order to make that happen and to dig deep because it is recursive and has great cool accumulative effects.

What are your perspectives on getting that habit to really stick in terms of, “I am embarking upon this. I want this to be a habit in my life”? What do I do to ensure that I can make that happen and not fall off the wagon?

Danny Dover
Well, the first thing I do is I put it out there into the world that I’m working towards this habit. So be it weight loss or be it exercise or be it Inbox Zero or whatever it is. Put it out in the world so that you have this positive peer pressure working for you. You could also word this as working against you. But it works in your favor because people are going to check in on this.

From then, I make sure that I have plans for your bad days because there’s nothing I found that I can do to eliminate bad days or days when you don’t have motivation. And so I pre-plan some simple alternatives to make sure I do my full prep.

So if this is exercising, this would be saying, okay, if you’re having a bad day, or today you’re traveling or it’s going to be really hard for you to do a run, for example, then what I’m going to do is I’m going to have this exercise, put into notes on my phone so I know exactly what it is. I’m already have looked at what all the positions are so that I know this, so there’s nothing to stop me there, and then I’m just going to do it in the clothes that I’m wearing. So this wouldn’t be a run, this would be something like a series of like jumping jacks and pushups and sit-ups that kind of thing, where you don’t need equipment.

So I pre-plan for bad days and I make it crystal clear on what I’m going to do on days where I don’t have the option of doing what I’m supposed to be doing. So that example was with exercise. You could also do this with, say, email or you could do this with kind of any other area in my life as I pre-plan for them.

And the last one here is rekindling what it is that inspired me to start this to begin with. So this is almost always YouTube videos for me. So what I’ve realized is that I can get into to, say, Day 20 of doing a new habit, be it exercise or be it, right now, I’m learning to base guitar. And what I found is that like Day 1 and 2 are easy basic, like kind of easy because you have a lot of motivation. Day 3 is always really hard because your motivation is a little bit low, and you don’t really have that willpower as strongly as you did the first two days.

And so what I found is that I go on Day 3 or Day 4, I’ll go re-watch that initial spark that made me be inspire to do this job to begin with. So, again, I said this is usually YouTube videos, sometime this will be a conversation with a friend or whatnot. But then I’ll do that again like 10 days later so that works out to Day 13 or Day 14.

And then any other times I stumble past that point where I’m not going to make it to a true ingrained habit, usually depending on the research or who you’re reading, is like Day 22 or Day 30. I make sure that I get those re-boost of the original inspiration source, multiple times at point when it’s particular important.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing that you can often pinpoint the original inspiration source. I’m curious, are there particular YouTube channels that you’re watching. Where are you going to pack such a punch?

[00:33:03]

Danny Dover
We’ll come back to that a little bit. So it’s important to note that sometimes watching this same video over and over again is not going to quite do it. Although there are some videos which I’m happy to share with you on the show notes, that really every time I watch them really get me going again. But it’s more like I’ll find a particular, with the base guitar I’ll find a particular artist. I really like Flea, and re-watch some new stuff that he’s done or stuff that I haven’t seen is really a better way of saying that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So understood. So the source of inspiration there. Now if you want to create habits of focus, for example, and you are seeking a source of inspiration, I’m wondering if a video would, what video would do it, it’s like, “Check out that guy,” not looking at his face, but it seems to be I’m fired up. What would it be?

Danny Dover
Well, in that case it could be that video is not the best way to do it. I’m certainly open to that. But if I was trying to do focus, I might look at something that someone has accomplished as a result of their focus and focusing on that. So that could be a great business person or a great sports star and their highlight reel, something along those lines, or spending some time with someone who I really admire who does a great job with their family and to see how it is they’re focusing on their children and just watch that again. I mean, maybe that’d be an offline example that is better applied here.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. And then I’m almost seeing, in my mind’s eye, I’m picturing just sort of like a pulled quote and a graphic of the person’s face, and them sort of articulating that sort of decision or philosophy whether it’s entrepreneur or someone that you’re looking up to, like they have attributed their success to a thing.

Danny Dover
I’m reading the book Black Swan right now and it seems to be at this point in the book that the major thesis is saying that some things that happen to us are very random, and very often humans do not take randomness enough and do account when they’re looking at back at their college life.

So one of the key examples, I don’t remember if it’s from this book or from something else that I read, Steve Jobs looking back at his life, and he does the famous commencement speech which is a great YouTube video. I bet you more than half of your listeners have watched that. But what he’s failing to do is understand a lot of the other things that happened in his life that he didn’t have any control over, any responsibility over but also helps him enable these.

So, yes, he’s certainly used some habits to make these things occur, but it also just so happen that he was born during a time when computers weren’t even possible to develop, and there’s also ripe given the marketplace for it. Those are the things that he didn’t have any control over. So these ae kind of the exceptions that break the rule, and I think humans overly attribute their own amazingness to their past accomplishments.

So I’m trying now, I’m reading this book. I’m trying to apply that to my life as much as possible. You can do things that open up opportunity for you but you’re not going to be able to control those opportunities and how they play out. You’re only going to be able to prepare yourself for the potential for an opportunity.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. You know, it’s not sort of “if this then that” kind of direct line of “because Steve Jobs did not check his email” I don’t know “early in the morning, then if I don’t do that I, too, will achieve his results.” But, nonetheless, it seems like that theme associated with identifying the patterns that you want to model or the spark of inspiration that is compelling for you will push you, even if, hey, even if we’re deceiving ourselves a smidgeon along the way to get there.

Danny Dover
Yeah, I mean, I’d be this role of randomness is a very positive thing in my life so if you want to say that like the habits that you’re doing and the opportunities you’re trying to present for yourself or you just throwing spaghetti on the wall, then by all means throw more spaghetti but just acknowledge that even if…there is going to be a degree of randomness to this.

And I find this is a nice thing because if I fail at something and it seems like I was doing everything right, it makes me realize, “Hey, you know what, the world is actually much more complex than I understand. There are other things that play here. It doesn’t mean that I’m a failure because I fail at this particular thing. It just means it didn’t happen this time.” So I see this, the role of randomness, as a very positive thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay. Cool. Well, Danny, tell me, anything else you want to cover before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Danny Dover
I do. I want to talk about mistakes that I’ve seen lots of my friends make professionally, and then I think they can be very valuable if people were able to get better at it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Danny Dover
So the most common professional mistake that I’m seeing with friends and family members and other people like clients that I have is that they’re not showing the right kind of value to the right people. A lot of people that I work with or have worked with in the past try to demonstrate their value by putting in lots and lots of hours.

And while in some, like especially the taxing emotions for most of my time has been that can show value – it doesn’t necessarily show the value to the right people, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re getting the right things done.

So what I’ve tried to do instead is really hyper focus and work these people to make sure that they’re demonstrating the right kind of value, so understand what their goals are from their boss which, actually I found is they can just ask their boss and that enlightens people a lot. They work on something, and I’ve done this many times, I’d work on a project for six months, nine months, and while my boss thought that it was interesting or good, I didn’t realize that it was not the thing that was most important to them or that it would solve their bigger hanging problem.

And just by having that simple coffee conversation with them, asking them what their biggest problems they run into, now I can understand what the right value is. And then showing this to the right person. So it’s easy to show value to your boss because they’re checking on you and they’re making sure you’re providing value for the business.

But what turns up to be more important is to show value many times to your boss’ boss because they’re going to be ones who are going to be – information about you is going to be new because they don’t see you every day, and they’re probably the ones who can make decisions that are going to impact you in a way that you’re able to leapfrog in your career as opposed to just move up incrementally.

So what I’ve been doing with that is sending out, and I have an email script for this, but a polite way of trying to have a very casual coffee with your boss’ boss, if that applies, or just with the head of the company, the CEO or whatnot, and just trying to understand their problems and then demonstrating that you have some value without stepping toe on the toes of anyone who you’re directly working for and just saying, “Hey, I’m here to help. I’m interested in what is you see as good employees. I’m interested to see where you think the company is going. I’m interested to see what your priorities are with everything just so that I can be on the same page with you and help eliminate kind of silos that kind of stuff.”

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

Danny Dover
Yeah, I’m a big fan of quotes so I have lots of them, but the one that has been resonating with me lately is one that my bartending instructor gave me years ago at a bartending school, he said, “Everything that we are is revealed by how we play.” That really struck me because I think a lot of people spend a lot of time, myself included, overthinking things. I do this probably worse than anybody. But when your shields are down, it’s when you’re actively playing that I think your true essence really shows itself. And I’ve been trying to remind myself of that more and more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Danny Dover
Favorite book. Hands down it’s The Alchemist. It’s the only book I re-read every year. The Alchemist is really a beautiful wonderful story.

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

Danny Dover
Gap tape. So gap tape is very much like duct tape but it doesn’t leave residue and it doesn’t melt in high temperatures. Of course, if you put it on the sun it would but generally speaking it doesn’t.

Pete Mockaitis
So this is for like your studio setup?

Danny Dover
Yeah, I mean, but I travel with this so there’s been lots of times when – you can use tape for anything, right? But this’ll be that I’m fixing some clothes. This will be patching a tent. This will be earplugs. I probably shouldn’t have done that but I have. I mean, gaff tape is just solves all kinds of problems that know has such an expansive way of solving problems. So, yeah, gaff tape, you can buy it on Amazon or anywhere.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. And how about a favorite habit? Of all these we’ve discussed, is there on you think is evermore key for you?

Danny Dover
Boy, I mean, I don’t have a specific habit but I would say a general good direction going is to read more autobiographies. So if you want to make that into a smart goal it would be read, say, 15 autobiographies by December 31, 2018.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And is there a particular nugget you share that seems to really connect and resonate with folks who hear them repeat it back to you?

Danny Dover
Yes. Okay, so this has to do with the human eyeball. This is something that comes back to me, and I haven’t heard people say it to me verbatim, but I’ve heard them express this same idea so I like it. So if you look at the human eyeball from an evolutionary standpoint, how we got it to where it is now, there’s at least one interesting thing about it, but I’m sure there’s many.

The typical men’s eyeball compared to the typical women, I want to make it clear that, of course, there’s going to be some variations here so I’m making a very big jump here by just saying that men versus women. But it’s more complicated than that but I’m going to.

So men’s, if you look at their eyeballs, it’s developed in a way where the visual perspective is relatively laser focus when compared to a typical female eyeball for humans, whereas women’s are very, very broadly focused. And so it’s unclear exactly what’s the reason for this but the best guess that I’ve heard from an evolutionary standpoint is that men developed narrow visual focus for hunting.

It’s very important to know exactly where the animal is and have that laser focus, whereas women’s evolutionary spent a lot of time taking care of children, and children are running around all over the place, and there’s lots of things going on at the same time so having a broader focus would be something helpful there.

And I like this from a humor perspective because it explains perfectly well why man checks out a woman, it’s very obvious. But when a woman checks out a man it’s not quite as obvious. But where I actually find value in this is that this is a really beautiful vivid picture of understanding alternative perspectives.

It’s very easy to get caught in your head where you believe that everybody lives in the same world as you. But with this example, it’s not that only do people think differently from you, which is kind of obvious, but it’s also a bit, in this example, half the population is going to see the world differently than you, and they’re going to experience the world differently from you because visual, your eye, is such an important sense for how you experience the world.

So I really like this idea of understanding how just that small subtle change can really make a vastly different world from different people’s point of views.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Danny Dover
Go to LifeListed.com in the About page there, so lifelisted.com/about. It’s got all the contact information, much more information about my story.

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

Danny Dover
Sure. If you’re interested in learning more about focus and an alternative way of trying to develop that in your life, check out my latest book The Minimalist Mindset. You can find it any bookstore or on Amazon.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, Danny, thanks so much for chatting here, and I wish you luck with the subsequent goals that you are establishing for yourself, and it seems like you’ve got a heck of a track record so it’d be cool to see what unfolds here.

Danny Dover
Well, thank you, and thanks to all the listeners for spending time with us today. We both really very much appreciate it.

Mar 21

276: Reframing Rejection with Alex Grodnik

By Podcasts One Comment

 

Alex Grodnik says: "You're not going to get what you don't ask for."

Alex Grodnik shares why he loves hearing no, how to respond rejection, and what to do when being ghosted.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why no is not the end but only the beginning
  2. The prescription to overcome your fear of rejection
  3. How to reframe a no

About Alex

Alex began his career as an analyst at JPMorgan Private Bank. After completing the program, he moved into investment banking at Houlihan Lokey in their restructuring group. Alex went on to work at a pioneering digital media firm before getting his MBA at UCLA Anderson. Alex grew up in Park City, Utah and loves to ski and golf.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

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

Alex Grodnik
Pete, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me too. And I think we’ve got a lot of great stuff to cover. But, first, I want to get your take on, I’ve learned that you had the idea for Uber years before the Uber people founded Uber. What’s the story here?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, so I was actually really fortunate. I got to grow up in Park City, Utah, which for those of you that don’t know is a small ski town about 30 miles outside of Salt Lake. It’s where all of the 2002 Winter Olympics Skiing events were held. So, you know, it’s a little ski town, everything just revolves around skiing.

And once a year there, there’s also happens to be Sundance Film Festival in February. And so growing up there with Sundance, it’s a fun time. There would be hundreds of thousands of people, movie stars and Hollywood people that would come to Park City, and it was kind of a unique period.

And so going to high school there, I saw in my little town, it doesn’t really have the infrastructure built to have hundreds of thousands people here at a given time. And one of the things I saw is that there’s no taxi system, there’s no way for anyone to get around. So I had this idea, “Hey, my mom has an SUV. What if I turned her car into a taxi during Sundance, for the two weeks that Sundance happen?”

And so I went to Home Depot and I got some fluorescent letters that said “TAXI” and I put them on the side of the car, on the back of the car. And, also, my dad did some work with police in one of his prior careers. And so we had one of those like undercover spinning lights that you plug into your cigarette lighter and like it magnets to the top of your car.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, wow.

Alex Grodnik
And completely illegal but would actually blind people when they saw it but would definitely get people’s attention. So I’m armed with fluorescent taxi letters all over the car and a spinning red police light, and I set out into Park City, and I’m picking people up. And it wasn’t even 30 seconds before I picked my first person up, and they were from England, and they got in the car, and I drove them somewhere five minutes away.

And they said, “Okay, how much do we owe you?” And I kind of froze, and I was like, “Oh, I hadn’t really thought about how to charge.” So I said, “Well, you can just give me a tip.” And they gave me $20.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Alex Grodnik
And I said, “Wow, I just made $20 for driving someone for about five minutes in my car. Maybe there’s something to this.” And it didn’t stop from there. For the first, probably six hours, I maybe had like 95% utilization, just dropping someone off, picking the next person up. Because, I mean, there were no cars for anyone to take.

So I came home on that first night about 8:00 o’clock, my parents were out to dinner, and my brother – I was like 17 at the time, and I think my brother was probably 13. And my brother was there, I roll out, you know, must’ve been like $600 or $700 on the floor. And he and I were like rolling around in it like we’re Richie Rich.

And I’m like, “Man, Jake, there’s something to this.” So I go back out, and I’m driving down main street of my town with this light spinning and say TAXI all over my car. And before you know it, the police pulled me over, and they’re like, “Where is your business license? Where’s your regular license? What are you doing here?”

And I’m like, “You know, I go to high school here. I’m not trying to do something…” And they’re like, “Just stop doing this. This is ridiculous. You can’t do any of this thing. You have an illegal police light, you’re saying TAXI.” So I go home and I’m like, “Man, I have to keep this going, I can’t take a no here.”

So I went back to Home Depot and I got some letters that said FREE RIDES TAXI and took off the light, still going around town doing this, and then I got pulled over again. And they said, “You can’t say TAXI. You’re not a taxi. You don’t have a business license.” So, fine, got rid of the taxi, still say FREE RIDES, and it did nothing to deter the demand.

So, for the next two weeks, I’m driving non-stop after school driving till 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, picking people. I’ve got three of my friends involved in it. They took their parents’ SUVs and they slapped FREE RIDES on it, and we had kind of a militia of high school students driving people around town.

And now, fast forward to today, Uber actually brings in a bunch of cars and, you know, there’s Uber in Park City and they bring in a bunch of stuff for the Festival. But when I did this, there was nothing. And so it’s kind of like I always bump into some police or something when I go back to Park City and kind of everyone remembers this story.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fun. Well, so with the militia then, you had multiple cars doing numerous nights unimpeded by the police once you called it FREE RIDES?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I mean, I still got pulled over one more time, and they took about a half hour, and they came back to us and they said, “Okay. Just be safe.” That was a complete loophole.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, well, that’s fun and intriguing. Well, I love it. So it’s not just like you thought of it, you really took some action, and that’s pretty cool. And I only thought of the Airbnb concept before Airbnb existed, and I had a buddy make a little PowerPoint talking about what he thought it would take to get the software up and going. We’re like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool. Maybe later.”

So that’s cool. Taking action. That’s awesome. And so I want to talk in large part about you and not taking no sort of as you illustrated here. But, first, I want to get a little bit of context prior to. So you got Wall Street Oasis, and that is a website I’ve been to many times. But could you orient folks, what’s the site about? And what’s your new podcast there about?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, absolutely. So Wall Street Oasis is a big finance community on the website, on the internet. It’s been around for over 10 years and it’s one of the most active finance communities online. It gets about a million unique visitors per month with people coming there looking for topics like how to break into investment banking, how to study for the GMAT, industry group specific stuff within investment banking, private equity, hedge funds. It’s pretty much the go-to place for people beginning a finance career.

And, recently, we’ve launched a podcast. And so the way that I came to it is I just graduated from business school. I got my MBA from UCLA, and I started a podcast, and the guys at Wall Street Oasis heard it, they liked it, and they said, “Why don’t you just have your podcast come live on our site?” And so for the last six months, we’ve been having a podcast where we speak with really just influential business leaders, most of them are in finance but a lot aren’t.

And we talk about secrets to success, the ups, the downs, optimal career paths, and really just life in general with founders, people like the CEO and founder of Google Voice, investment bankers who love investment banking, people who used to work in investment banking and have left for entrepreneurial pastures or greener pastures, all sorts of just interesting human stories.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So optimal career paths, have you sort of synthesized any kind of key takeaways or themes that show up again and again when it comes to getting an optimal career path?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah. So, you know, it’s interesting. A lot of the kind of key takeaways from the podcast kind of come congealed to – one of them is like really finding the right people who complement you. And that was something that Craig Walker, he’s the guy who founded Google Voice and who, now, has been a serial entrepreneur.

But he attributes a lot of the success that he’s had in his career to positioning himself around just other smart people, people that complement his skillsets. And we’ve also had discussions about the importance of networking with your peers, and not just networking with the guys who are running the show, but networking with your peers can be as beneficial as networking with bosses because, as you and your peers progress, they’re eventually are going to be the ones running the show. And so that’s also super important.

We talk about breaking down success and how defining success is really important, and how putting a process around that. So lots of interesting tidbits that have come from the podcast which has been really, really fun to do and get these first hand.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool, yes. Well, so I’m intrigued when it comes to career paths. So I’ve been to Wall Street Oasis for all sorts of little questions. It seems like Google loves it. So, hey, that’s cool. All sorts of questions. I’m remember when I was researching dress shoes, it seems like many, many forum posts, had to do with dress shoes and the hierarchy of prestige or quality to them.

But I think a much more substantive question is when it comes to MBAs, masters of business administration degrees, you got one, and you’re thinking a lot about career paths and career advice.

I know this is a hot topic. I know people who got an MBA and regret it, say, “Why did I spend that time and money?” I know people who got an MBA and say, “They were the best two years of my life. I figured out so much stuff. It’s been so instrumental in opening doors.” What’s your take on that one?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s a tough question. It’s a unique question given for every single person. And I think if you go to a top 30 program, right? I mean, there’s 25, 30 great business schools. It’s going to be very tough to regret it in a long-term picture. I mean, it is an action-packed very, very fast-moving fun couple of years.

I mean, the experiences that you have are life-changing. The people that you meet are life-changing. But you’re getting at a good point. It is expensive. You might be giving up – you know, look at my perspective, I gave up a job where I was making six figures for two years, and then you’re paying six figures to go to school. So, then, the huge, huge commitment.

Really, on the financial return side, it makes a lot of sense. If you come from a, I don’t know, I’m going to call an obscure background, just not a traditional background or any traditional background but you want to move into a different career path, you want to go work for a big company. So, say, you want to go work for Bain or a different management consulting company, or an investment bank, or Amazon.

Amazon was actually the number one recruiter out of my class. These are window jobs, and windows open up to get these jobs right after undergrad and then they close. And then another window opens up again right after business school. And so if you want to go work for GE or Amazon or JP Morgan – great, you go to business school, you come into business school, you leave your job paying $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 and you get a job that pays you $200,000, and it’s a pretty quick return on investment, right?

From my perspective, I left a job paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars, and now I go to business school and I spent another $100,000. And now I’m at a job that’s paying me literally hundreds of dollars per week. So my return is going to be a little bit longer but there’s no way that I regret going to business school. The connections and experiences that I had I think are going to be fruitful for me for my entire life.

You know, I went to business school at UCLA. I planned on living my whole life in Los Angeles. So these connections, you know, the 50, 100 connections that I have are really going to, I think, prove beneficial for me throughout my career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. Thank you. Well, one more appetizer, if I may, before we jump into the meat of things. I would love to get your take, you know, bankers and finance folks, there are some associations and some stereotypes, whether they come from movies or the imagination of folks. So having lived it and seen a lot of commentary around it through Wall Street Oasis, what general tidbits might you share in terms of when it comes to banker perception and stereotypes? Which of them are generally true versus generally false versus really vary a lot person-to-person?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, so I did banking for a short time in New York, but mostly I did it in Los Angeles. And while investment bankers are pretty similar across, I mean, you’re going to have much more stereotypical investment bankers in New York than you are in L.A.

But, you know, just like anything else, stereotyping and grouping people is kind of like a lazy way to look at it. Every single person is unique. But I can tell you that most investment bankers tend to be intelligent, driven, and bitter. You know, bitter after one year on the job, I would say. Optimistic, pie-eyed optimistic, zero years into the job. And then after one year, maybe a little bitter.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say bitter, like bitter about what or in what ways?

Alex Grodnik
You know, it’s tough. You have thought for so long that you want to do investment banking, and you get this job and really you’re just elated, and they’re paying you lots of money. I mean, you make well into the hundred thousands dollars your first year out of undergrad. And you think, “Oh, man, I want to go really just light the world on fire here.”

But then you start to realize that a big piece of that large compensation really is to compensate you for giving up your entire life. So you really have very, very little clarity into when you’re going to be working and when you’re not going to be working. I mean, basically, the idea is you’re going to be working around the clock.

I mean, I can’t tell you how many times there were when it’s Friday, at 5:30, and I’m thinking, “Yes, I am getting out of here. I’m going to go get dinner with my girlfriend. I text her, “Let’s get dinner. Cancel your plans.” And 15 or 20 minutes later, you got make that terrible phone call where, “Hey, sorry, I actually got a bunch of work. And not only am I not going to see you tonight, I’m not going to see you tomorrow, and I’m not going to see you Sunday either.”

And so that gets old. And investment banking, it’s an incredible place to begin your career. They say it’s like dog years. You get seven years’ worth of experience for every one year of work. And it is. You learn a lot, you get incredible access to management teams and investors and boards of directors, and you’re at the top level of the capital structure but you have to sacrifice a lot for it. And it’s definitely a tradeoff that people are usually not fully aware of when they’re making the decision to get into it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you. Well, cool. So, now, I’ve sort of scratched the itch of curiosity. I had a few things I wanted to hear you tackle. So, now, I want to hear a little bit about one of your superpowers which is not taking no for an answer. What do you mean by that? And how can we implement some of this wisdom?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, what do I mean by not taking no? It’s pretty simple. If someone tells you no, for me, that gets me excited because it’s like, “Okay, now my skills and expertise get to shine. I get to find a creative way, a loophole, a workaround,” just like what I did with that taxi story at the beginning, but it’s pretty much what my entire career has been based off of, of not just taking no and chasing the goals and accomplishments that you want to achieve.

And so, as applied in my life, I got into a college that was kind of above my punching weight. Then I graduated from that college in 2009 and I got into investment banking right in the middle of the financial crisis, you know. And then I got a different job in investment banking. And now, after business school, I’m a first-time entrepreneur, I’ve got a startup, I’m raising venture financing for it. And I’ve been told no probably over a hundred times trying to raise money for it, and it’s exciting for me when that happens because that’s when you start to get creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool to hear. And there’s so much to unpack there. When you say you heard no over a hundred times, this is just bringing me back to when I wrote my first book, it was about leadership in student organizations. I wrote it in college, it’s available for free at studentleadership.com but not super relevant to what we’re doing here.

And it was interesting because I wrote all of these query letters, these one-page notes to publishers and agents, and like day after day after day, I would get a bundle of letters back in the mail, old-fashioned snail mail, that say no, no, no in differing sorts of ways. And, occasionally, they’re like, “Yes, go ahead and send me a proposal.” And one turned into a deal which I ended up declining and self-publishing.

Anyway, but it was very therapeutic for me in terms of saying, “You know what, this doesn’t really hurt or sting that much, hitting it again and again and again.” And so you have called that rejection therapy. I don’t know if that’s an Alex original or if you’re borrowing that from somewhere, but I love that turn of a phrase. Can you expand upon that?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, rejection therapy, it’s not my phrase. It’s out there in the public domain, but it’s really just reducing the fear of rejection by exposure, by exposing yourself to it. It’s similar to someone who’s afraid of germs, they’re afraid of germs. And you go and you touch the railway going down to the subway in New York City every day. Over time you’re not going to be afraid of germs any longer.

So it’s desensitizing yourself to that fear. And it doesn’t have to be big things. There’s really one rule to it is that you need to be rejected by another person every day. And so, really, asking someone for a stick of gum, or a ride across town, or to borrow 50 cents, or for a high five, or to take a picture with you. All of these things in the beginning are hard to do. It’s hard to ask someone for a stick of gum.

By day five, by day six, by day seven, it’s definitely not hard anymore, and all of a sudden, bigger things. Asking for promotions at work, or raises at your job, or someone to go out on a date with you become not hard. You become desensitized to being afraid of no.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. That’s a powerful thought there. And so I guess I’m wondering a little bit when it comes to all of this asking, is there a risk of becoming a taker, you know, in terms of you just are freely asking and having so much with it that you’re sort of receiving more than you’re giving out in the professional or a karmic context?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, of course, there is. And you have to be mindful of that. I mean, we’re all human beings, we all want things, and we all generally like to help others. And so if you make it easy for someone to help you, that’s usually a pretty good thing and they’re usually pretty amendable to doing that.

On the same side, if someone asks you for something, going through this process, you become more humble. There’s a sense of humility that kind of comes over you as you go through this rejection process because you start to see that really no one cares. Like if you asks someone for something or like you raise your hand in a class, or you ask a question in a meeting, you might think it’s a big deal, but everyone is really so concerned with themselves and so caught up in what they’re trying to get and their goals and their achievements, that no one is thinking about your silly question or something you asked them for.

And so, really, you just come to the realization that it just doesn’t matter. And by putting yourself out there, there’s really only good to be come from it. And, yes, of course, you don’t want to be like that guy that’s asking, asking, asking and bothering people and pestering people. But there’s a fine balance to it, and I’m sure the listeners of this podcast are smart enough to determine that balance for themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, now, I want to zoom back to you said when you hear a no you get kind of excited. And you said that’s because it seems like it doesn’t even register that this is the end or that the door has been closed to you but rather you’re being presented with an interesting challenge. Can you expand upon that a little bit in terms of, you know, what is going on in your brain and the emotional makeup when you hear the no?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, so there’s obviously something missing inside, there’s something amiss inside of me that I need to fill it up with challenges all day long, but that’s a story for another podcast. But, yeah, really, the interesting part is, okay, so you get told no, and to a lot of people that’s the end of it. To me, that’s really the beginning of it because now, it’s like, “Okay, my creative juices start to flow,” and you get to think, “How can I get around this?”

And so it’s not even something that I’m doing consciously. It’s just like the taxi story. You tell me I can’t have taxi on my car, and immediately my mind just says FREE RIDES. I’m not afraid that the police have me pulled out of the car on the side of the street. I’m thinking, “Okay, how can I keep this going? How can I get around this?”

Very similar to what I told you about raising capital for the startup I’m working on. This is something I’m going through right now. Like I said, we’ve spent, we’ve hundreds of conversations at least, no, no, no, no, no, no, no at breakfast, no at lunch, no at dinner, no at cocktails. And I thought, “Okay, clearly there needs to be a better way to do this.”

And so I actually recently came up with a better way that I just started implementing so I don’t really have success metrics around it yet. But I’ve been asking a lot of these investors, instead of, “Hey, can we have a meeting for the startup?” I say, “Hey, do you want to be a guest on my podcast?” And, Pete, it’s amazing, all of these big time major venture capitalists, they love talking about themselves, and they want to be on the podcast.

And so I say, “Hey, will you be on the podcast?” And they say, “Oh, man, I’m honored. I’d love to be on the podcast. Send me your startup deck. I’d love to look at that as well.” It’s like it’s incredible the results that we’re seeing. We went from like seeing like 10% success rates up to close to 40% success rates. And so it’s early days. I don’t have millions of dollars of funding to show for it yet but invite me back in a few more months and I’m sure I will.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool, certainly. And I find that, with the podcast analogy, well, it’s not an analogy, the practice that you’re employing, I can kind of relate to, in that it’s really just so much a matter of is your first kind of request or impression, one, in which you are giving, you’re offering something versus you’re taking something.

And it’s intriguing to me how, I suppose, when folks reach out to me with a guest pitch, like, “Hey, I want to be on your show,” or, “I’m a publicist, I represent this client. I want to be on your show.” It’s like, you know, I’m automatically biased to say no because, I don’t know, 95% plus of those requests are just fall dead. So nice job, Alex, you got in. You’re an elite, 5% are there.

So I was compelled, you know, because it was relevant and authoritative and engaging and unheard of Wall Street Oasis, like, “Oh, cool. Yeah, let’s talk.” So that worked out. But on the flipside, if someone is kind of being generous, like, “Hey, would you like to appear on my podcast?” Like, “Oh, well, yes, thank you.” And then it’s just sort of naturally inside me, and vice versa, is what I’m seeing.

Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, would vouch for this. It’s like there’s this natural reciprocity. It’s like, “You know what, someone gave me something, and I’m inclined to say yes because, you know, it’s beneficial for me so, sure, I’ll say yes. And then as a result, I get to know that person, I’ve got a bit of relationship with that person. I like that person, having had a little bit of a back and forth. And I kind of want to reciprocate. It’s like, you know, that person was helpful to me. I feel like it would just only be right for me to, if possible, try a little harder to maybe find a potential fit in the podcast for them, and to say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going for. You give me some topics. Those aren’t any good. Give me some more…’”

You know, it’s like, suddenly, whereas they had to like nail it the first time with the perfect thing I needed to hear, now it’s like I’m helping them. it’s like, “No, no, move it a little over this way so we can find a fit.”

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I mean, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s reframing the no and so it’s beneficial to you. I think, Pitbull has this lyric in one of his songs where he says, “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.” And so, really, just re-positioning, thinking creatively, instead of just asking, you know, “What can you do for me?” Maybe offering what you can do for them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And could you give us a few more examples? So, you know, we’ve talked very specifically about, hey, if you happen to have a podcast or a media channel at your disposal, that’s great. Go ahead and offer that up. But what are some other kind of gifts that you recommend offering that can help be door openers?

Alex Grodnik
You know, like in terms of cold-emailing people, there’s kind of an art to it. And, really, you have to be very clear with your ask. And so when you’re sending someone a cold email, you have to say, “Well, what am I looking for here? Yes, at the end of the day, I’m looking for a job, or I’m looking for an investment in my company.”

But there’s sometimes three, four, five, maybe even ten steps in between the cold email and the end goal. And so I always like to take baby steps. And so the first email says, “Hey, can we have a 10-minute call?” And if we’re in the same city, “Hey, can we grab a 10-minute coffee?”

And, really, just by making it very, very simple and very clear, a very short email, I find that people are much more receptive to that. If you make it easy you can have a calendar invite already in the email so that it’s really straightforward and simple for them.

And from there, you take the call and you turn it into an in-person meeting. You take the in-person meeting and you send them your investor deck or your business pitch. And you take that and you have them meet one of your co-founders or one of your advisors. And it kind of snowballs from there. But you’ve got to be very clear with your ask in the beginning and be very succinct with it as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. So that’s in the asking phase in terms of sort of upgrading folks’ level of commitment and investment and helpfulness toward you. I’d love to hear if you have a few more perspectives in terms of what you can give, what you can offer that is embrace, whether it’s a media opportunity, or what else?

Alex Grodnik
Yes, you know, it’s funny. No one even asks the size of my podcast when I’m saying, “Hey, will you be on my podcast?” So, I mean, it’s growing and I say we’ve been doing it for six months now. But, really, it could be an upstart, and I say, “Hey, come on my podcast,” or, “Hey, I’d love to interview you on my blog,” or, “I would love to get a comment of yours on my Facebook channel.”

There’s really so many ways to engage someone today. And, like I said, people are usually very interested in helping others, and they’re also interested in talking and adding advice, and talking about themselves, something everyone – a common thing. Humans love talking about themselves.

So, if you can get them, instead of asking for what you might really want in step six or seven, just ask them for their advice, how they got to where they are, what they did. People are generally pretty receptive to that. And, fine, if you have some type of outlet, you’ve got a Facebook channel, you’ve got a podcast, you’ve got a YouTube channel, people would be honored as they tell me to come on and help you.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And so then I want to get your take then when instead of maybe, let’s say you don’t get a no but you just get silence, you know. It’s sort of like if you try to make a call, or a voicemail, or an email, or a letter, whatever your mechanism, a tweet. And there’s just sort of nothing on the other end. You know, in a way I’m right with you like, oh, you’re hear a no and that sparks the creative wheels turning, like, “Oh, okay, well, let’s figure out an alternative win.” What happens if it’s just sort of like you can’t even connect with them in the first place?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, and that’s a great question, Pete, and it’s probably the more common scenario. And what I tell youths, I mean, I tell my brother this. My brother is an actor, and I tell him about emailing people, and he does it sometimes, and he’ll come back to me, and say, “You know, I email them, and they don’t email me back. So forget them, that opportunity is dead.”

And I said, “Jake, you sent them one email. Like do you respond to every single email? You have to send them two, three, four emails. I mean, not every day but like send an email, wait eight or nine days. Send another email, ‘Hey, I just wanted to make sure you saw this. Would love to get your advice.’ Another week, week and a half, ‘Hey, sorry for bothering you. This will be my last time. I really just would love to get your insight.’”

And people are busy, they don’t always respond to strangers on the first email. But give them the benefit of the doubt. They generally will respond if you send them a sequence of emails. And there’s tools that can help you to do this. Emailing tools like Mixmax is the one I use. And you can send an original email, and if they don’t respond you can set it for seven, eight, nine, ten days later to send a follow up email.

But, yeah, I mean, I say getting ghosted, again, it’s persistence is kind of also not taking no but, softly, not being a burden to someone.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s encouraging to hear that in your own life and results of emailing. You found that if you do have the persistence to do a triple, over time, you say more often than not, you get something.

Alex Grodnik
You know, I’m not going to say more than 50%, so less often than not. But it’s a numbers thing. If you send enough emails and, yes, you have called a 40% success rate of your three-email chain, then, yeah, those are pretty great numbers.

I mean, cold emails in the world do not have a 40% success rate. I would assume they have like a low single-digit success rate. So if you can get above that by employing some of these tactics I’m talking about, then that’s really great.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And when is it time, you know, to say, “You know, they’ve said no and I’ve kind of come back with a number of creative alternatives. When is it time to say, you know, goodbye for now?”

Alex Grodnik
I would say, you know, sometimes like three contacts is probably enough. You don’t really want to do more than that. And it’s also not to say that that’s dead. When you’re playing these numbers game and you’re sending, you know, a quantity of notes and emails and calls, sometimes things come back from the dead, you know, from weeks and months old.

Once you have enough irons in the fire, all of a sudden, like old things start to come back alive. And it’s really cool when that happens. It’s an incredible testament to just like the effort and the dividends that it starts to pay over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I can admit and attest to that when it comes to podcast guests’ pitches. I have pulled emails like months’ old because I saw them, and I thought, “Oh, that’s kind of interesting. Okay, I’ll put them in. Maybe I’ll look at it later when the guest pipeline is looking a little light folder.” And then when I do look at them closer and see some video, I go, “Oh, wow, what an engaging personality. Yeah, let’s do it.” So that totally happens on my end there.

So, very good. Well, tell me, Alex, anything else you want to make sure to cover before we shift gears and talk about some of your favorite things?

Alex Grodnik
You know, I really just employ everyone to try the rejection therapy. It’s pretty easy. Also, another great way to do it is you go out and grab a turkey sandwich for lunch. You say, “Hey, may I please have a discount on this?” And you will be amazed by how often you get 10% off of a turkey sandwich. And people love to do it, and it’s kind of a funny thing. Because people don’t usually ask that, and so that’s an interesting way to get it. But I really just want to leave with a saying that you’ll never get what you don’t ask for.

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

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I’ve got a bunch of quotes. Actually, I can remember the one from my childhood that was my favorite, was, “The happiness of your life is based on the quality of your thoughts.” And I really like that quote because it kind of goes with happiness is a choice. It’s not a right, it’s not something that you’re automatically going to get.

You need to choose to be happy and you need to seek that out in life. And so I make a conscious effort every day to remind myself that you can choose to be happy. And I also like a quote from Henry Ford, where he says, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Alex Grodnik
You know, I just read Shoe Dogs which was the Nike, Phil Knight memoir. It’s just, again, a story of persistence. Oh, my God, the obstacles that he overcame in starting Nike, and not over a short period of time. Basically like 10 years, the fights with the manufacturing facilities in Asia, and people trying to knock off his shoes, and the retailers. I mean, it was endless. And he just kept going forward. So I really love that.

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

Alex Grodnik
Yes, so I’ve mentioned Mixmax which is the email and calendar sending tool. It’s real simple. It’s like one of these things where someone shares their calendar with you and they send you three or four different times, and you click one and it instantly puts an appointment on both your calendars. It gets rid of the back and forth.

You know, once someone agrees to meeting you, you want to make it as easy as possible for them. And so by just quickly sending five or six different times where they could speak with you, and not having to go back and forth with, “Hey, what works for you. Friday, well, all right. How about the morning?” “No, I can do the morning.” Well, that sucks. So don’t do that.

Also, I recently purchased a thing for $8 which has changed my life. And it is computer glasses, glasses that I wear all day while staring at the screen that blocks some of the UV light from the computer screen. Maybe this is just specific to me, but I would come home from work, you know, after staring at this computer screen for 10 hours, and like my eyes would be so strained and I would have a headache.

I wear this $8-glasses and like my eyes feel like they do right when I wake up in the morning at the end of the day. So that’s an interesting purchase too.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, these computer glasses have come up in a previous conversation when we were talking about sales, and then I had a listener say, “I love computer glasses.” So it’s striking a chord. So then what you’re describing at eight bucks, at the price point then, sounds like it is primarily a matter of just blocking the light and not giving you any sort of prescription, you know, eye correction love. Just a bit of UV or blue light blocking?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I don’t wear glasses. If I did, I would get these lenses put in them, and I’m sure you can get these types of blue light blocking lenses if you already have glasses, at any eye glass place.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so then, tell me, feel free to name the brand. Was it Amazon? Or where did you acquire it? How can we all?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, it is Amazon. I typed in, you know, computer light-blocking glasses, and there are some that are more expensive and actually there was a company that was on Shark Tank last week that’s got another pair of glasses. I think theirs is like $50 or $60. I honestly don’t know what the difference is. My $8 ones are fabulous, so try them out. I mean, I don’t know that they’re the most fashionable but try them out. And if you want to upgrade, you know, upgrade later.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s excellent. Thank you. All right. Cool. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite habit, you know, a personal practice of yours that’s really been helpful?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I’ve got a few. I try and meditate in the mornings. I’m not great about it. They say you’re supposed to do it before coffee, and I really like having coffee first thing. So I’m getting better at practicing meditation in the morning, but the practice I really want to share is a creativity practice.

And so I’ve got about a 30-minute drive to this startup that I work at now, and my old morning routine would be to wake up, you know, consume some online news, and then start listening to podcasts. And I would probably listen to two, three, four podcasts in the morning all sped up one and a half times. And I’d get to work and I’d be a little bit on edge, I’d be stressed out, “Oh, I didn’t get through all my podcasts. I’m listening to fast voices all morning long.”

It really wasn’t the most relaxing start for the day. And you and I both are podcast professionals, we’ve got to listen to a lot of podcasts and know what’s going on out there. So I still listen to podcasts in the morning, but for a piece of my commute now, I don’t listen to a podcast, I turn off the radio, and I sit in silence in my car as I drive to work.

And this is going to sound really funny, but I look at things on the side of the road that I see, and I see a dog on the side of the road, and I’ll start to makeup a story about that dog out loud in my car. I’ll say, “That dog is named, you know, Frisky. And Frisky came on a boat here from China. And on that boat, he made a friend…”

And so, you know, I start to do this. And, Pete, stay with me, it sounds crazy but now when I get to work, I feel like my creativity and my original thinking capabilities are really firing on all cylinders. And it’s been an interesting way to cut back on a lot of the stress that I have in the morning, and start these creative juices flowing.

You know, it wasn’t long ago where we didn’t have smartphones and we weren’t filling every single second of our time being in front of a screen being entertained. We used to have quiet time alone with ourselves. Now we rarely have that. And I think our minds need an outlet for the creativity. I think we all have creativity and creative juices pumping through us. But we need to manifest this, we need to practice this, we need an outlet for them.

And now, you know, by sitting quietly for five or ten minutes, kind of similar to meditating, I let those creative juices flow. And the results have been pretty cool.

Pete Mockaitis
That is intriguing. Well, it’s funny, as you tell the Frisky story, it just brings a smile to my face, and it just seems like a pleasant way to live life in the sense of you’re noticing things, and then you’re allowing to bring into play a little bit. And in so doing, it just makes sense as a natural outcome of that is more free-flowing creative thought.

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, you know, I’m looking forward to having kids because then I won’t be a crazy person telling stories to myself in the car. I can make up stories for my kids and I think that’d be a great outlet for it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And is there a particular nugget or piece of insight that you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, they maybe repeat it back to you?

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I mean, it just kind of harkens back to the not taking no. You know, it’s really just what I said before, is that you’re not going to get what you don’t ask for. And everyone is just trying to have their best and most happy path through life, trying to help others where they can, and there’s a good way to achieve that.

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

Alex Grodnik
Yeah, I’d point them to the podcast WallStreetOasis.com. You’ll find the podcast there. And I’d love to hear any questions as well. You can email me alex@wallstreetoasis.com. Happy to help and anything that I can do.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d share to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Alex Grodnik
Yup, I would say the rejection therapy, do it for 30 days. You’ll be amazed by what comes of it. Like I said in the beginning, it’s very, very, very difficult. And by the end, you will be walking up to strangers in bars, asking them for God knows what, but you’ll have the confidence and humility that you never thought you would have before.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Well, Alex, thank you so much for taking the time here. I wish you tons of luck with the podcast and your fundraising and your storytelling and future child-rearing and all you’re up to.

Alex Grodnik
Pete, thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

Mar 05

269: Why Willpower Doesn’t Work (and What Does) with Benjamin Hardy

By Podcasts 2 Comments

 

 

Benjamin Hardy says: "It's not confidence that leads to success, it's successful behavior that creates confidence."

Medium writer Benjamin Hardy makes the case for why and how to shape our environments to support success.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to use the sunk cost fallacy to your advantage
  2. The definition of a forcing function and how to apply them at work
  3. Why pen and paper beats digital journaling

About Benjamin

Since late 2015, Benjamin has been the #1 writer on Medium.com. Ben’s writing focuses on self-improvement, motivation, and entrepreneurship. His writing is fueled by personal experiences, self-directed education, and formal education. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Clemson University. His research focuses on the psychological differences of wannabe entrepreneurs and actual entrepreneurs (dreamers vs. doers).

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Pete Mockaitis
Ben, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Benjamin Hardy
Thank you, Pete. Very glad to be here with you, man.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so you’ve got a pretty cool claim to fame, and it’s that you are the number one writer on Medium. I guess we measure that in page views by the tens of millions. So, congrats. That’s really cool.

Benjamin Hardy
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
How does that happen?

Benjamin Hardy
I mean, a lot of luck, a lot of good timing, and a lot of things. I mean, I started writing online in 2015 shortly after becoming a foster parent of three kids, was in a PhD program, still in that program actually. I’m almost done. It’s organizational psychology, so I have lots to talk about because it’s psychology of the workforce, how to keep people motivated and whatnot.

But, yeah, I mean, after I became a foster parent it kind of really put a lot of external pressure on me. I’d been wanting to be a writer since 2010, had spent from 2010 to 2015 reading, reading, reading, reading, and I’ve always been an intense journaler. But it was when I became a foster parent actually did that pressure kind of really forced to like think about – think things through.

And then that led me to investing some money into a domain name, an online course that taught me how to write viral articles, and then seeking mentorships. And then just pumping out lots of articles in my spare time and getting lucky and, I mean, I could tell you as much as you want to hear as far as, in my opinion, what makes good writing but, yeah, having lot of…it’s been a fun ride.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I would be intrigued if maybe there is a key principle or rule of thumb or mantra that you keep front and center that contributes, you think, to the success there.

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, yeah, I mean, as far as the marketing, you have to get really, really good at writing headlines and structuring articles in a way that is very easy flowing for people to read. As far as writing, the three components are being very good. You know, you’ve got to be a very good communicator. Being able to weave concepts, principles, stories, so you have to communicate but not just communicate head knowledge.

You have to have the head knowledge which is expertise or something on a topic because if you don’t have that then you just sound like you’re sharing your opinion and it’s not credible. But if you just have the head knowledge, if you’re just writing facts then it’s not compelling and it’s not persuasive. And so I think kind of the triple threat is knowing your stuff so well but actually knowing when it… and then understanding it kind of at the heart level, the emotional level, and being able to speak from experience in a communicative way and a persuasive way.

So kind of emotions, expertise, and good communication is what I think really makes it powerful because when you can speak really persuasively but then you’re backing your stuff up with like, you know, tons of science or compelling or very credible sources then not only is it emotional for people, but they’re like, “Oh, wow,” they believe it’s true because you’re backing it up over and over and over. And so that’s kind of some keys, I think.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. Thank you. Well, I appreciate that. It wasn’t just like, “Well, the key is to put a number in your headline,” and then it’s like the eight reasons willpower doesn’t work, “You won’t believe number six.” That’s all there is to it, you know.

Benjamin Hardy
That’s all you need, my man. That’s it. Now you can go be famous.

Pete Mockaitis
I had a hunch like each of those things sounds hard in the sense of, “That’ll take some time to develop that capability just like real life.”

Benjamin Hardy
Oh, yeah, it’s not an overnight thing, you know what I mean? So you can apply some strategies overnight that make a big difference but at the end of the day you’ve got to be good at what you do. Like Cal Newport says, you’ve got to be so good you can’t be ignored.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so I’m excited to see you have put some of these skills to work in crafting your book here Willpower Doesn’t Work. Tell us what’s this all about?

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, Willpower Doesn’t Work is kind of, I mean, I don’t know I’d call it a manifesto but it’s like a countercultural punch in the face to Western culture. So Western culture, especially in the self-improvement world but also like in the pop psychology world, is very individualistic. That’s just our culture. We’re a very individualistic society. We’re very focused on ourselves.

And so when we’re talking about self-improvement and stuff like that, we’re always talking about, you know, we’re always focused on the self, you know, have more willpower, have a better mindset, how to set better goals. I mean, it’s all about you and there’s no focus on the context around you. There’s no focus on the environment or very little because in our culture we kind of downplay how much the environment truly shapes us.

So what the book is all about is it’s all about, first off, how important our environment really is, the fact that you’re a different person in one situation than you are in a different situation, and how environment shapes your identity. And then, really, ultimately how to shape the optimal environment so that you can succeed.

And there’s a curt quote that comes from Marshall Goldsmith. He wrote the book Triggers, and the quote is, “If you do not create and control your environment, your environment will create and control you.”

I go into a lot of science and research since I study organizational psychology, but there’s been a big shift over the last 50 years in the research. So back in like, well, really, it’s been a long time coming, but in the 1920s and 1930s, all of the research on leadership, for example, was focused on men. So the first core leadership theories were the great men leaders, great men theory of leadership. I mean, it was like it all about how leaders can only be men.

And then we went to the trait perspective where it’s like, you know, you could only be a six-foot tall man. And, ultimately, we were all focused on traits and stuff, and even personality types. I mean, it’s so popular. We’re all so focused on these fixed traits. And, in my opinion, the science at this point it’s pretty clear that it’s all about the environment, and about creating that environment, that’s why companies like Zappos are so popular.

But all the research in organizational psychology is focused now on, “How do you structure environmental settings so that employees can be successful so that leadership can happen?” So, really, this book is just all about, “How do you setup the environment so that you can win?”

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Well, so maybe we should back it up a little bit when you talk about winning. I guess that really starts with a decision to commit to a particular goal, result, outcome to begin with. So what’s your take on where it all starts and how you arrive at a point of conviction that this is the thing that I shall pursue?

Benjamin Hardy
I love that. So it actually directly relates to my research. And so throughout my doctoral research, and I know that we’re not going to be talking about entrepreneurship specifically on this video or on this episode, but I actually do study the difference between wanna-be entrepreneurs versus actual entrepreneurs but it relates to everything. Really it’s the difference between dreamers and doers, you know. What is the difference between those people who can never reach that point of conviction versus those people who become fully committed?

And, ultimately, kind of what I’ve included after studying all sorts of people on this topic is that, yes, you have to have some internal desire, but that’s too focused to get on the individual. You have to ultimately do something in the real world. And so there’s a few components but I think the main one is that once a person starts financially investing in themselves, in their skill development, in their relationships, once they actually start investing money in what they want to do, then all of a sudden they become hyper committed.

Like there’s a lot of research in economic stuff called escalation of commitment where like once you commit, or once you start investing money, dollars, into something you become very committed to it, almost so committed that it becomes hard not to commit. It kind of goes along with the idea of sunk cost bias where you become so…have you heard of sunk cost bias before?

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Certainly. It’s like you’re trying to justify what you want, you know.

Benjamin Hardy
Hundred percent, yeah. Almost all the research on sunk cost bias points in the negative direction, it becomes an irrational commitment. But, it’s the same level of commitment that leads to success. The only reason people think it’s irrational is because often it ends in failure. You know, if you think Elon Musk, he was so convicted in his companies that he sunk all of his money into it. And because he succeeded, we all think he’s a hero. If he had failed we would’ve called him irrational.

But the same principle applies. If you start investing money, you become very committed whether that’s to an organization, whether that’s to a goal, whether that’s to a relationship, whether that’s to your skills, once you become invested, you become committed, and as you get committed then you start to wrap your identity around that thing. You start to change your identity and believe that you are that thing, whether that’s entrepreneur or leader or writer, and you start to go from wanting to be that thing to actually being that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s intriguing and powerful. You know, this is bringing me back to Robert Cialdini talking about commitment consistency in his book Influence and those sorts of principles. Now when it comes to money, is it important that it be a sizable sum of money or do you really get the ball rolling if you spend 12 bucks on an Amazon book in the direction that you’re pursuing, like things are happening already?

Benjamin Hardy
I, a hundred percent, think it can definitely start small. I mean, I have been coming to grips with this principle, and, by the way, I love Cialdini. I’ve spent so much time studying his work in commitment and stuff, but, yeah, it always starts small. Like when I was first starting my PhD program, when I was like really starting to say, “I want to start this whole writing thing.”

As a PhD student you’re making 12,000 bucks a year. You’re getting about a thousand bucks a month plus you get your tuition paid for. And so for me it was like, “Okay, I need to buy a website,” and that domain name costs 800 bucks. That’s more than $12 but I bought an online course for $197 that taught me how to write viral articles or viral headlines.

And so I do think it can start small, it can start with books, it can start with really what needs to happen is that you see yourself moving in the direction you want to go. Like if you watch yourself buying and reading books on a topic, you’re like, “Oh, I’m observing myself performing these behaviors.” That’s how people develop their identity, it called self-signaling in psychology.

Basically, what it means is that we, ourselves, we don’t really know ourselves as much as we think we do. We judge ourselves the same way we judge other people. It’s based on our behaviors. And so if you start watching yourself behave in certain ways, you’ll start to believe it, and that’s how confidence develops. You know, confidence is the product of successful behavior, and so once you start behaving in a certain way, and you start to kind of developing some consistency, all of a sudden you start to have confidence, then you can become passionate about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s cool. I like that. And so, then, when it comes to the environment, you know, I dug your quote from Marshall Goldsmith. It also reminds me of one by Churchill who said, “We shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us.”

Benjamin Hardy
By the way, Marshall McLuhan also says we shape our language and then our language shapes us.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. We got a full-blown theme here.

Benjamin Hardy
By the way, the whole book is about how your environment shapes you, and that the only way to proactively become the person you want to be is to shape the environment that you know will shape you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, that’s compelling. So let’s hear it. How do we go about taking those steps to shaping such an environment?

Benjamin Hardy
I mean, first things first. You have to somewhat – I mean, you kind of have to know what you want. You don’t need to know all of it because a lot of the change happens once you’re in the environment. Or I think there’s so many layers to this question. I think, for the starters, I’ll talk about, in the book I talk about two types of optimal environments.

So I call them enriched environments, and that comes from a lot of theory and organizational psychology about basically how people have been structuring jobs. They call it job enrichment which is basically all the stuff that Dan Pink talk about in his book Drive, I believe, about creating jobs where people have more autonomy and stuff. I mean, that’s all based on research in organizational psychology.

But, basically, the two types of optimal environments that I talk about in the book are environments of high stress and then environments of complete rest. And, basically, it’s the idea that you need to be fully engaged and absorbed in whatever environment you’re in. So in order to be fully absorbed in, let’s just say, like a flow state, where you’re totally engaged in what you’re doing, you’re totally focused, there’s got to be several factors.

You’ve got to have high level of responsibility, there’s got to be consequences for performance. Ideally, you should be doing something that you’ve never done before and that somewhat above your skill level. I mean, it needs to be challenging and difficult, and there needs to be feedback, you know what I mean? It’s basically like the equivalent of being at the gym with a personal trainer. It should be very difficult and you should be having to rise to an occasion, rise above what you’ve done before so much so, and very few people work environments are like that.

Most people are in a semi state of distraction, there’s tabs open on their stuff, there’s notifications popping on their phone, there’s very low consequence for bad performance, it’s mundane, it’s routine. And so step one is, “How do you create an optimal environment that’s high stress?”

Then step two is you can’t do that all day, it’s not about being busy, it’s about being productive. And so you need to, have an environment for rest and recovery where you fully detach from work and where you, then, just focus on whatever it is you want to do at home whether that’s to be with your family or whether that’s like rest and recover in some other way.

There’s a lot of research in organizational psychology that talks about a concept called psychologically detaching from work. And, basically, it means that in order to fully be engaged while you’re at work, you need to fully detach and be engaged in life and rest, and let it go. And there’s like all sorts of negative effects if you don’t ever detach from work, like you have a hard time fully engaging, you burn out quicker.

And so I think, kind of just bringing this together real quick, there’s a quote from Dan Sullivan, he’s the founder of Strategic Coach, but he says, “Wherever you are that’s where you should be. Wherever you are make sure you’re there.” And so the idea is when you’re fully resting, like actually rest and recover. Almost all of your best ideas are going to happen while you’re resting. And then while you’re at work you can fully engage at a much higher level. You can be much more proactive, you can take on more responsibility.

And so I think that, first off, understanding those two types of environments and kind of assessing yourself how often are you in those types of environments. Like when you’re actually home, are you actually resting? Or is your environment setup for failure? Like do you have a TV in your bedroom? You know what I mean? Like, is your environment setup to fail?

And so I think, first off, is assessing how often are you in a flow state and knowing that flow is purely based on your environment is number one. I don’t know if you want to just talk about that first and then we can talk more about how to actually structure those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. So I would like to hear about how one constructs both a high stress and a high recovery environment. And so it sounds like the antithesis to high stress was, “Hey, you know, we got a lot of bad distractions, we’ve got not a whole lot of really high stakes,” in terms of if you succeed or fail  in a given day, it’s like, “Well,” you know, you’re probably not going to be fired or promoted or get a fat bonus or whatever kind of, on most days. So how do we go about putting an environment in place in which we do have this stress so that we could be totally in and rocking? And then afterwards let’s talk about the recovery side.

Benjamin Hardy
Totally. Absolutely. So there’s a concept I talk about in the book called forcing functions. And forcing functions are basically a simple way to kind of manipulate your environment so that basically desired behavior is the norm, it’s the automatic. I mean, a simple forcing function literally is just leave your phone away from your person. Like if you’re not required to use it, like while you’re at work, for example, don’t have it around you. Leave it in a bag or something.

Basically, just put constraints in place so that you’re not going to do something stupid. That’s basically what a forcing function is.

Other forcing functions, and this is more relevant to just like self-improvement, but I think it could be related to the job site. Like Ramit Sethi, for example, he’s like an online entrepreneur, but he invests like a good amount of money every year into a personal trainer. And when he does that, and it’s almost the same principle we’re talking about before, it forces him to go to the gym. You know what I mean?

And so let’s just say a person has a goal, whatever it may be, get a promotion or get a better job. A lot of it is thinking what you want and then embedding these forcing functions to make it happen. I mean, a very simple interesting forcing function just for high productivity is, so one of the people I talked to, he purposefully, if he’s going to go work for a few hours, like let’s say at the library or something, he purposely leaves his power cord at home for his laptop because he knows that now his laptop only has three hours of battery. For him, it forces him to be more focused because he knows that his battery is going to die in three hours, then when it’s dead, and he’s got to go home. Those are really simple low-level things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d like some more. So we talked about, hey, leaving the phone, leaving the laptop charger, paying some money up front for a personal trainer. I’d love, if you got it, a smorgasbord to spark some inspiration.

Benjamin Hardy
So is this all straight up in the context of being at work?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think it’s okay if we drift a bit in terms of things that boost your general productivity and effectiveness and energy but, yeah, if you got some office-specific tidbits those are great to prioritize.

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. For me, in what I’ve seen, a lot of it has to do if you’re in a job, for example, like how can you take on more responsibility? A very simple forcing function is literally just applying Parkinson’s Law which is tell your advisor whoever it is that you need to report that that you’re going have something done very soon.

Like if you tell them vocally that you’re going to have their report back, or whatever it is that you have to give them, if you give them a very short timeline on where you’re going to have it back and you’ve made it verbal so that now they’re expecting it, all of a sudden you’re going to get to work. Parkinson’s Law basically is work fills the space of the amount of time you give it.

And then asking for more responsibility, like seeking greater responsibility, actually trying to –  I mean, a lot of these are very simple and basic.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fine.

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, you just want to – and say it like how it is. If your job is not setup so that those things are in place, I’m not saying go quit. I’m saying you might have to have some conversation so that you can be in a position where it does matter. That may require that you seek more mentoring or something. A lot of it is just taking responsibility for your job and for your situation.

If you need to have a conversation with your boss and say you want more work, or you just need to show up more. A lot of that is just being proactive. That step is not necessarily about tweaking the environment but it’s more about tweaking the expectations around the environment. And there’s a lot of research that talks about how you rise or fall based on the expectations of those around you, that’s called the Pygmalion Effect. And so if you have leaders that don’t expect much of you, sadly you’re probably going to drop to those expectations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s potent stuff. Now let’s talk about the flipside of it then when it comes to building out the high recovery environment or any, why it’s forcing functions to be implemented there.

Benjamin Hardy
Totally. So to the extent you can, and I think Greg McKeown, who I know has been on the show, one of the things he talks about is literally just asking for specific things with your job. I mean, if you can ask for certain days off or certain types of schedules, asking if you can work from home. But if you can’t, asking for certain amounts of time off.

So, basically, the idea is this. The best creative insights are not going to happen while you’re at work. The research that only 16% of creative ideas happen when you’re sitting at your desk. And so, you need to be very focused when you’re at work but you also want to optimize for rest and recovery, you want to optimize for being away.

And so there’s a lot of research and a lot of cool ideas around sabbaticals, around mini retirements. If you think about Bill Gates, he did his think weeks where two weeks a year he would leave. He would totally detach, he was very inaccessible, and he would just spend time reading articles thinking. And he said that’s where his best ideas came from.

And you can apply that at a really small scale. A lot of people talk about having a disconnected day where you leave, where you go away for a day and you just rest. You don’t have you phone with you, you’re unreachable, like you just go and have a you day where you’re just resting, or you’re maybe listening to an audio book or writing in your journal, or going on a hike.

The more of those types of days you can embed into your life, or weekends, or mini retirements where you’re doing maybe like a five-day weekend, like once every month or two, the power of leaving your routine environment is very important because when you’re outside your routine environment, when you allow yourself to actually rest and recover, then you start to get some really good clarity, and there’s strategies around getting that clarity and connecting with your why.

Like I would talk about writing in your journal in specific ways, and I talk about that in the book. So there’s a lot of kind of research around the idea that the power of a decision is based on the emotional state that you make that decision. And so a lot of people, they don’t make powerful decisions because they’re not in a very powerful mental place when they make that decision.

When you get out of your routine environment, when you can kind of see the forest of your life for the trees because you’re kind of outside of it, you’re not like staring it in the face, you can kind of take a breath, you can look at life, you can kind of reconnect with who it is you want to be or with your core values or whatnot.

The more of those days you can take, especially if you’re spending time in self-improvement, like reading audiobooks along the way, or writing in your journal and thinking about your goals, it’s making powerful decisions in those states that allows you then to come back into your environment, into your life, at your job, wherever you are and live in a much higher level. And I think everyone who’s listening to this podcast, regardless of where they are in their career, they’re probably listening to this podcast because they want to upgrade themselves and they want to continue to upgrade their career.

And so I think spending plenty of time resting and recovering, first off, so that you can psychologically detach so that you can come back and be in flow while you’re at work so you can be super productive while you’re there, but also giving yourself plenty of time to totally just detach and reset and reconnect with yourself, and then make powerful decisions outside of your environment about who you want to be, what you want to do, and then jumping back into life, and actually living that out, that’s how you upgrade yourself, that’s how you become successful regardless of your career path or your job. You can become successful in any field if you give yourself plenty of time to self-improve. Stephen Covey calls that sharpening your saw.

Pete Mockaitis
And so when you talk about a powerful state for a powerful decision, so it sounds like you’re sort of contrasting that, as opposed to a state in which you have very narrow shallow distracted attention and feel constrained to not have a lot of time, energy, focus, attention to having that time, that rejuvenated space to rock and roll.

So that sounds like what you mean by powerful state because, well, I got Tony Robbins in my head right now. I was like, “Make your move chest,” you know, powerful state, peak state, jump up and down. So are you talking about a powerful state in the sense of, “I am so freaking excited,” as well as, “Hey, I’ve got sort of time and resources to apply the thought”?

Benjamin Hardy
I would say it’s slightly a blend of both. So there’s a really good book called The Power of Moments that recently came out by Chip and Dan Heath, and they talk about powerful moments whether they’re peaks or like pits. Pits are like hard moments where you’re facing hard truths, or just transition moments. Those are the things that generally are most memorable. Like when you think back on your life, you’re generally thinking about highs, lows, or transitions. Those are the kinds of things that are most potent in our memory.

Like with the Tony Robbins like how you get yourself into an elevated state so that you can make bigger decisions, there’s some good stuff in there but a lot of it is mostly just getting clarity, getting clear on what you want, reconnecting with what you want. And so I would say it’s kind of a blend of both.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So I would like to talk a little bit about this clarity and this journaling stuff here. So we talk about giving it the time, energy and attention and space required to touch base with what’s really important and what matters. But it sounds like you’ve also got some particular prompts or questions that you suggest pursuing in order to really zero in on that.

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, definitely. Giving yourself the space to do it is important. For me, when I’m journaling, and read plenty of books on this. A really, really good one I would recommend is called Write It Down, Make It Happen written by some English professor of some sort. She was great.

But, basically, journal writing has been found to be helpful for a lot of reasons, one of them being emotional regulation. So a lot of people have a lot of suppressed emotions of some sort, you know, suppressed trauma. One of the best books on the topic that’s staring to get a lot of steam is called The Body Keeps The Score. It’s written by an amazing medical doctor.

But, basically, a lot of the reason people are stuck is because they have suppressed energy or emotions that they just don’t want to let come back up. And one of the main tools for writing in the journal is just to emotionally regulate, writing about what you’re dealing with, getting kind of understanding your emotions. There’s a lot of really cool research talking about it.

Well, so another one of the kind of myths that I try to slam in this book is the idea that you don’t necessarily have what I would call a fixed personality. In Western culture, because we’re so individualistic, we think that the personality you’re born with is the personality you are for the rest of your life, and that’s why we’re so focused on personality tests and stuff like that.

From kind of combining a lot of the stuff in the medical field about trauma, what usually happens when a person goes through a traumatic experience or even just stress, is that they start to – basically it’s what they would call, your personality becomes frozen. You stop living in the present, you stop integrating new experiences, and you kind of get stuck. Or you stop creating these peaks, pits or transitions, these challenging moments that gets you.

And so kind of going back to journaling, one of the reasons, so you want to write in it to break through some of those emotions, but you also want to write in it to purposely create some of these life-altering experiences. They don’t have to be these high-high peaks like the Tony Robbins style, although that’s what they call them is peaks. Tony didn’t make up that word. He just used it in his own ways.

But peak experiences come from Abraham Maslow. But, ultimately, I think you want to create those. And so in my journal, not only am I writing about the emotions and stuff that I’m dealing with, but also you want to think about what are the experiences you want to create that would allow you to continually upgrade as a person and so you want to strategize in your journal.

Not only write about the stuff that’s difficult but you want to write about the things you want to actually do and why you’re writing. Because what’s cool about writing pen and paper is that it allows you to focus on the topic but it also allows your mind to wander at the same time. And when your mind is wandering, it’s able to make connections to distant places in your memory or in your brain or just based on where you’re located in the environment.

And so while you’re writing you actually end up getting a lot of a-has and insights, or at least you come up with ideas that are things that you can then attempt to do, whether that’s you may get the idea to call your advisor or your boss and make a recommendation, or send that email, or an idea to maybe be more productive or proactive at work, it maybe an idea of how you can help a colleague.

It’s basically giving yourself the space to think and then maybe developing the confidence to actually try stuff you haven’t been trying so that you can actually do stuff to get different results.

Pete Mockaitis
And so that’s intriguing when you mentioned the pen and paper situation is helpful because you’re focusing on the thing, and yet also wander. So you’re saying you don’t get the same effect in a digital writing environment.

Benjamin Hardy
Nope. Not at all. No, writing with a pen and paper is so slow and kind of tedious that it allows you to wander in random places, that’s why journal writing is inherently random, you know what I mean? Often, for most people, it goes from topic to topic is because not only are you slightly focused on a topic but your mind is also like roaming around, and so it picks things up that you couldn’t pick up if you were so – I think it’s a better tool for creativity on a brain level for most people than just writing in an app.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. Well, thank you, that’s a great distinction to tuck in here. Well, Ben, it sounds like we could cover a whole lot of goodies here. You tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to highlight before we shift gears and hear about a few of your favorite things?

Benjamin Hardy
No, we can just shift gears.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sure. Well, can you share with a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Benjamin Hardy
Sure. I think I’ll just probably repeat the one I did before just to emphasize, “If you do not create and control your environment your environment will create and control you.” I guess another one that goes with that is just, “Willpower is for people who haven’t decided what they want to do.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or a bit of research?

Benjamin Hardy
I really like Ellen Langer’s work honestly. She’s my favorite psychologist. She’s a Harvard psychologist. She wrote two really good books and has spent several decades studying. Her research is really non-conventional but her two books are called Mindfulness, and she’s kind of the godmother or the queen of mindfulness which her stuff is so different than the pop stuff that you see online these days.

She wrote a book called Mindfulness and she wrote a book called Counterclockwise. And her Counterclockwise study is so interesting. Basically, what she did was she took – do you know the Counterclockwise study?

Pete Mockaitis
I really don’t. Let’s hear it.

Benjamin Hardy
Okay. Okay. Cool. So she took a bunch of men in their 70s.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, okay. Go on.

Benjamin Hardy
Yeah, you know it?

Pete Mockaitis
We’ll see. We’ll see.

Benjamin Hardy
This study actually happened in the ‘70s, in the 1970s. So she took a bunch of like eight men in their 70s and took them to a place that they designed to look like the 1950s. And so it looked like they had old pictures, old magazines, and basically what she did was she had the men get dropped off by their families and then they spent the time reminiscing as if it was the 1950s.

And so they couldn’t talk about anything after the year 1958, and I think that this study actually happened in 1978, so it was like 20 years earlier. And so they had to pretend like they were the 50-year old version of themselves, and they had to pretend like that that’s who they were, so they had to talk about current events of the time as if it was real. They had to talk about their job as if that was who they were, and they spent five days doing this.

And then when the five days was up, and what’s interesting is that a lo of the people who came when they’re getting dropped off by their kids, they were coming in on canes and stuff, they had to, you know, they could barely – so they came in, some of them can’t even really walk. And what Ellen Langer and her team of graduate students did is they treated them as if – it kind of goes this whole idea of actors but it’s very different.

They treated them like human beings and gave them the context to act differently than they would’ve been expected to act because there’s so much interesting research about how, you know, I already talked about the Pygmalion Effect about how people respond psychologically based on the expectations of the environment, but their biological metrics also kind of are altered by the expectations of the environment, that’s a new and emerging field called epigenetics.

But, basically, what happened with the study was after like five or seven days, it was time for the study to be over, and these men scored totally different on their dexterity, their vision was better, their memory was better, some of them who had walked in on canes like walked out on their own two feet. It’s a very compelling study, and it’s called the Counterclockwise study, Ellen Langer.

Basically, that kind of opened the door for a lot of her research in studying how context and environment and expectations, and all of these things relate to identity. And so one of the big a-has that I would hope that anyone that hears this ideas takes is that who you are in one situation is not who you are in a different situation.

That is kind of a Western perspective and it’s a very fixed and rigid mindset and it totally ignores the power of context. So who you are in one situation is different from who you are in a different situation. Your personality is not fixed but it’s fluid, and it’s also based on environment, and your identity is not singular but it’s based on your situation.

And so once you kind of get those things then your level of responsibility becomes shape the environment that shapes you, or as Churchill would say shape the building, or whatever, shape your home that shapes you. That’s kind of, I think, ultimately where the responsibility comes when you start to understand these things.

And my prediction, because now that the fields of epigenetics and stuff, and neuroscience are becoming so popular and they’re realizing the power of environment, my prediction is that you’re going to see a big shift in a lot of the self-improvement writing, and it’s going to start to focus a lot more in environment because the science that’s been around in psychology for three decades is staring to become very compellingly clear in other fields now.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, intriguing. Thank you. And so you’ve list a few but could you also share with us a favorite book?

Benjamin Hardy
I think I’ll just stick with the recommendation I gave about The Body Keeps The Score, that’s a really good one right now for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And how about, is there a particular nugget or piece that you share that seems to really connect and resonate and get folks sort of quoting you back to you?

Benjamin Hardy
Yup, definitely. It brings all these ideas together. So, number one, it’s not your personality that shapes your behavior, it’s your behavior that shapes your personality. And, the behavior that leads you to certain environments, so that’s one key is your behavior shapes your identity. Number two is it’s not confidence that leads to success, it’s successful behavior that creates confidence. I think that those two are nuggets that people can internalize, they can actually make some big change in their lives.

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

Benjamin Hardy
I would point them to my book Willpower Doesn’t Work. they can read all my articles on Medium.com, they can check out BenjaminHardy.com, but, yeah, my big ask or my big challenge would be go check out the book Willpower Doesn’t Work.

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

Benjamin Hardy
Try as hard as you can to create these two types of optimal environments in your life, or what I would call enriched environments. And I think that it’s really good to really assess how much time you’re spending in these types of environments. Because your environment is either pushing against you or it’s pulling you forward. And if your environment is not pulling you forward, and if it’s pushing against you, then you’re going to have to use willpower.

So I think it’s easier actually initially to start with the rest and recovery environments. Like when you’re home, be home. Leave the distractions alone and actually do something engaging at home and disconnect from work, and then with those insights and rest that you’ll get, like actually make your job high level, make it high demand, take on more responsibility, create consequences through publicly saying when you’ll have stuff done, take on more responsibility.

I would say just create more enriched environments in your life through forcing functions like we’ve talked about or just through making your life more engaging. Those types of environments are very rare in today’s society. Most people are very distracted, very few people are fully on or fully off. And if you can create those environments it’ll allow you to do that. It’ll change your life.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, Ben, this has been so fun. I hope that book is a smashing success, and I wish you lots of luck in your writing and all you’re doing here.

Benjamin Hardy
Thank you, Pete. Seriously, thanks for being so accommodating and for taking the time. It means a lot.

Feb 28

267: Managing Self-Doubt to Tackle Bigger Challenges with Tara Mohr

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Tara Mohr says: "Playing big is being more loyal to your dreams than your fears."

Tara Mohr offers deep insight into how our fears and inner critic operate–and how to optimally respond.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The key drivers behind fear and self-doubt
  2. A handy Hebrew distinction for thinking about fear
  3. How to consult your inner critic–and inner mentor–wisely

About Tara

Tara Mohr is an expert on leadership and well-being. She helps people play bigger in sharing their voices and bringing forward their ideas in work and in life. Tara is the author of Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, named a best book of the year by Apple’s iBooks and now in paperback. In the book, she shares her pioneering model for making the journey from playing small–being held back by fear and self-doubt–to playing big, taking bold action to pursue what you see as your callings.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Pete Mockaitis
Tara, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Tara Mohr
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I learned something fun what about you, which is that as a child your dreams were analyzed each morning with your parents along with breakfast. What’s the story here?

Tara Mohr
Yeah, I think I was very fortunate to grow up with a mom who was very interested in psychology and self-improvement, and believed she could start conversations about those things with me as a young child. And so, at a very young age she would say, “Did you have a dream last night?”, and then she would ask me about it and she would explain to me that the different characters in the dream could be different parts of myself, or they were symbols. And she would get out a yellow pad and we would diagram it, and she talked to me about architypes. And that’s how I grew up; that was just one example of how she brought the kind of conversation you have on this podcast. I was really lucky to grow up with that as an everyday matter in my house.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so cool. Tara, last night I dreamt that I got shot by a gun twice in different places. One was in just a value priced hotel, and the other was in my childhood home, recovering from the first gun shot.

Tara Mohr
Okay, that’s very interesting. We could really dive into that. And how did you feel in the dream after that?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I didn’t like it. Actually I woke up at 4:30 am against my will, and I was a little riled up. It took a while to calm down and fall back asleep.

Tara Mohr
Yeah. Have you ever heard the Buddhist phase “the second arrow”? Have you heard that?

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, no. Tell me about it.

Tara Mohr
So it sounds very much related to what happened in your dream. So there’s this idea of, in life there are things that wound us, or there are feelings we have that are hurt, and that’s the first arrow. But then we often impose the second arrow of our reaction or the story that we make up about what happened, or the shame or guilt we have, or the self-judgments we have for having the feelings we have. So, that whole idea of being shot twice is interesting, and of course I would ask did something that hurt or wounded you, and then you went back in your literal childhood home or kind of in your family self? Was there something in the recovery process that wounded you further? That would be the first place I would look.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, nothing is leaping to mind, but I’ll definitely chew on that and see what happens as I explore, because we could spend a full conversation on that alone.

Tara Mohr
We could. And that’s actually dream interpretation, although part of my childhood is really not the center of my work now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us about your most recent book – Playing Big. What’s the main idea here and why is it important?

Tara Mohr
Yeah. Well, I found when I went into the working world, I had come out of graduate school, I had had the benefit of a good education, I was an academically-oriented and achievement-oriented person, and I was very surprised to find that I didn’t feel confident in those first years in the working world, I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my ideas or my voice, and I also wasn’t really going for what I really wanted with my career. I was kind of in a job that was fine but not great, but didn’t really relate to the creative dreams or the entrepreneurial dreams that I had for myself.
And I was really curious about why I was getting so stuck around that. And then I knew I wanted to do work in the personal growth world, partly informed by how I grew up, and I got trained as a coach and I started coaching people just in the early mornings before I would go to work, or sometimes in the evenings, on the weekends, around my regular job. And I saw again and again actually at all stages of career my clients grappling with the same thing – self-doubt, not trusting their ideas and their voice, not really going for what they really wanted to do and believing there was some reason they couldn’t.
And I got really interested in this question of why do we play small and how can we play bigger? And my definition of playing big is it’s being more loyal to your dreams than your fears. So it’s whatever that means to you. It’s not necessarily anything that would look “big” in the eyes of the world, but you know it’s the real challenge, the real work for you to live that life or do that work. It’s an individual matter of discernment. And so I started to make that the focus of my coaching practice – how can people play bigger in that way, what are the tools and ideas that help us?
And I found there really were a set of things that made a transformational impact. And so that became kind of an arc that I would take my clients through, and then I started teaching large groups that all around the world, and then it became the topic of the book. And now for 10 years of really being immersed in working with people around defining what “playing big” means for them, and then most importantly doing the day-to-day practices and work to bring that vision into reality.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, I like that simple distinction then – more so about your dreams than your fears. And it really kind of puts into focus in a hurry, in terms of what’s my thinking right now, the patterns, who’s sort of got the upper hand. And so, I’d love to get your view then, when it comes to these fears or lack of confidence and self-doubt, what are some of the key drivers behind it? Why is that there and what should be done about it?

Tara Mohr
Yeah. Well, I think that we all have a very strong safety instinct inside of us. And the safety instinct is a primal part of us that is a very deep part of our wiring to be on the lookout for any possible danger or threat, and make sure that we avoid it or we fight it, right? And our fight or flight instinct is there to make sure that if we see any possible risk to our survival, we go into fight or flight mode and we make sure we’re conquering in some way, or we’re avoiding.
And what we know now is that in our contemporary lives that same safety instinct gets misapplied to the emotional risks in our life. So, the safety instinct that should be very conservative and over-reactive if it’s trying to ensure the physical survival of people who are threatened by lots of predators or warring tribes or poisons, as our predecessors were – that instinct is now operating when we face everyday risks, like the risk of failure, the risk of feeling really uncomfortable, the risk of worrying.
We might feel like a beginner or feel clueless or be embarrassed or do something that really rocks the boat among our friends and family. And that safety instinct then tries to do everything it can to get us to stay in the comfort zone of the known or the familiar, and that includes making up a lot of narratives that feel believable but then aren’t true, like, “You aren’t qualified for that. Who do you think you are? You’re not enough of an expert in that. There’s too many other people doing that.” All those inner critic narratives we hear are really manifestations of the safety Instinct.
And the good news about that is it means that our inner critic is not going anywhere. And I know you have many listeners who are a little bit more in the earlier phases of their careers, and I think it’s so game-changing to understand early that confidence doesn’t actually come in an enduring way with experience.
There was just a study done through KPMG that looked at confidence levels among professional women, and they looked at how many women early in their career would say they’re confident, and then how many executive-level women, senior women, would say they feel confident in their work. And the difference between those two groups was only about 10%, in terms of how many indicated they were confident.
In other words, experience didn’t change it, because when you get into a new senior role – sure, you’re more confident about some things that you did a long time ago and you’ve been doing for a long time, but you have a new edge, and the voice of the inner critic and self-doubt comes up again because that safety instinct is perceiving more emotional risk, no matter what the situation. And so we’re really not looking to get rid of the inner critic or find some unfailing sense of confidence. The “playing big” process is in part about learning how do you hear your inner critic, let it be there, know it’s always going to be there when you’re doing important work, and just not take direction from it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. So that is powerful, to assimilate that really inside your psyche there. The inner critic, as you said, it doesn’t go away – the KPMG study is pointing to that. And in a way, that kind of unmasks everything.

Tara Mohr
It does. And there are so many lies we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves, “Well, when I get to this stage in my career, then I’m going to feel confident.” We also tell ourselves, “If I get that additional certification or degree, then these uncomfortable feelings of self-doubt or uncertainty or fear will go away.” We tell ourselves, “If my weight changes and it’s this amount, then I’m going to feel confident getting up and sharing my point of view in front of a group.”
We fill a lot of things into that blank, and what we’re really doing there is making it convenient for ourselves to put risks on hold, put playing bigger on hold, put really stepping into our gifts and using our natural talents and gifts more, which is actually a very vulnerable thing – put that on hold thinking something is going to come along that’s going to bring confidence. But it doesn’t. And what we want to do is really learn to work effectively, live effectively with the voice of self-doubt, letting it be there but not taking direction from it, not letting it make our decisions.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful. And so then the implication is that you’re going to feel some lack of confidence and some self-doubt till the day you die, right?

Tara Mohr
Hopefully, right? And I say “hopefully” because it comes up most strongly when you are on the edge of your comfort zone. So for those who might be sitting there right now thinking, “I don’t really hear my inner critic that much”, I would ask you two things. One – make sure you’re looking across all areas of your life, because sometimes people think, “I’ve kind of got it down at work”, but then they’ll realize, “Oh my gosh, in my dating life, or in my parenting, or my body image” or, “I’d love to play music again but I have that voice in my head saying…” So look across all areas of your life.
But second – notice where that lack of inner critic is just kind of a dead-end part of your life, where you are not pushing yourself to an edge, you’re not doing what really matters to you, you’re not being loyal to those dreams. The inner critic will come up when there’s vulnerability, and so if you’re doing something that is 100% in your comfort zone and routine to you and not very important to you, you might not hear it, but that’s not a good thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, I’m with you there. And so then, I also want to get your view – now, there’s a bit of a postponement factor – the way that the inner critic can sound, in terms of, “Hey, if this changes – if I lost the weight, if I got the certification, if I had a certain preparation – then I would feel confident.” And so now, for the most part that seems like that is often a lie. It is a deception that is destructive, but at the same time there are times in which no, you really are not prepared for that opportunity or that dream that you’re thinking about, and some action, some preparation is necessary to get there. So, I’d love your view on, how could we prudently discern the difference, and what’s a wise means of thinking through that, so that you get the valid prep steps done but you don’t delay yourself till it never happens?

Tara Mohr
Yeah, yeah, and it’s so funny that you are asking that specific question, because I just got off of our course call and we were exactly talking about this piece today. So there’s a few things I’d offer around that. One is, pay attention to the evidence that you’re getting from the world. Are you getting clear repeated information from the stakeholders that matter to you, that you need more preparation? In other words, maybe you want to offer a support group for moms, and you do a trial day where you invite a few moms in your community to come together, and you put together a great little program for them or whatever.
And then you hand out feedback forms and you notice there’s really a theme on the feedback forms, that people felt like they wanted more content or more expertise. And you hear again and again that your audience is asking for a different level of preparation and knowledge for you – okay, then you have some evidence. But most people never get to that stage of even asking their intended audience for information. They make up a story in their head and it’s usually a convenience story that allows them to hide a little bit that they need to do a lot more preparatory work. So that’s one piece – is it coming to you in real information and evidence from the outside world?
A second is, what’s the energy that you have or the beliefs that you have around that preparation? If you notice that in a very sort of joyful, light, abundant kind of energy you feel like, “I’m going to go learn more so I can do even more here, and this is going to be an enriching process for me” – that can be a great thing to follow. But if you notice that you’re feeling, “I don’t know enough until…” or, “There’s no way I could contribute any value until…” – the sort of like “This will complete me.” It’s like the equivalent of the romantic “He or she will complete me” feeling. Notice that, and that’s kind of a clue that you’re probably putting a story there that is more about fear than about the external thing itself.
And then a third thing I would offer is… A real issue in our culture is that we tend to put all the emphasis on expertise, and have a kind of cultural narrative that the people who contribute value around a topic are the “experts”. And that’s a view that’s really enforced by our educational system, reinforced by our educational system that says if you want to do something in X topic – if you want to do something around history – go get your degree in history. If you want to do something in serving kids, go get X degree. We’re looking for, what information do I need to absorb to be able to contribute value on that topic?
And that is certainly important, and you’re talking to someone who really values education and has a graduate degree and I believe it’s very important that we have those places to get expertise and we have experts in our culture. But on any given subject there are people contributing value as the expert. Let’s take for example breast cancer. So we have our experts who have PhDs in breast cancer treatment and prevention and rehabilitation and so on. And they’re playing a certain role.
But then we have other people – we have people who are survivors, who have different insights and a different sensibility and can contribute something different, in terms of sharing a message, inspiring people, improving upon services, innovating. The experts can never bring what they can bring.
And we have other people who I would call “cross-trainers”, who come from a completely different type of expertise – maybe they come from the design world or the business world or the activism world, and they can take their lens and their expertise and look at a new topic. And because they don’t have formal training in it and they’re bringing a fresh lens, they add value in a different way. And I think we really deemphasize those things.
So that’s another question when you’re discerning, as you’re asking, Pete – do I get more training? Part of it is, who do I want to be? Is my calling to be the expert on this, or is my calling to contribute value in a different way? And really we can’t discount how significant the value is that people contribute, who are coming from that cross-trainer or survivor perspective, not from the formal expert perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, so much good stuff. Okay, so we’ve amassed a big lie, we’ve got a nice distinction here associated with, is preparation necessary, and some indicators how the inner critic can be a useful indicator, in terms of maybe pushing harder toward the edge. So, that’s a lot of great stuff. So now I’d like to zoom in sort of in the heat of battle. You’re trying to do some bigger things, and tell us, what are the particular fears that arise and your pro tips for responding to them?

Tara Mohr
Well, I’ll share a little bit about how I look at fear. And in the book I call this “a very old new way of looking at fear”, because I’m drawing here on two terms that are actually Old Testament, ancient Hebrew terms. These are two words that are used in the Old Testament to describe types of fear. And when I came across these I kind of fell off my chair, because I felt like they were so illustrative of what I was seeing with my coaching clients, but I had never heard about them before. So let me walk you through the two.
So the first word is “pahad”. And pahad is defined as the fear of projected things or imagined things. So this is when we imagine the worst case scenario of what could happen. It’s when we project the movie of how things might play out. And most of the fear that you and I and our friends and colleagues experience on a day-to-day basis is this, right? We are imagining a potential outcome and feeling afraid. It’s an anticipatory feeling; it is not usually about what’s happening right now, in this moment, but about what we fear could happen.
We know – not from the Old Testament but from all the biological and neuroscience research that has come since – that this kind of fear is generally over-reactive and misleading. We know for example that when we learn to fear a particular thing through conditioning – let’s say we get bitten badly by a dog and then the way the human response to that works is we learn to fear being bitten by a dog. We also know that we have a very generalizing response to that experience, so we won’t just become afraid of that dog; we might become afraid of dogs in general.
And in the foundational experiment that was done on this in the 1920s, they could actually see how by priming a baby to be afraid of a small white mouse… The baby initially was not afraid of the white mouse, but then they paired it with a very loud startling noise, and so then the baby started to associate the two and would see the mouse and would have a fear response. But then the baby also became afraid of a white rabbit and a white cotton ball and a man with a white beard.
This is what we’re also doing in our adult lives, right? Whether that’s you had one negative relationship experience and now you’re generalizing that a certain type of relationship or a certain type of person – you’re going to fear that. Or maybe you did something in one professional environment that was met with really painful feedback, and then you come to fear a whole set of associated things. So that associative quality of our fear response means that fear misleads us, because of course that white rabbit and the white beard and the cotton ball are harmless, as are many of the things we come to fear.
Another way fear misleads us is that we learn what to fear not just from our own experiences but also by watching what the people around us fear. And that of course happens in early childhood for a lot of us, and happens in problematic ways because many times the fears that those around us have are based on their own false stories. So all to say when we have pahad kind of fear, we do not want to believe it or let it be in charge; we need to know, “Okay, I’m in pahad, I’m in that anticipatory fear. It is probably not accurately guiding me and I want to shift myself out of it.” And you can do all kinds of practices, whether it’s calming your nervous system through meditation or shifting into another energy. I like whenever I’m afraid to just focus on, “What can I be curious about in this situation? What can I get really interested in?” Because if you’re in curiosity, you can’t simultaneously be in fear. So we always want to be looking at shifting out of pahad.
Okay, the second kind of fear that is mentioned in the Old Testament is something we really don’t talk about in our culture, and the word for that is yirah, is the ancient Hebrew word. And that has three definitions. Yirah is what we feel when we are inhabiting a larger space than we’re used to. It’s what we feel when we suddenly have more energy, when we come into possession of more energy than we normally have. So think about in your life, like what lights you up, what fills you with energy, your passions, using your gifts, telling your truth – whatever gives you that infusion of energy. That kind of exhilarated, scared feeling that can come with that – that’s yirah. And the third definition is this is what we feel in the presence of the sacred. So in fact when Moses is at the burning bush, yirah is the word used to describe how he feels when he’s at the burning bush.
So this was very significant for me to see as a coach and as a human being, because I understood that when I was working with people and they really told the truth about what they wanted, or they made a momentous decision that really resonated with the core of them, this was the feeling they felt. And it did include fear; it also had awe and exhilaration in it. And yirah is really different that pahad. We don’t need to shift out of yirah; we kind of need to learn to tolerate it and breathe into it and not find it such an electric infusion of energy that we block it or numb out or avoid the things that bring it. So that is the framework we use in the “playing big” model for working with fear.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s so interesting when you say yirah, if I’m pronouncing it correctly. When you say “inhabiting a larger space”, this is kind of both literally and figuratively?

Tara Mohr
Exactly, exactly. So certainly when people step onto a bigger stage, speak to a bigger audience, maybe stand at the front of a bigger conference room, or whatever that might be. There’s literal spaces and then there’s the figurative, like I am reaching more people or I am being willing to take up more room. You can look at it that way as well.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so cool, because I really do find if I have a speaking engagement and I arrive there early, I actually love it. When I’m in the room and it’s completely empty but there are hundreds of seats there, there is a sensation – and now I’ve got a word for it, thank you – and I love it. It’s just so full of possibility. And it’s interesting you say “presence of the sacred” because it does often prompts me to pray – not because I’m terrified, but it’s just like there’s a bigness to it, and that’s just sort of a natural response for me. And that’s so cool and I think really eye-opening, because maybe my personality is I’m just like, “Oh yeah, I love that. Bring it on! I want some more of that in my life!” But you’re saying that for many of us, “Oh no, that’s just too big and I can’t even sort of abide there for very long without getting into maybe like a freak out type of sensation.”

Tara Mohr
Yeah, that’s what I find, that it’s both wonderful and it often feels wonderful when we’re in it, but there is a quality to it of, it’s a heightened state, it does take us out of our comfort zone a bit, it does have that component of fear or almost breathlessness in it. Sometimes it asks us to change, right? Like you could imagine that if you were in a different career and you were only doing speaking once a year or every 18 months and then you felt that feeling when you were speaking, when you were doing public speaking –that’s telling you something about your life and your career, which you may or may not want to hear at that point, because it might ask you to make some changes that require courage or trade-offs and so on. And so we do sometimes try and block the yirah or turn away from it.
I think also yirah, for a lot of people there’s kind of transcendence of the self that comes with it, and you may find when you’re doing that public speaking, you get into the zone, you get into flow state – you kind of lose the sense of Pete and you’re one with the words or you’re one with the audience. And then at the end it’s like, “Oh, where did I go? I went fully into that.” And that happens for a lot of people. The things that bring them yirah – they lose their normal sense of self while they’re doing them, and that’s that flow state, that kind of immersion, what Martin Seligman calls our “gratifications”. And that can be a little bit threatening to our ego sometimes, because our ego likes to be, “I’m Tara”, “I’m Pete”, “I’m in my mundane sense of self.” It doesn’t really like that transcendence of self, and so that could be another reason we resist it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent, thank you. So then you say that’s kind of the different prescription then, in terms of with the projected things and fear. It’s a matter of, “Hey, slow it down, calm it down.” And with yirah the big stuff is being able to hold on for a bit.

Tara Mohr
Breathe into it, lean into it, notice what brings you it, pursue those things. Yeah, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So now thinking more a bit about self-doubt and it popping up – you say that confidence is not the prescription or the answer to self-doubt appearing. Tell us a little bit more about that, and what is?

Tara Mohr
Yeah. Well, just as we were talking about before – if confidence isn’t coming and if the inner critic is always going to be speaking up when we are on the edge of our comfort zone, we certainly don’t want to wait on confidence to do our most important work. And instead of looking for aiming for confidence, I believe we need a new relationship with our self-doubt. And so that has a couple of components. The first is being aware when you are hearing your inner critic.
For so many of us the inner critic is the background noise that we live with, it’s the music that has been playing in our head for a long time, we don’t even hear it anymore, it’s the water that we’re swimming in. It’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve never been good at that kind of thing”, “Oh, those people over there are the ones who have it going on and I’m the outsider, “Oh, my body this and that” – whatever your inner critic lines are, many of them become just so habitual you don’t hear them anymore, or you hear them as those are true facts.
So step one here is starting to be able to notice and name your inner critic, so that in those moments you can say, “I’m hearing my inner critic right now.” Now, a lot of times that’s enough; it’s just like a mindfulness practice. That’s enough to let you go, “Oh, if I’m hearing my inner critic, then that’s certainly not the part of me I’m going to listen to.” But sometimes we do need a secondary tool, and there’s a whole range of things that can be effective – sometimes for people creating a character that personifies the inner critic so they can actually see, “Okay, my inner critic sounds like the perfect housewife”, or the stern old mean professor, and really getting a visual, so that when you are hearing your inner critic line you see it as coming from that character. And all of a sudden then there’s humor and you can have perspective on it.

Pete Mockaitis
What are some names that you’ve heard given to inner critics?

Tara Mohr
Oh gosh, all kinds of things. I feel like there was a year there where everywhere I would go and speak, the inner critic was always a Downton Abbey character. I’m trying to think of the name. The evil folks downstairs in Downton Abbey, and Harry Potter characters, and sometimes it’s a random name that comes to people and then I always have to hope there’s no one else in the class with that name. Sometimes they won’t write it down because it’s their colleague from down the hall and they don’t want that their worksheet from the program is seen by anyone later. So yeah, creating a character can be useful.
I really like using another tool, and I’ll share an example of how I used it for myself. When the Playing Big book was coming out, about six weeks before the publication date, I got an email from my editor at Penguin and she said, “Oh Tara, great news – we’ve piqued the interest of the editors of the Sunday Review section of the New York Times. They’d like you to write an essay based on Chapter 6 for their consideration for the Sunday Review.
So I see that and my mouth kind of fell open because I didn’t even know they were pitching them, or I had no idea that was even on the table. And my very first thoughts were, “Oh no, this is going to be a huge waste of time. I have an actual book launch to prepare for and a lot to do, and now I’m going to have to spend all this time writing this piece, which we know is never going to be published, because people who write for the Sunday Review section sound very grown-up and articulate in their writing, and Tara, you know you’ve never sounded that way.”
That was what the voice in my head said. And that voice and those thoughts pretty much stayed cycling that way for a few days. And then there were some other ones that got added in, like, “You can’t write about this for a co-ed audience because the book had been directed at women”, and, “There’s no way you can translate that chapter’s topics into an op-ed; it won’t make sense.” I had piling on every problem and excuse.
And on about the fourth day of this, somewhere there was a little graced thought that flew into my head that said, “You know, Tara, maybe that’s your inner critic talking.” Now, this is like a primary subject of the book that I had just written, but it took me four days because in our own minds the inner critic always sounds like truth. But on the fourth day… And that’s what I think we can get with practice – it might not be immediate but it didn’t take me six months at least. On the fourth day the voice said, “Maybe that’s the inner critic.” And of course internally my response was like, “No, no, no, it can’t be the inner critic. There’s no way you can pull off this piece. Your writing and your voice is just not mature enough.” But another voice said, “You know, this kind of sounds like an inner critic.”
And then I used this tool, which I love, which is to say, “Well, what does my safety instinct not like about this situation?” Because I know that my inner critic is always going to be a strategy of my safety Instinct. So, when I asked myself that question: “What does my safety instinct not like about this situation?”, the whole picture looked so different to me. I could suddenly see, “Wow, this is basically the worst nightmare of an emotional safety instinct”, because in one scenario here I’m going to write a piece that my editor thinks is not good and I’m worried she’s going to write back and be like, “It’s not good enough; I can’t pass it on”, and that’s going to be painful. Another scenario is the New York Times editors say that, and that will be painful because that will make me feel like I don’t measure up.
And even in the best case scenario, what’s my big reward? It’s that 3 million people are going to judge what I write and have opinions about it. And that’s scary for a part of us, for sure. And it can be especially, I would say, even more so often for women, because we are really socialized to not rock the boat and not do things that bring criticism. And I knew if I write an op-ed about some of these issues in the New York Times, they’re some controversial topics, there’s going to be a mixed reaction.
So then I could see, “Okay, I get it. I get what my safety instinct doesn’t like here.” And I’m going to lovingly parent that part of myself and say, “I get it. This feels really big and scary to you. We’re going to be okay. I’ve got this, and you’re allowed to be here with all these fears, but there’s another part of me that wants to be in charge here – the part that loves writing, that wants to get these ideas out, that likes taking a seat at the table in this way.” And that allowed me to proceed.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful, thank you. That’s a great illustration, and talking about the second arrow – coming full circle here. You’re beating yourself up maybe, associated with, “I’m supposed to be the expert on this and I can’t even…” There may be a risk of some self-judgment even when you’re trying to apply the tools and are aware of this wisdom here.

Tara Mohr
Yeah, and luckily I do. That part I feel very clear on, and I would offer that to people too, that I never have felt I need to be an expert on these things and be flawlessly playing big in my own life. I feel the opposite – I feel the only way I can stay interested in these topics and have something relevant to say about them is if I’m really grappling with them and I am compelled around these topics, because I’m a fellow traveler. And so I proudly use all these tools myself and always try and work my own playing big edges myself.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome, thank you. Well, Tara, tell me – is there anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some your favorite things?

Tara Mohr
I do want to mention inner mentor for a minute, because I think that’s such an important topic, and it’s really kind of the antidote to the inner critic; it’s the other voice in us that we talk about a lot in Playing Big. And the idea with the inner mentor is that rather than always seeking external mentors and looking for that person out there that has the answers for you, you come into contact with a sense of your own older, wiser self. And so in the book we do a guided visualization, so you can meet yourself 20 years in the future.
And what people find is they don’t just meet their older self, they sort of meet their elder, wise self, their authentic self. And then you can really consult and dialogue with that part of you as a mentor. And it is absolutely the best mentor you will ever have – all its answers are customized for you, it is always available to you. And so, that’s just been such a powerful tool and I want to make sure people know about it, because I’ve watched it be really, really pivotal for so many people now.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so interesting, and I’m right now imagining an older, wiser Pete with a cane, sitting on a log on an autumn day.

Tara Mohr
Well, we can do that right now. Yeah, so one thing that you are finding a
dilemma right now – just ask him for his perspective on it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. Well, so the silence there… Yeah, I was just thinking about, I just have a new baby. Yay! My first son.

Tara Mohr
Congratulations!

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And so, I’m just thinking about, what’s prudent, in terms of kind of growing business without spending crazy hours, in kind of a way that would be troublesome for a family living. And so, it was only a few seconds, but what I’m picking up is the notion that there’s no need to sprint, rush, rush, do more, is kind of a wisdom nugget I’m starting to unpack there.

Tara Mohr
Yeah, and it sounds like… So did he kind of give you a vibe or a perspective around this question that was a little different than what you were holding in your mind before?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, kind of, yes. Because my instinct is to, “Alright, strategize, let’s figure out what is our optimal point of leverage”, as opposed to having a bit more of a calm, spacious, patient view of the matter.

Tara Mohr
Yeah. So Pete, it sounds like you tapped in really quickly, which is wonderful. Even without doing a longer visualization you could just call up a picture of him and then connect with a voice that was different than that of your everyday thinking, and that’s exactly it. And usually that inner mentor voice is more spacious, it’s more calm, it’s more loving, and it does give us something really different. I can’t tell you how many times people will come with like, “I don’t know, is it A or B? Is it A or B? And I’m stuck between A or B.”
And they check in with their inner mentor for a second and there is a C option that comes that they didn’t perceive before, that feels really right and gives them kind of a new path forward. So, it’s an amazing tool and it sounds like you have it right there at your fingertips. For people who feel like they need a little more help or if you just want to have a deeper experience with that, there’s an audio that you can use and a written form also in the book. But it’s a great tool to tap into.

Pete Mockaitis
That is wonderful, and I’m glad you highlighted it before we moved on to the next phase. And it’s so funny, I’m tempted – you tell me, is this a good idea or a bad idea – when it comes to the visualization, one of my knee-jerk reactions was, “Oh, I bet there is a website where I can put a photo of myself and see what I look like when I’m old.” And it was like, “Hm, on the one hand that could be interesting and help bring about a picture, but on the other hand, maybe I won’t like the picture.”

Tara Mohr
Yeah. I would say, let your subconscious mind do it because it’s sort of going back to our dream conversation – you’re going to see where this person lives, how they live, how they carry themselves. You want your right brain and your intuition to bring all that to you, rather than some computer-generated literal thing. So yeah, I’d say let your mind’s eye dream it up.

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

Tara Mohr
Oh, sure. Well, one of my favorite quotes comes from Marianne Williamson, and it is, “Ask to be a representative of love.” So, in any situation that you’re feeling stressed about… And I have used this in professional situations, including before I was an entrepreneur – very traditional professional situations – with amazing success and results, like going into a tense meeting where there was a lot of conflict and my prayer and inner intention was, I want to be a representative of love in the room. And what that allowed me to do was get out of myself and my fear and my ego, and contribute so much more value and be such a more helpful, mature voice in the room. So that’s always for me like a mantra, a favorite quote, a favorite practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Tara Mohr
I have so many, but I just finished one that I think is outstanding and that your listeners will probably really enjoy. It’s called Einstein and the Rabbi. It’s by Rabbi Naomi Levy and it’s really a personal growth type book that is just very compelling and helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours that helps you be awesome at your job?

Tara Mohr
One of my favorite habits is surrender, by which I mean remembering that I’m not supposed to figure it out all on my own. So when I’m feeling overwhelmed or unclear, I can very consciously say, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do in this situation.” I physically open up my hands to the world, the greater space and say “Help!” And then I kind of go through my day with a sensitive listening for the insights and answers. And I find that that surrender and asking for help really changes everything.

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

Tara Mohr
I’m at TaraMohr.com. And the Playing Big book is available on Amazon and everywhere that books are sold.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Tara Mohr
I do. I would invite everyone to circle back to that idea we started our conversation with, and ask yourself are you being more loyal to your fears or your dreams? And what’s one thing you can do today to be more loyal to your dreams?

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Tara, thank you so much for sharing this. I wish you lots and lots of luck in your coaching and your book and all the cool things you’re up to!

Tara Mohr
Thank you! Likewise.

Jan 17

250: Powering Up Your Professional Presence with Magdalena Yesil

By Podcasts No Comments

 

 

Magdalena Yesil says: "There's no one more important for your career advancement than your current boss."

Technology mogul Magdalena Yesil shares how to boost your gravitas, results, and ability to be heard at the workplace.

You’ll Learn:

 

  1. What is the professional ask and why you should do it
  2. How to access and convey greater gravitas
  3. Tips for being heard better in meetings

 

About Magdalena 

Magdalena Yeşil is a founder, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist of many of the world’s top technology companies, including Salesforce, where she was the first investor and founding board member. Yesil is a former general partner at U.S. Venture Partners, where she oversaw investments in more than thirty early-stage companies and served on the boards of many. A technology pioneer, Yeşil founded three of the first companies dedicated to commercializing Internet access, e-commerce infrastructure, and electronic payments.

Items Mentioned in this Show:

Pete Mockaitis
Magdalena, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Magdalena Yesil
Thank you. I’m very excited to do this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I am, too. And I’d love to kick it off, if you could share with us, the story of when you had to take the SAT you got there via a ride from a fisherman. What’s the backstory here?

Magdalena Yesil
Yes, not the most traditional way to go to the SAT exam. So, I have to take you back to 1975, in the late fall. And so, women and men in high school in Turkey did not think of going abroad to university, so the SAT exam was something incredibly unique. I had never really heard of it and I certainly had never seen a multiple-choice test before. It was being offered on the European side of the city, Istanbul is a city that is built on two continents, Europe and Asia. I happen to live on the Asian side. And it was being offered starting at 8:00 a.m. which meant that I should be on my way about 5:00-5:30 a.m.

Well, it turns out we did not have ferries running that early, so what ended up happening was that my boyfriend took me to the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, and we knew that in that narrow part of the Bosphorus, which is the waterway that divides the Asian from the European side, we would find some fisherman who usually spent the nights so they could go out fishing with dawn, and we were able to wake one up and when we offered him enough money and told him what the reason was, he was kind enough to actually take us across on his little baby motorboat, fishing boat, to the European side.

And then the exam was up a really steep hill in a spot that today is the Bosphorus University, but in those days, it was a school, it was a boys’ high school. And not only did we cross the Bosphorus on a fisherman’s boat but then we actually had to hike our way up to the exam venue. The biggest shock, though, wasn’t crossing the Bosphorus to get to the SAT on a fishing boat; the biggest shock was actually seeing that you had to answer by coloring in circles, the exam questions. I had never seen anything like that before. That was just amazing to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what a story. And I think about, whenever we’re tempted to say, “Oh, I don’t want to inconvenience that person,” or, “Oh, I guess I’m out of luck. I can’t make it,” just that sheer resourcefulness and determination. And I don’t know if you can recall, but at the time, just what was the amount of money it takes to get a sleepy fisherman to give you a ride across?

Magdalena Yesil
Probably it was, you know, five or six liras, probably no more than with the local, at the time, exchange rate maybe about a dollar, but that was big money for a high school student.

Pete Mockaitis
Right, yeah. And then you put forty-ish years of inflation there and, okay, I’m with you. So, I’ll try it out if I find myself in that situation which is very specific with another urgent need. Now, SAT is behind me except in scary dreams that come up from time to time. I guess I’m naked and unprepared for it. Cool.

Magdalena Yesil
Well, it just shows, first of all, I had a very nice boyfriend who was willing to help me out to make that journey to the exam, and that we were very resourceful. We actually were able to think of a way to get me to the other side of the Bosphorus.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s great. Well, so, I want to talk about some of your resourcefulness. You’ve packed a whole lot of it in your most recent book called Power Up. What’s the main idea behind the book? And why is it important here and now?

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah, so Power Up: How Smart Women Win in the New Economy is really all about being resourceful and how I, in my career, was able to take advantage of the opportunities and really embrace them with both hands, and make do with whatever I had. And it wasn’t just me but also was other women, 27 others that I interviewed for the book – our learning, our experiences, our advice to the next generation.

What’s really heartwarming is that a lot of the reviews I read on the book are actually coming from men. I want to say maybe even more than 50% of the reviews are written by men. So, even though I originally wrote this book for young women, I feel that the advice applies across the board. It’s supposed to be incredibly pragmatic, incredibly easy to apply because when you are resourceful, when you don’t have very many resources in your hand, you make do with whatever you have. A lot of that actually translates to other generations, other geographies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Excellent. Well, thank you, and so I am eager to dig into some of these items. Your table of contents is so tantalizing. And so, I just want to just jump into the pieces that I found most intriguing. So, could we start off by sharing what is the power to flow and how do we get that?

Magdalena Yesil
So, I open the book with the most traditional way to basically send someone off on a journey, which is exactly what my friends and family did, as well as my neighbors, as I embarked on my journey to come to the United States. What people do is they take buckets of water and, as the individual is departing, they throw these buckets of water after the person as they’re driving away or walking away or taking a ferry.

The idea is that water always flows and gets to a destination, and they’re wishing the person leaving the ability to flow and get to where they want. Water flows around rocks and boulders, and if there’s a big barrier it usually finds cracks. Sometimes it goes underground and becomes underground streams. And that concept of flowing and when you’re faced with difficulty, sometimes when you’re faced with absolute no’s, and to be able to maneuver your way around has really helped me a lot in my career.

I’ve actually used that imagery for myself, and I do think it’s a strong imagery. What it means is that no one can stop me. I might not end up exactly where I wanted, I might not end up taking the journey I thought I was going to have, but I’m going to get to the other side one way or the other.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, it’s about mindset and a visual and metaphor that sort of triggers that sense of conviction and motivation. That’s great in terms of starting in your brain. And so, then, when it comes into practice in terms of like the day-to-day, what are some things that you’re, in fact, doing, actions you’re taking to keep that flow of power going?

Magdalena Yesil
Well, some of the simplest things to do is when you want something to actually ask for it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Magdalena Yesil
You know, very often we want something and, for some reason, we are feeling like we cannot actually specifically put it on the table and ask for it. A good example, actually I share this in the book, is I wanted to be a speaker at a invite-only conference years back. I was the co-founder of a no-name company, I was a no-name person myself, and this was a conference that was really for the elite of the industry, of the technology industry.

Pete Mockaitis
You’re elite now.

Magdalena Yesil
Well, maybe so. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, those types of names would get invited, not a nobody startup founder. And I had the opportunity to actually have a meeting with the organizer of the conference, and as we were talking about this startup and the new technology, and as he was leaving I said to him, “Do you know my birthday is coming right up.” And he like looked at me like, “What does that have to do with anything?”

And I said, “Do you know what I want for my birthday more so than anything else?” And he took my bait and said, “What?” He probably thought, “What is she talking about?” I said, “What I want for my birthday, more than anything else, is to be a speaker at your conference.” And I said that because I knew that I would never get an invite as an attendee. The only way I would get invite is if I could actually bring something of real value that would allow me to be a speaker.

So, he laughed, he thought it was a cute joke, and that was the end of that but I put my request on the table. And, literally, about maybe four-five months later, I got an email from him. He was putting together a panel. One of the panelists was Scott Cook the founder of Intuit, a couple of other people from the financial industry, and he was very excited to invite me as well because I had a company that was creating a product called CyberCash which was an electronic payment for the, at the time, emerging e-commerce industry.

So, the bottom line is: ask; you may receive it. You may not, but if you don’t you didn’t lose anything. That’s a way to flow forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s excellent. And I’d love to zoom into the psyches of your readers and as you’ve engaged in conversations. What are some key reasons why people don’t ask? And what sort of the mental antidote to those excuses?

Magdalena Yesil
I think the hardest thing for people and the biggest barrier for not asking is being turned down. They feel that if they get turned down that will really be depressing, they will lose face, and they just don’t want to go there. So, the most important building block to being able to ask what you want is to actually convince yourself that if you are turned down that’s totally okay. It actually is not a disaster and it doesn’t take anything from your self-esteem. Once you convince yourself of that it gets much easier to ask.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, as I’m thinking about some things I’ve been a little bit hesitant or slow to ask for, I think it’s been kind of like I really, really want it and there’s not any direct urgency, and so I have maybe this conception that somehow I will be more worthy or impressive or persuasive if I do so at a different or later time. And I’m starting to think that that’s BS, that’s not actually true.

Magdalena Yesil
Yes, I totally agree with that. I think a lot of people feel that, “Well, tomorrow I might be in a better position to get a yes, so let me just hold off. Let me just wait until then. I might be in of higher stature or somehow things might have worked out for me and I might be in a much better position to get the final answer that I want.”

You know, that would be great but life doesn’t usually work that way, and if we postpone, tomorrow, who knows what will happen tomorrow, what will it bring. So, in my life, a sense of urgency has always been in me and with me. I have always had this desire to do it now, partly also I’m a very impatient person. So, asking today, I just want to get it over with. I want to put it on the table. Let them think about it now.

Pete Mockaitis
You know that’s a great point in that it’s sort of like upon what evidence or data do we have to suggest that delay will be good because there’s plenty of data points, from my own life, in which delay is bad? It’s like, “Oh, I was going to ask for that opportunity from that person I know who likes me, but that person no longer works there or no longer holds that title or role or position in order to extend that offer to me.” And so, it’s like the delay hurt me and the delay, it’s like there’s not much hard proof or evidence that it will help me.

Magdalena Yesil
Absolutely. And I think my impatience actually comes in handy here. I always feel like this is the best time now. Now is better than ever before or ever later so I embrace things that way. Sometimes I’m full of it, it doesn’t work out. I was just too premature. I just didn’t have the credentials or it wasn’t the right timing. But I’d rather step forward now than wait. And that’s usually working out for me.

You know, I’m doing a new startup right now so I’ve gone from being a venture capitalist and an angel investor with the power of the checkbook to being a very needy entrepreneur again. And this desire to just ask for things and put it all on the table so that others are thinking about it on my behalf as well, I’m back to that mode and it’s working out.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I know this is hard to pin you to a number, but I think it’s helpful context. So, when you ask for something, and maybe if you historically have thought, or others that you’ve advised thought, “Well, you know, I really have no business doing this. I’m not worthy yet. They don’t like me enough. I don’t have the credentials,” or whatever sort of. How often do you think people get yeses when you just put yourself out there person-to-person, face-to-face?

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah, let me tell you, more than 50%.

Pete Mockaitis
Booyah. Awesome.

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah, so it’s more than average. So, the good news, I feel, and the reason why I keep doing it and I recommend it to others, is that the probability of getting yes is actually much higher than you thought. And if that is, in fact, the case for others as well, then it becomes you get that positive feedback and you do it more.

Because I’ve asked in the past and I’ve gotten what I’ve wanted more than half the time, then I’m more likely to ask. If you never ask you’ll never get those statistics and you’ll probably just assume that, “Well, the probability is probably less than 5% I’ll be given what I’m asking for.”

I’m not talking about outrageous stuff, I’m not talking about going and asking for a big house or a big car or any of that. I’m talking about in your career, asking for a meeting, asking for the audience of someone, asking for feedback from someone you care about, asking to be included at a conference.

The professional ask, that make a lot of sense for your career even though it’s a little early for you and your career, extend yourself. If you’re not a VP of sales, act like you’re a VP of sales. If you’re not a director of engineering, act like you’re a director of engineering, so have that chutzpah to go ask for what you really feel maybe in the future you’ll deserve. Ask for it today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yes. That’s so good. And I’m thinking about I remember one time I met with someone who asked me, just randomly, didn’t know him at all, about when it comes to some advice about consulting or getting involved in it, and I said, “Oh, yeah, sure.” So, we chat and then I noticed he had this like detailed notebook of all the people he had reached to and talked to. I was like, “Wow, could you tell me how often total strangers like myself have said yes and agreed to meet and chat with you?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, let me crunch those numbers.”

And he told me that amongst total strangers it was about 28% of the time. And so, you put into context, you’re talking about a professional ask and someone that you have some kind of a connection or relationship or like-mindedness, affinity and affiliation in some way, that can really skyrocket past 50%, so that’s encouraging.

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah. The other thing I just would like to say is if you feel like you’re asking for something and it’s going to be really one-sided, meaning you’re going to be the beneficiary and the other people are really giving you, extending themselves for you, then think of what they will get out of it, and then make the ask. Because it’s almost much better to approach someone with something you want but also be able to articulate for them what it is they’re going to get so always think about it from the other side’s point of view as well, “If I make this request, are they actually going to benefit from giving me what it is that I’m asking for?” If you put it in that context, the probability of getting a yes goes up significantly.

Pete Mockaitis 
Perfect. Okay. Cool. Well, now to totally change gears, I wanted to get your take on how one goes about developing gravitas?

Magdalena Yesil
Oh, okay. Well, gravitas is a word that I truly use over and over again that I really feel has guided my career as a woman in technology, and it’s a concept that I like to promote especially for young women. What is gravitas? Gravitas is your dignity and your seriousness all combined together in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Magdalena Yesil
What it is is the way you carry yourself, the way you dress, the way you make eye contact with someone when you first meet them and shake their hand, it’s your openness, your friendliness, and yet your seriousness, your professionalism. Put it all together and you create a package which is basically communicating to the person across from you, “I am just as serious as you. I mean to win just like you do. I am your equal. And I may be just a tiny bit better.” That is a great place to start.

I think that I did that as a kid, I did that as a young adult partly because I really grew up in an environment where things weren’t necessarily being handed to me. I didn’t always feel like I was the equal of other people but I wanted to make sure that other people knew that I felt I was their equal. So, communicating that very, very early in relationships in your workplace is so important for young women because it sets the tone. It basically subconsciously sends the message to those that are working with you that you mean business and nothing else.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so now, I’d love it if you could maybe just really break that down in terms of you mentioned the smile and the handshake and such. So, could you give us some examples that you see frequently in terms of gravitas-conveying versus gravitas-destroying behaviors you see time and time again as you meet and interact with people?

Magdalena Yesil
So, I think gravitas, let’s just start with dress because that’s the external packaging and it’s easy to decipher what it communicates. I have my whole professional career, and you have to realize at 21 years old I was a semiconductor design engineer in a semiconductor company back in the early ‘80s, and the world was quite different.

I mean, it was technology industry was extremely male dominated especially in semiconductors. I was the only woman almost always in my work environments so, for me, it was very clear that I had to communicate a real professional image. And dress actually says a lot about what your intent is, why you’re there.

I know that as we’ve gone to casual Fridays, and then we’ve gone into casual dress, it has become the acceptable norm for dress has become much wider. And with that actually there’s a lot of confusion on the recipient’s end. So, personally, for me, my dress going to work has looked very different than my dress on the weekends or my dress going out at night.

My going-to-work dress has always been extremely serious, extremely professional, and I’ve always looked to see if I can dress as if I’m someone at a higher level in the organization than my current level. So, as a young woman, as a 24-year old, 25-year old, I really wanted to look much more like one of those VPs. Now, it happens to be there were no female VPs in my company but there were female VPs in adjacent industries, other industries, so I wanted to dress for a role I was aspiring to not just dress for my role of today.

And I know it sounds very old-fashioned but it certainly has made a very big difference for me. Also, I think, when you meet someone, to really have the posture of standing up really on your own two feet, to have a firm handshake, to put out your hand first, especially if you’re with a man, shaking their hand. For the woman to extend their hand first, what it shows is power. It shows actually affirmative behavior. It shows, “I am choosing to shake your hand versus I’m reacting to you.”

And pretty much everything, it’s taking that first step. It just replete with so many subtle messages. And gravitas means that, as a young woman, you are leading. You know what you want in that relationship, and you’re taking charge.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, I’m thinking when you talk about so many subtle messages, I think a lot of it is even below the realm of our consciousness in terms of what we’re doing and what we’re putting out there. And yet, I think if you have that sense of belief, I guess I’m also thinking kind of method acting here in terms of rather than an actor fixating on, “Okay, I can do this with my eyebrows, and this with my hands, and this with my chest,” and sort of hitting a series of movements that they want to convey an emotion. Rather they just get into the place where they feel that emotion.

Magdalena Yesil
Absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, all these things flow naturally. So, I guess, I’m thinking maybe a central sort of belief or attitude is, “Does someone really believe and feel that they are equal to the people that they’re speaking with or engaging with, or that they are just a worker and someone so much more impressive and influential and amazing relative to them?” So, how do you think about, I guess, just the fundamental mindsets self-belief stuff there?

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah. Well, I think it, unfortunately, usually starts very early in our lives and, therefore, if we have children it’s very important to ingrain in them that sense of self-confidence, and we can talk about that some more. But it’s that self-confidence that comes through. You’re absolutely right, and the advice I give in Power Up: How Smart Women Win in the New Economy is all about dressing and stuff that makes you feel powerful, because if you do, if you are walking out of your house, and you say to yourself, “Wow, I really look good. I feel powerful. I feel just so great today,” you’re going to communicate that to people.

I have a story in the book about my college classmate, Christy Wagner, who basically had nothing to do with the computer industry. She had a great degree in biology, but she got a computer industry job. and I said, “Christy, how do you do it? You don’t know this stuff.” I had a double degree. So, it was like I was just amazed she had so much self-confidence she got a job. She said, “You know what, I put on my bitch in clothes and I get out of my house, and I walk into that office and I feel so good.” And, sure enough, she was incredibly successful because she had that attitude. It didn’t take her very long to learn.

She obviously was a smart woman, she was a quick study, but it was that attitude that carried her forward. She didn’t walk in saying, “Well, I’m not good at this, I’m not good at that. And these other people, please, let me sit all the way in the back and not get noticed.” No, she put herself out there and people took her lead. She looked like she knew what she was doing and they believed that she knew what she was doing.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I really like how you’ve zoomed in on clothes and how they make you feel. And I’m kind of reflecting on I remember there was a number of occasions I went on a speed-dating event in sort of the same event, same place across multiple years. And one year I had some shirts that were sort of custom-made to my measurements, and so I just sported one of those. And what do you know? That year I had like three times as many women interested.

Magdalena Yesil
Isn’t that the truth? Because you felt so great.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. And I’m sure part of it was, “Hey, it looks good,” but a huge part of it is that I felt a sense of comfort and confidence. And, for me, I think, when it comes to clothes, fit is really king. It’s like, “Is it kind of pinching and tugging or billowing? Or is it just, ‘Hmm, perfect.’?”

Magdalena Yesil
Perfect, yes. And the key is, of course, whatever it is for you, figure that out. Put on those clothes. See which clothes make you feel better. It might not be your clothes. It might be your hair. It might be something else. But whatever it is, embrace it, because if you feel great about yourself, others will think the same.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. You know, I also think it’s really powerful to be able to reflect upon victory moments and accomplishments and achievements, and so that those are more top of mind than the times that you totally screwed up in a similar context. So, any other quick tips on the confidence game?

Magdalena Yesil
So, I always feel that what works for me is projecting myself in a winning position that I really want. So, if I really want to close a customer or turn a prospect into a customer, I will think about them six months out and we’re having a celebration dinner because actually our software has really increased their sales, and they’re telling us how fantastic it has been.

So, I do these mental imagery that makes me feel like I actually have made my customers’ life so much better, I have increased their business, I have solved the problem that they couldn’t solve before, I brought efficiency. And when I create these images for myself, I start believing that, in fact, our software can do that. So, when I meet them, I am talking to them with so much more passion, with so much more conviction.

And same thing when you’re fundraising. When you’re fundraising as an entrepreneur you’re sitting across from venture capitalists, they’re all powerful because they happen to have the money. But are they? You are actually the one who’s going to make them money. You actually are the one that they should be chasing because if they’re not an investor in your company but others are, they’re going to feel so sorry. They’re going to feel so left out.

So, getting yourself, doing these pep talks with yourself, “I’m going to meet that investor but, in fact, that investor, you know, I’m giving them the opportunity to invest in me. I’m giving them the half hour that they might not have then deserved, but I will give it to them.” And let the other side feel that it’s really an honor to be with you. It’s really an opportunity to be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s so fun. And I think there’s some gurus about pitching, and I’ll find them and have them on the show one of these days. That’s kind of a huge part of their whole approach, and people say, “They don’t ask for the money. They just take the money.”

Magdalena Yesil
Exactly. And, listen, I have done a lot of pitching at Salesforce where I’m the first investor and founding board member. We could not raise a penny of venture capital, and it’s hard to believe that with Salesforce now building the tallest building west of the Mississippi. But it’s not always easy, and yet we never got discouraged just because VCs didn’t get it. We just said, “Hey, they’re not just as smart as we thought they would be.”

So, it’s that attitude really comes in and helps you out when things are not going your way, and that ability to flow. So, we went and found money from private investors. You know, it took a lot more work because we raised it in small chunks but so be it. We were going to persevere.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, once again, to dramatically change the topic, but I think there’s probably some good overlap at the same time. I’d like your perspective on how can one be better heard at meetings? And I’m thinking about some scenarios where it’s almost comical or enraging where two people sort of say just about the same thing, and one is just sort of, “Eh,” brushed aside, and the other one, people sort of vigorously nod, like, “Yes, this makes a lot of sense. I’m excited about what you’ve said.” So, what’s behind that? How are you better heard there?

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah, I’m going to address that, but before that, I want to say something else. And that is if you’re sitting in a meeting and you’re thinking something, which we all do, but you’re holding off on saying it, don’t hold off. Say it. Because if you’re thinking of a thought that you think the rest of the team should hear, this is actually value-add to the group, but you’re holding off. There’s a chance every minute you hold off, there’s a chance someone else will say it before you.

So, again, it comes back to that, you know, be bold. So, rule number one is if you think of something that you think is worthwhile in a meeting, don’t just talk to hear yourself talk. You’ve got to have something to say that’s really worthwhile. But if you think it’s worthwhile, don’t hold off. Don’t be musing in your head how you should be saying it, and repeating it. Also, the more you think about a thought and try to say it just the right way, the less you’re listening to whatever else is going on in the meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
Right.

Magdalena Yesil
Right? So, it’s much better to get it out of your chest so that you can actually pay attention to what’s going on. Now, number two, the question you asked me, and that is you have said it and the conversation continued as if no one even really heard you, or maybe someone said something. And then, about five minutes later, if you’re a woman, it’s usually a man, who says something almost exactly the same or very, very similar, and people say, “Wow, that was great, Greg. Good for you. That is a very good observation.”

Now, what do you do? You sit there, usually just do and feel so horrible, and really start saying, “Oh, life is so unfair. Women, we will never be able to have an equal chance to be heard.” You know, don’t go there. Don’t make yourself a victim. Instead, what I recommend you do is you say, “Greg, thank you so very much for amplifying what I said a few minutes ago, and I really appreciate it. Thank you, because when I said it the team didn’t seem like they picked up on it, so I really appreciate you underscoring what I said.” What did you do? You just took the credit back. You didn’t get angry, you didn’t get sour, you didn’t start saying, “Oh, gosh, I will never get recognition. Look at this guy. He copied me.”

Okay. So, the other thing that I say about meetings is if you’re kind of a timid person, and not everyone is as aggressive as sometimes these companies require you to be, if you’re sort of on the timid side, find someone who can actually be your amplifier in a meeting, one of your colleagues. If you’re female it’s probably better to find a male colleague to be your amplifier. What do I mean by that?

When you make a comment that is worthwhile, your amplifier would say, “Just like Magdalena said, I agree,” and give you credit and repeat what you just said. That person just amplified you, gave you credit so that the rest of the team doesn’t forget that was your idea, and put it back on the table when maybe you weren’t getting as much attention to your point.

An amplifier is such a great tool to use in your career. And what do you do for that amplifier? You become their amplifier. You become the one that does it for him, and it’s a symbiotic relationship. And, especially if you’re the timid one, you learn how to speak up to second your friends’, your colleagues’ ideas. And sometimes it’s easier to second someone else than to come up with your original idea, so it’s great practice for public speaking as well, speaking up in a meeting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, in your example, in which you said, “Thank you, Greg, for amplifying what I said previously,” I’m wondering if there are some sort of misbehaving professionals who are kind of credit-stealing or just would feel furious if you sort of reasserted your claim to the credit for the idea in the meeting. Any pro tips on navigating those waters?

Magdalena Yesil
So, I think that if you have the right, and if you are feeling like you are in control, and someone maybe belittles you for what you said, or they don’t give you credit, or they just actually still walk over you, that’s okay. You’ll do it again in the next meeting. It’s just a practice. You’re not going to win each one so you have to have some patience as well that you’re not always going to get the credit, but to hang in there and to make a practice of it. And, over time, people will actually learn to listen to you because they’ll realize that if they don’t give you the time of day you’re going to come back and ask for it.

Pete Mockaitis
And along these lines I’m wondering about environments in which sometimes Dr. Evil who inquired, “Why must I be surrounded by idiots?” I think there are times when there are professionals who are good and smart and sharp, and yet it’s like both their bosses and their colleagues all seem obliviously unaware of something that’s just so clearly true and right and good and necessary. And it seems like they don’t even get or appreciate how you are raising critical factors.

And so, I have a number of ideas are coming to mind whether it’s people are doing some group collaborations and trying to win over a big customer or grant. And it’s like, “Hey, you straight up have errors or inconsistencies in this proposal that you’re putting forward. Like, come on now.” So, I think that’s a uniquely tricky situation. But I’d love your view on that one, too.

Magdalena Yesil
Well, first of all, if you don’t have a supportive boss, if you have a boss who is minimizing you or ignoring you, it probably is time to find another boss because there’s no one more important for your career advancement than your current boss. And I cannot stress that enough, and I do talk about a boss as potentially a sponsor where they are actually trying to open up doors for you and help you advance in your career.

Now, we cannot always find another job, we cannot always find another boss. Sometimes we’re just stuck with a situation. And there, what I would do is I would pull my boss aside, and say, “What is it that I need to do to actually have you hear me better, to actually have you give me more credit? Because you know what, I work for you. If I win, you win. I’m here to make you look better. So, how can we collaborate more? How can I actually really move your career forward?”

So, you put it always in terms of the other person. What can you bring to them? How can you make their career better? How can you help them get the recognition from the CEO? Then they’ll actually listen to you because you’re giving them a very personal reason to collaborate with you. Then it’s no longer about you; it’s about them. And then, over time, they might actually start confiding in you and coming to you, asking you to do certain things. So, it’s that level of collaboration with your boss and with some of the higher ups in the organization. If you think everyone that’s around you is kind of an idiot and they just don’t get it, you’re at the wrong company.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Well, Magdalena, I think we can go for hours, but I might need to push fast-forward a little bit. So, can you tell me, is there anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear quickly about some of your favorite things?

Magdalena Yesil
Yeah, so I think the most important thing, and I open the book with this, is not being afraid to fail, because if we are afraid to fail we will never really be able to take risks. We’re always going to go down to the common denominator. The ability to fail, to accept failure, and say, “You know what, I’m going to probably fail multiple times before I get to where I want to go.” That is really an important mindset. And I certainly have failed multiple times in my careers. They were painful processes but they made me much stronger. And the one thing I knew was that no failure was ever going to stop me.

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

Magdalena Yesil
I don’t know if it’s inspiring, but a quote that I think very often, that one of my old bosses used to say is, “You get nothing for trying.” It’s kind of a harsh quote, but he’s absolutely right, and the first time he said that to me I was very taken aback, “I get nothing for trying?” Like, Americans like saying, “Nice try. Good try.” But he said, “No, you get nothing. There’s no result. Okay, maybe you’ll learn something.”

So, I often say to myself when I think about him, “I have to get whatever I’m going after. Just that I tried and I didn’t get there is okay. I failed. I’m not afraid of failure but it is not a good try. It’s the goal that I’m really after.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Magdalena Yesil
Well, my favorite study is actually one that I did very many years ago when I was looking for a job and I couldn’t find one, and I was trying to figure out how I could be an entrepreneur because I couldn’t find an employer. I did the very first internet user study, and that really put me on the map. I actually got a speaking spot at a conference at the very first internet conference, I presented, and I went from being a nobody to being somebody and actually someone who got regarded as an expert. And then I found my co-founder for my first entrepreneurial company.

So, doing the user study at an area, you’re going to learn a lot. If you can fund it yourself, great. If not, study up with others, but I do actually think conducting studies is a great way to gain expertise in some of the new fields that are emerging.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Magdalena Yesil
Alice in Wonderland.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And a favorite tool?

Magdalena Yesil
My favorite tool ever is a smile. It really works.

Pete Mockaitis
Awesome. And how about a favorite habit?

Magdalena Yesil
Asking every day as I drive to work, or as I commute to work on ferry, or walking to work, whatever it is I’m doing, I always ask myself, “If there was only one thing I could accomplish today, what would they be? What would that be?” I want to everyday establish the most important task for myself, and then tell myself that I cannot leave that office until I’ve accomplished that.

It’s amazingly hard to accomplish even one simple task sometimes because the day gets so crowded and you become so reactive especially if people are working for you and they’re constantly coming to talk to you. So, making that decision every day there’s one task, I have to get this done, it’s the highest leverage, and if I don’t get it done I’m not leaving that office until I get it done.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget that you share in your book and speaking and working with folks that seems to really connect and resonate, getting them quoting it back to you often?

Magdalena Yesil
I think the biggest quote I have gotten out of this book is people telling me that they themselves have started using the imagery of flowing especially when things don’t go well for them or they don’t go as they predicted or wanted. That thought that, “Okay, I will find a way around this because I’m like water. You cannot stop water. It might stop for a little while but then it’ll become a roaring waterfall on the other side.”

So, it’s amazing how I thought no one would really embrace that, they would think that the whole concept of people throwing water after you as you depart is some arcane habit of a different culture, but it really seems to resonate with people.

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

Magdalena Yesil
To Magdalena.com. Also, you can find me on Twitter, on LinkedIn as Magdalena Yesil.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Magdalena Yesil
Never be a victim. Never. Never let anybody make you feel like a victim. And take the word “hurt” out of your professional vocabulary. The workplace is never a place to feel hurt.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Magdalena, thanks so much for sharing this perspective. Powerful stuff. It served you well and I think will serve many listeners as well, so please keep doing what you’re doing, and it’s been great chatting.

Magdalena Yesil
I hope it will help very many especially young people push forward in their careers and get to where they want.