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Dec 09
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726: Developing the Mind of a Champion and Leader with Dr. Jim Afremow

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Dr. Jim Afremow reveals the secrets of how top performers prepare themselves mentally to succeed.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The five-minute mental training routine used by top athletes 
  2. Two easy ways to turn a bad day around
  3. One powerful question to elevate your leadership 

About Jim

Dr. Jim Afremow is a much sought-after mental skills coach, licensed professional counselor, co-founder of the Champion’s Mind app, and the author of The Champion’s Mind (over 140,000 copies sold), The Champion’s Comeback, and The Young Champion’s Mind. For over 20 years, Dr. Afremow has assisted numerous high-school, collegiate, recreational, and professional athletes. In addition, he has mentally trained several U.S. and international Olympic competitors. Jim also served as a senior staff member with Counseling Services and Sports Medicine at Arizona State University, and as a Mental Skills Coach and the Peak Performance Coordinator with the San Francisco Giants MLB organization. In addition, Jim has helped many business executives elevate their mental game. 

Resources Mentioned

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Dr. Jim Afremow Interview Transcript

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

Jim Afremow
Hey, Pete, thanks so much for having me on today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your wisdom. And you’ve helped a lot of athletes achieve peak performance. I’d love to hear is there a particularly dramatic or exciting story you’d like to share to set the stage or the scene for what could be possible if we become mental champions?

Jim Afremow
Absolutely. So, one of my favorite stories is from Natalie Cook, and she’s a five-time Olympian, and she won the gold medal in Sand Volleyball at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. And the story behind that is her grandfather, when she was really young, encouraged her to dream big, and set a that’s impossible goal, or seems like an impossible goal. And so, she said, “Grandpa, I want to win a gold medal in the Olympics, and I don’t even know what sport yet.” So, he said, “Really go for it, and I believe in you.”

And so, anyway, she ended up really dedicating her life to excellence and she surrounded herself with the color of gold. So, she wore gold-colored sunglasses, and had painted her nails gold, and just surrounded herself with gold as almost a subliminal message that, “That’s what you’re gunning for in life.” And so, she ended up, again, accomplishing all of her goals. But my favorite part of the story that she shared with me is that she was asked after winning the Olympic gold medal what if she had finished second place. What if she got a silver medal?

And her response is perfect. She said, “Well, I would’ve painted my silver medal gold.” And her point was it’s not about the medal, it’s about living a gold-medal life. And so, when she decided to really go for it, she ended up telling everyone, and one of the things that usually when we set a big goal, we don’t want to tell anyone because what if we don’t accomplish it. And her idea was, “I want people to hold me accountable to that goal,” and she calls it teaming, which is surrounding yourself with people that really support your dreams and goals. And it’s just a great story because I think that should be something that we all strive for, is to live a gold-medal life.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I dig that. Yes, thank you. Well, I’m excited to hear some of your particular insights and tools from your books The Champion’s Mind, and your latest, The Leader’s Mind: How Great Leaders Prepare, Perform, and Prevail. So, that’ll be fun. But, first, my producers and I, we were prepping for this. We can’t resist. On your website, you have an intriguing teaser that says, “Win the mental battle. Train your mind in just five minutes a day by following the mental training routines used by top athletes.” That’s good copy, Jim. Tell us, what is the five-minute mental training routine used by top athletes? And can you walk us through it? And what is it going to do for us?

Jim Afremow
Well, absolutely. So, I do have an app, Champion’s Mind app, it’s sort of like a powered toolbox. And the powered tools would be things that we should all work on regardless of whether we’re athletes or not. So, examples would be positive self-talk. How can we talk better to ourselves to accomplish what we want more in life?

Gratitude. We’ve often heard about gratitude and how important it is but I don’t think we realize how important it really is and what a game changer it is. So, there’s different tools and techniques for how to be more grateful in life. Goal-setting. Just like what we’re talking about with Natalie Cook, let’s write our goals down, let’s share them with others, and let’s put them somewhere where we could see them each day.

In addition to that, visualization. That’s one of my favorite mental skills. Not only just picturing our success but the steps, the specific steps to achieve our success. And then, of course, mindfulness. There’s a new saying now in sports, which is, “Be where your feet are.” And if we’re in the moment, we’re at full power, but most of us tend to be thinking about what happened earlier today or what might go on later today instead of being right here, right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Well, that sounds cool. And I can do all that in five minutes?

Jim Afremow
You could definitely do that in five minutes. And the neat thing about mental skills training is that you could do it in tandem or in parallel with other activities. So, for example, gratitude, one of the suggestions that I like to give to athletes is when they’re driving to the arena or the ballpark, is turn the music completely off and think about what you’re grateful for, not only in your sport but also in the rest of your life. And so then, you start your day or your practice with an attitude of gratitude, which really helps us not only to feel our best but to perform our best.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Certainly. Well, so then I’m curious, over the course of five minutes, what might my ritual or protocol be in terms of if I’m going to do a little bit of all of these things in five minutes?

Jim Afremow
Yup. What you can do is, I think that having a routine is good. One of the things that we hate as human beings is uncertainty, and that adds a lot to our stress. And the world is kind of in an uncertain place right now with the pandemic and just maybe job security and those kinds of things. So, build a routine around thinking like a champion each day. So, whether in the morning, afternoon, or in the evening, set aside some time to review our goals, review what makes us grateful, to give ourselves credit where credit is due.

Most of us are too hard on ourselves than not hard enough, so part of the positive self-talk is thinking about what you did do well today or what you’ve done well recently, and say, “Hey, that’s just like me to do that.” And then mindfulness, again, kind of in parallel with other activities, when you’re eating, really taste your food, or when you’re taking a sip of water, really taste the temperature and feel that water cooling your chest as it goes down when you take your sip.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, well, I do. I like cold water so much more for that very reason. It’s just more entertaining and rejuvenating, in my own personal opinion. And so, who could’ve thought, that, apparently, by adding some mindfulness to that, I can be more champion-like in my mental game. So, that’s cool. Well, so then share with us then, so your latest The Leader’s Mind: How Great Leaders Prepare, Perform, and Prevail, sort of what’s the big idea here?

Jim Afremow
Well, the big idea is that we need good leadership now more than ever, and that all of us are leaders in one way or another. We don’t need a title to be a leader. And so, take the opportunity to show good leadership skills in all areas of one’s life. So, as a parent, as a coworker, whether a teammate, or if you happen to coach a team or be a boss, I think it’s important to be the very best you can be as a leader because, number one, we know that people don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses.

And then the other thing, too, that we know is, from research, that most of us at work are only about 50% engaged with what we’re doing in the moment. We’re either feeling entitled, or unhappy, or negative. We’re not really engaged with what we’re doing so we’re not going to perform well obviously and then no one wins when that happens.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, lay it on us then, what should we do in terms of is there a particular mindset that gets us engaged and rearing to go, and makes us do better leadership-y activities and avoid poor leadership activities? How do we think about the mental game here?

Jim Afremow
Yeah. Well, I think it all starts with the idea that champions make each day count. So, most of us tend to procrastinate, “I’ll just try to get through today, and then maybe tomorrow I’ll bring my A-game.” And that’s one thing that champions don’t do. What they do do is, “How can I get one day better today?” And so, it’s that attitude that, “Whatever I’m going today, I’m going to do it to the fullest. And so, I’m going to have a great attitude and give my best effort.”

And so, part of being a great leader is taking care of yourself and leading by example. So, that’s why some of those mental skills and strategies we’ve talked about at the beginning are so important, “Am I talking good to myself with positive self-talk? Do I have great body language?” As a leader, you got to ask yourself, “Would I want to work for me today?” or if I’m a coach, “Would I want to play for me today?” So, it all starts with setting the right tone with your attitude.

And then looking for ways to help others around you. And when we help others around us, we kind of feel better about ourselves, and then it shows that we’re there for the right reason instead of it just being about us; it’s about the collective good.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m curious, so, Jim if you said that sometimes we have these days, like, “Ugh, I’m kind of tired. I don’t know, bored, unmotivated, disengaged, not into it,” whatever is going on, a little of blah or yuck going on. And so, rather than responding with a, “Uh, let’s see if I could just get through the day and maybe tomorrow will be better, and I can really make it count tomorrow.”

I’m curious, if you’re in the heat of battle there, the “Ugh” feeling not so grand, what do you do? Like, how can you flip the switch or get to a better place? Or, maybe you just don’t, and you suffer through but that somehow feel horrible on the inside but I guess look good on the outside and get some things done. Help us, Jim. When you’re in that yucky place, what do you do?

Jim Afremow
Yeah. Well, you definitely need a go-to strategy, and I have a bunch to share. But the thing is it’s really a fork in the road, in terms of, “Am I just going to go down the path of least resistance, and good is good enough?” And then we know that when our head hits the pillow at night, we usually don’t feel good about our day in terms of, “Yeah, I settled for silver instead of really went for gold today.”

But when we do our best, I don’t think anyone ever regrets that, and then we’re more likely to get into flow state or in the zone, and not only do we perform better, we end up enjoying our day more. So, we have everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving that extra effort of excellence. And so, one kind of fun activity that I like to do with athletes is I suggest that they pick an animal, a predator in nature, that they want to emulate on the field or in practice. It could be a fun team-building exercise as well.

But when you think about predators, they love to hunt. They live in the moment. They’re not too worried about what else is going on around them. And when they’re hunting for prey, they’re totally focused and goal-oriented. And if they don’t get that prey, they don’t needlessly beat themselves up. What they tend to do is just, “Okay, where is my next prey?”

And I think that what’s really cool about that, thinking about, “What’s my predator that I want to emulate on the field?” is then we could talk to ourselves that way. So, we could say, if I’m feeling a little bit low energy, I could say, “Hey, wake up. It’s time to hunt. Be the tiger. Be the lion. Let’s get after it today.” And I think one of the things, too, is that, for athletes and other performers, we tend to think, “Well, if I have a bad day, I’m a bad performer,” or a bad worker, or a bad athlete. And what I like to remind my clients is that even tigers have bad days but they’re still tigers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Noted. Thank you. That’s cool. Well, so I’m intrigued, you really sort of go into some detail in terms of the internal conversations. Can you share with us, you mentioned a go-to strategy, are there any key sort of words, or phrases, some do’s and don’ts in terms of particular verbiage inside our heads?

Jim Afremow
Yeah. Well, self-talk is the mind leads the body, so that’s also a good metaphor for leadership. The leader kind of leads the team. But the reason why self-talk is so important is because we have about 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day. There are different estimates, but we have a lot of thoughts per day, and the one thing we do know from research is that most of those thoughts are negative. So, we all have a negativity bias that keeps us safe, and that’s the number one priority of our brain is safety first. That’s the operating principle there.

And so, that’s going to keep us safe but it’s not necessarily going to make us successful. And so, in order to be happy and successful, we need to counteract that negative self-talk with positive self-talk. And so, that’s where I like to say that champions listen to themselves, or rather they talk to themselves, they don’t listen to themselves, because most of the thoughts that we’re going to have are going to be negative throughout the day.

So, when you catch yourself kind of in that negative state of mind, that’s when you really need to kick in the positive self-talk. And it could be as simple as, “I can do this. I am strong,” or, “I am not alone.” One athlete that I worked with was kind of having some challenges with conditioning on her team. She’s a freshman and moved up to college, and, man, the conditioning was a lot harder than in high school. And so, one of the things that she would say to herself is, “I’m not alone. I’m strong. I can do this.” And she would just repeat it over and over again, and that helped her get through those tough workouts. Whereas, before, what she was saying to herself is, “This hurts. This sucks. I can’t do this.”

Pete Mockaitis
Interesting. It sounds so simple and, yet, you’re telling us that that makes the difference in terms of whether you quit and don’t get the result versus you persist and do. Is that fair?

Jim Afremow
Yeah. Well, our muscles are always listening to what the mind says. So, if we want our muscles to perform or our body to perform the way we want, we need to really give it the right messages. And self-talk is something that, just like with gratitude or goal-setting or visualization, body language, all these skills and strategies are simple but they’re not easy. We just need to remember to do them.

And, usually, when we need to do them the most, is when we least feel like doing them. So, again, we’re having an off day, we’re low energy, adversity is striking, and that’s when we need to say, “Okay, game on. Put on the champion,” and look at whatever we’re faced with as a challenge to overcome rather than a threat to avoid.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m intrigued about self-talk in that it’s not that often that I am too harsh myself, like, “Oh, I’m a loser,” or, “I’m an idiot.” That happens here and there. But mostly my own negative self-talk is more just like I’m irritated by something. For example, I was trying to sell something on Facebook Marketplace mostly just because I wanted them to haul it away without paying for it to be hauled away. So, don’t tell them but I would take zero dollars for this item, but anyhow.

So, they send a message, like, “Hey, what time?” or whatever, and then I’m not on Facebook for a while, and then 40 minutes later, they’re like, “Hello?” and that just makes me angry. Jim, I don’t know if that’s just me or what because it’s sort of like, “I am angry that someone has the expectation of being always on and instantly replying. And, like, I feel like I have failed or disappointed them in some expectation. But I think that expectation is bull crap. So, I’m angry.” Usually, I can let that pass but it kind of gets me a little bit of a slant or funk.

I think the mind, with those 60 to 80,000 thoughts, it’s sort of like, once you’re prewired or in one chute of emotional being, it’s easier to see, “Well, what else is irritating and anger-inducing in my environment or world?” So, Jim, I’d love to get your take on that when it comes to self-talk. Sometimes it’s not even verbal inside the mind’s ear, but it’s an emotion. And sometimes it’s not lifted or pointed at the self, like, “I’m so bad,” but rather something else, but it still has unpleasant effects that can decrease performance and productivity over the course of the day. So, yeah, I guess I laid it on you my own situation but some of the nuances of self-talk. How might you address that situation?

Jim Afremow
Well, we definitely, most of the time, our first appraisal is usually negative. And, again, that relates to the negativity bias, so, “I can’t believe this is happening,” or, “Why now?” or, “This is unfair.”

Pete Mockaitis
Like, “What’s this guy’s problem? Chill out, man. Some people don’t live their lives on Facebook. Deal with it.”

Jim Afremow
Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Like, it’s just not helpful.

Jim Afremow
Exactly. And that’s where we need to make a re-appraisal of the situation and either look at it in a humorous way, like, “Okay, this is going to be a funny thing to share with someone later today,” or, we look at it as a challenge to overcome. And one of the little sayings that I like to use for myself is, “Get your expectations in line with reality.”

And most of us expect everything to go perfectly well each day, and, lots of luck, that’s not going to happen. And so, it reminds me of the story of Walter Hagen. He was, about a hundred years ago, one of the best golfers in the world, if not the best golfer of his time, and he reacted really well to the bad shots when he played. And back in the day, most golfers would throw their clubs or break their clubs and let it ruin their whole round when something bad happened. And he just ho-hummed, went onto the next shot, hit a good shot.

And so, he was asked, “How do you do that? How do you keep such a great attitude?” And he said, “Well, I expect four, or five, or six bad shots around, and golf is not a game of perfect, so to speak,” as we say nowadays, “So, when I do hit a bad shot, well, there’s one of the five, six, or seven bad shots that I’m going to hit today, or this tournament, so let it go. Put it behind me.”

And so, that’s kind of a key of champions is they tend to underreact emotionally when things aren’t going well rather than to overreact. And so, I like to joke again with performers that no one after a competition has ever said, “Man, I wish I got more angry out there or more anxious out there, or whatever it is out there. I wish I overreacted more to that bad call by the rep.” It’s usually, “I should’ve kept my cool,” and that’s where I like the saying that, “Cool heads win hot games.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s lovely. So, two good tools there. One is expectations, like, “Hey, if you interact with strangers, it’s probably going to have some unusual characters in some ways, and there’s a scammer in the mix as well. So, to be expected,” as opposed to be, like, “I’m so mad and frustrated and surprised and shocked that this thing happened.” So, one tool, get those expectations aligned with reality.

Secondly, re-appraisal, tell us, how can we do that? What are some examples of re-appraising? You say funny. I guess I’m imagining, I don’t know, like Seinfeld or something. You can make a whole episode out of this nothingness and turn that into humor. Can you give us some examples of re-appraisal in action, how it’s done?

Jim Afremow
Well, let’s say the classic example is you’re stuck in traffic and you need to get somewhere, maybe to work that day, and you’re getting frustrated, “What’s taking so long? Why are the roads so crowded?” And so, we’re going to have that instant negative reaction, and I think that’s where we could catch ourselves, take a deep breath, and kind laugh it off, and maybe think of it as an episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm, and just think that, “If I were watching this on TV, what would make this situation kind of humorous or funny?” versus just getting upset, and then kind of reminds me of, what the saying, that it’s kind of like holding a hot coal and expecting it to hurt someone else that you’re mad at.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, like revenge.

Jim Afremow
Yes. So, we tend to be our own worst enemy in those situations where we just stress ourselves out but, yet, we’re the ones holding the stress. So, the problem isn’t the problem is, I guess, what I’m getting at. It’s our reaction to the problem that’s often the problem. So, being stuck in traffic is just, “Okay, it’s going to happen. I’ll probably be a few minutes late. It’s not the end of the world.”

Again, get my expectations in line with reality, and then maybe take a deep breath, find out, listen to something good on the radio versus getting really upset, frustrated, heated, and then, all of a sudden, we have this really…we slip into this black hole and then carry it around with us all day.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Thank you. Well, so now these are parts of the mental game that apply to everybody. I’d be curious to hear, particularly with your book here The Leader’s Mind, how do we translate this into leadership context? Like, are there any particular applications, use cases, do’s and don’ts, that make all the difference when it comes to leading others?

Jim Afremow
I do think that what’s really, really important is that we get crystal clear about our core values. And one example that I share in the book is when Steve Kerr decided to accept the Golden State Warriors’ head coaching job for the basketball team, he started reaching out to not only his mentors in the basketball world, Phil Jackson, when he was with the Bulls, and then Greg Popovich when he was with the San Antonio Spurs, but he reached outside of his sport.

And one of the people that he reached out to was Pete Carroll, who’s Seattle Seahawks’ Super Bowl winning coach. And he said, “Pete, what should I do in terms of being a great coach?” And Pete said, “Don’t worry about the X’s and O so much. I want you to start with what is the most important to you.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” And he said, “Well, write down ten core values and then narrow that list to four core values that you’re going to implement in your program on your team, and that you’re going to live each day.”

And so, he came up with joy, mindfulness, competition, and then kind of like gratitude. And what’s really powerful about that is they incorporated those things into every day practice, “So, let’s make sure we’re having fun with the purpose of practice.” In terms of the gratitude or the caring for others, “Let’s really care about each other, not just the uniform but the person in the uniform.”

And so, he started really living those core values, and I think that that’s really important because then you can kind of gauge, “Am I living those or are we living those?” And then when the team or the organization kind of hits a wall or goes through a period of struggle, you could go back to those core values.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Thank you. All right. So, I’m curious, core values have come up a few times in the show. How does one arrive at them? I could just think of some off the top of my head, sure, and maybe that’s your first 10 or 50 depending on how much the juices are flowing. And then how do you recommend you really zero in on what are the big four?

Jim Afremow
Yeah, I think that one thing is having role models can be important. So, in terms of leadership, we don’t have to be kind of lost in the wilderness on our own. We should have leaders that we look up to that we can gain some wisdom from. And so, kind of along those lines would be, “Who do I respect most in terms of leadership?” It could be a family member, a parent. It could be maybe a teacher or a boss that you’ve had or a coach, or it could be someone that you’ve studied in history or maybe a current coach in a major league sport.

And then you think about, “Okay, what are their core values? How do those resonate with kind of my own experience?” And that could be a good starting point. So, just with, for example, with Steve Kerr, I really liked his core value of joy because I’m a big believer that the more fun you have, the better you’re going to do, and the better you do, the more fun you’re going to have. So, let’s start with joy. If we’re not having fun, and again, it’s not silly fun or goofing off fun, it’s fun with a purpose, or it can even be intense fun. If we’re not having fun in any area of our life, we’re probably not going to be doing that well in that area of our life.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Thank you. Okay. So, core values, that’s one huge cornerstone in terms of leading well. What else do you recommend?

Jim Afremow
I love the idea of having an after-action review or a debrief after a performance. And in the work world, it could be maybe a weekly debrief but, basically, “What are we doing well? And what can we do better, moving forward?” That also gives you the opportunity to celebrate what you’re doing well, give yourself credit where credit is due, but then also to really put your finger on, “Okay, here are some…let’s target some areas for growth that we can really take up a notch and that will help us to move forward.” Because that, again, the goal is to get one day better every day or one week better every week. And if you can do that throughout a season or a year, and do it every season and every year, you’re going to like where you end up.

Pete Mockaitis
I love it. And, likewise, what are some things we should not do or stop doing? Any key mistakes that leaders tend to make repeatedly that maybe they’re not even aware of?

Jim Afremow
You know what’s really, really fascinating is, in terms of the advice I give coaches and other types of leaders, number one is I’ll ask them, “Have you ever asked your employees or your athletes ‘What do I need to know about you or what do you want me to know about you in order to be the best leader I can possibly be for you?’” And it’s such an interesting and powerful question that we tend not to…it’s almost too simple.

Jim Afremow
But it’s really powerful and so a lot of the coaches that I’ve worked with will ask their athletes, “You know, on an index card, write down some things that you want me to know about you that will help me to be the best coach possible for you.” And it’s amazing what they get back. It might be, “Hey, I like when you coach me really tough,” or, “I respond better to maybe encouragement versus being challenged.” And so, really, it’s a great way to learn what buttons to press, to get the most out of the people you work for, and then so everyone is happy.

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

Jim Afremow
Well, I think that visualization is, again, it’s one of those skills that I think we all use a lot when we’re little just kind of spontaneously, picturing kind of cool and awesome things. Let’s get back to being creative in our own lives. And I encourage people to spend a few minutes a day just with their eyes closed and visualizing kind of who they want to be as a professional and performing the way that you want to perform.

So, it’s not just the end result of holding the trophy or getting the big paycheck, but the steps that will lead to that. But spend a little more time crafting your reality in your mind’s eye, and it’s amazing how often that will manifest itself in real life. I did that with my first book The Champion’s Mind. I visualized holding the finished product while I was writing it, and it gave me kind of that extra motivation to work when it was hard to sit down at the desk and write.

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

Jim Afremow
Well, a quote from Muhammad Ali, I really, really appreciate. So, he was doing, during one of his fight camps, he was doing sit-ups, and one of the reporters was watching and afterward asked Muhammad Ali, “How many sit-ups did you do there?” And Muhammad Ali said, “I don’t know because I only start counting them when they start hurting.” He said, “The reason I do that is because those are the ones that really count, those are the ones that make you a champion.”

And so, I really loved that quote about kind of when things get tough, that’s when you really find out what you’re made of, and that’s where you really, that extra effort of excellence, that’s where really you could go that…accomplish what you really want to accomplish. And so, working hard when things get hard is the great separator.

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

Jim Afremow
I always got a kick out of…so, just majoring in psychology as an undergrad, I went to University of Oregon, undergrad, and they just had a great psychology department, and just fell in love with psychology and then studied sports psychology and counselling in grad school. But I was a big fan of the Stanford marshmallow experiment.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Jim Afremow
I really enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a great movie, the early one. I know there’s been newer movie of it made. But I just love just the adventure of it and the story of redemption. This guy gets wronged and finds a way to kind of crawl back and reinvent himself and come back out on top again. So, I kind of love those stories about great comebacks.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Jim Afremow
Favorite tool for me is having that attitude of gratitude. And along those lines, I like the quote that “Entitled to nothing but grateful for everything.” And, usually, when I find that I’m in that state of gratitude where I appreciate everything I have in life, and I’m thankful for the people in my life, it just makes everything better.

I heard someone once say that if everyone in the world put all their troubles in a big circle, you would gladly take yours back. And so, most of us could probably appreciate what we have, or the bad things that we don’t have, much more and that will make us feel much better about things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite nugget, something you share that really connects and resonates with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Jim Afremow
So, the mantra, kind of the motto is, for The Champion’s Mind book is, “Think gold and never settle for silver.” And so, it’s just that reminder that every day is an opportunity to be the best or the gold version of ourselves. So, to ask ourselves, “What can I do today, what acts of excellence can I do today to make my life more golden?” I think that’s an important question.

And then my second book, The Champion’s Comeback, it’s we’re going to get knocked down. If we have big goals and dreams in life, we’re going to fall but we need to get back up again. So, I love the saying that “Love the comeback more than you hate the setback.”

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

Jim Afremow
Well, my website is GoldMedalMind.net and I’m on Twitter a lot, and I might already be following you or we might already be following each other because I follow a lot of people and have a lot of followers, but that’s at @goldmedalmind. And then on Instagram, @jimafremow

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

Jim Afremow
Yeah, I would start with, “What’s one thing that I’m going to start doing as a result of listening to the podcast today in my own life?” And it could be a small thing. It doesn’t have to necessarily be a big thing. It might even be just, “I’m going to take a gratitude drive when I go to work each day. So, “One thing I’m going to start doing,” and then, “One thing that I’m going to stop doing.” And it might be related to, “I’m going to stop watching TV or looking at my phone while I’m eating. I’m going to really sit and be mindful and appreciative of the food that I’m eating.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jim, thank you. This has been a treat. And I wish you much luck and much champion goodness.

Jim Afremow
Thanks so much, Pete.

Oct 25
0

714: How to Find Success and Purpose with Tanya Dalton

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Tanya Dalton says: "Living on purpose isn't about changing who you are. It's rising up and becoming the best version of you."

Productivity expert Tanya Dalton lays out the daily steps for a more successful and purposeful life and career.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The life-changing habit we often shy away from 
  2. Why our brains hijack our motivation and willpower
  3. The simple trick to propelling yourself into action 

About Tanya

Tanya Dalton is a nationally recognized productivity expert, best-selling author and speaker. Tanya serves as a growth strategist for female leaders in the corporate and entrepreneurial sectors. 

In addition to having her book being named one of the Top 10 Business Books of 2019 by Fortune Magazine, Tanya’s podcast, Productivity Paradox is ranked among the top 50 on iTunes. She is also a regular contributor for Entrepreneur and has been featured in some of the world’s leading publications including Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, and Real Simple. She has been awarded the elite Enterprising Women Award and has been named the Female Entrepreneur to Watch for the state of North Carolina. 

Tanya is also the founder and CEO of inkWELL Press Productivity Co. a multi-million dollar company providing tools that work as a catalyst in helping women do less while achieving success. 

 

Resources Mentioned

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Tanya Dalton Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tanya, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Tanya Dalton
I’m so happy to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, me, too. We’re happy to have you back. And I’m curious to hear, any pretty noteworthy discoveries you’ve made over the last two years you think that might help people be awesome at their jobs? Let’s just get that right up front at the top.

Tanya Dalton
Yeah, let’s just go for it, shall we? Let’s just start it right away. Yeah, I’ve been on quite a journey for sure for the past couple of years. I had the Joy of Missing Out come out two years ago at this point, and have had a lot of things happen to my life, notwithstanding my name change. I changed my name. I have a new book coming out. I have a kid who went to college. Lots of things, lots of shifts in my life.

You and I were chatting before we went live here, and talked about, “Okay, you changed your name. It’s kind of a big thing. It’s kind of a big deal.” And it really is especially when you have a book come out with your other name. So, my name just changed the spelling, T-O-N-Y-A, to T-A-N-Y-A, still pronounced the same, but we were talking about it and it was really important to me to really signify that I’ve been on a journey, that I’ve changed who I am spiritually, emotionally, in a lot of ways have done a lot of deep work.

And I was mentioning to you, what’s good about changing my name is this is something that a lot of cultures do. It opens up the door for conversation to talk about things like this, “Oh, you went and you did some deep work mentally.” And, for me, it really was wanted to signify that to the whole world that I’ve changed who I am and I think I’ve changed for the better and I think, because of all that I went through, I was able to write an even better book, for this new book, that’s come out On Purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
And I know in the book, there are some themes there associated with taking a look at the past and such. So, it’s called On Purpose: The Busy Woman’s Guide to an Extraordinary Life of Meaning and Success. Now, Tanya, I presume men can also find value on having an extraordinary life of meaning and success.

Tanya Dalton
Oh, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good. Good.

Tanya Dalton
Men also need an extraordinary life as well. Most of my writing is really focused and narrowed in on women because, let’s be honest, Pete, for hundreds of years, books have been written for men. And we, as women, we’ve read those books and we make it work for us, and it’s the same thing here. This book is written for women but it absolutely applies to men.

Pete Mockaitis
Men will make it work there.

Tanya Dalton
You can read it too. I think that a lot of people can get a lot out of this book. I think it has the ability to allow everyone to see that they have an extraordinary life just waiting for them.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, would you say that’s the core thesis here, everybody has an extraordinary life just waiting for them or how would you articulate kind of the big idea?

Tanya Dalton
Oh, absolutely. I think that we think that extraordinary is this thing that we have to claw and scratch to fight to achieve, and an extraordinary life is just waiting for us. Living on purpose isn’t about changing who you are. It’s rising up and becoming the best version of you. It’s really about looking out beyond today and seeing a brighter tomorrow and then making strides each and every day to get to that tomorrow, to that vision we want for ourselves.

[03:22]

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that all sounds pretty cool. Could you make it all the more concrete for us with an inspiring story of someone who did just that?

Tanya Dalton
Yeah. Well, I love that question because, honestly, me, in my journey, is a perfect example of, really, shifting and changing who you are. In the book, we go through four different sections. We go through reflection, projection, action, and alteration. And what’s beautiful about this is they all weave together so intentionally, and I know they have in my life.

I think that reflection is such an important part of growth. It really is, that we have to look backwards in order to move forward, in that when we take the time to dive into who we were, to see how far we’ve come, we understand how far we can go, and we understand what’s possible. And I know, for me, in my own life, I’ve seen this manifest in numerous ways, in numerous times.

We talked about my name change. That was certainly one of those times. But when I closed my first business and made the decision to open up inkWELL Press Productivity Co., that was definitely me making a very intentional choice to shift and move into what I was really meant to do. I started my first business in 2008, and I started with $50, and it was just a little side business that I was doing, selling to friends, maybe friends of friends. And I had a moment where I was on a phone call with my husband.

He was doing marketing for Fortune 500 companies at the time, and he would buy a ticket called the Round the World ticket where, literally, he would leave our home in Dallas and he would fly all the way around the planet, come back to the other side, so he’d be gone for three or four weeks at a time. And we had a conversation where I was telling him all the things that the kids were doing, they were really small at the time. And he said, “I’m missing everything. I’m missing all the moments. I’m missing all the milestones. I’m missing everything.” And I said, “No, no, no, you’re not.” And he said, “No, I am.”

And I hang up the phone that night and I made a big decision in my kitchen that night, that this girl with a ponytail, with $50 that she started her business with, no business experience, was going to grow that business to the point where it could absorb my husband’s MBA income and he could come work alongside of me, so we could have that lifestyle freedom that would allow him to be a part of the kids’ life, more a part, which is what he was really wanting.

So, I sat down, I created some plans for myself, I sketched out some systems, and it was about a year I made that happen. So, he and I started working together in 2009. It was great.

Pete Mockaitis
One year. It’s pretty quick. From fifty bucks to two income size in one year. That’s well done.

Tanya Dalton
Thank you. Well, I think this is a thing, it really is about choosing and then I had that to work towards. That’s me looking bigger than today. That’s me looking at tomorrow, “Where is it I want to go?” I knew at the time I wanted him to come and work alongside me, or rather across the desk from me, which is where he still is, and have this life for ourselves.

So, that gave me the motivation I needed to dig in and figure out what it is I need to do next. And that’s what I really think is so important, is understanding where it is you want to go. So, it was great because then he and I started working together and we loved that. But then in 2013, I looked at him and said, “I love you. I love working with you, but I don’t love what we’re doing.” That big goal that I had of getting him to work alongside me, I was ready for something else. I was ready for something bigger.

I knew that I wanted to make a bigger impact, and what we were creating together with that business wasn’t it for me. It wasn’t hitting those buttons of what I was truly passionate about, what I really wanted to do in the world. I used to be a teacher and so I’m really big on influencing and impacting other people’s lives, teaching and helping others grow.

So, he said, “Okay, what do you want to do?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. I have no idea.” So, I had to do a little reflection, I had to get my little Marty McFly time machine, go back in time and reflect back on, “What is it I want to do? What am I passionate about? How do I figure out what it is I want to do when I have no idea? How is this going to work?”

So, I did that, I did this process of reflection. I tried to find activities and exercises to dive into it myself but nobody seemed to have anything that would work for me. And out of that reflection process, which we can dive more into if you want to, but I found that there were really three things that I am truly passionate about.

I’m truly passionate about teaching. I have always been a teacher even when I was like eight years old. I was teaching and educating and I love watching lightbulbs light up in people’s eyes. I love empowering women and I love productivity. I love structuring things and systematizing things. That’s how I was able to grow that business, that first business, and able to really make that work for our family.

So, through that process of reflection, I realized, “Oh, this is what I want.” So, reflection tells us why, why we want what we want, “This is what I’m passionate about.” So, then we have projection, which is what, “What is it I want?” Well, I have these three things that seem very unrelated: empowering women, educating, and productivity. What can I create out of that? Well, that what became inkWELL Press Productivity Co., my company that I started and created.

So, I projected and figured out this is what I want to do, this is where I want to go with it. I started looking to the future of where could it go. And so, that’s when I stepped into that third step of action, creating action, “How am I going to get there? How am I going to create this for myself?” So, really, creating an action roadmap for myself of, “Okay, if this is where I’m starting out with closing down a business,” mind you, going without income, this is a family of four, both my husband and I are now getting income from my business I started, making that decision to close that up and open up something brand new, that was a big choice.

So, I needed to create an action plan to make sure that I had a map in front of me, that I knew where it was I wanted to go. So, I created that action plan for myself, scaled to seven figures in less than 18 months because, again, I love systems, I love productivity, so I was able to really make that work. And then along the way, there was a lot of shifting and changing that had to happen because life happens, life gets messy, things shift, we evolve and change and grow.

And that’s where alteration step comes in where we know where it is we want to go. We know that vision, that north star. You heard me talk about before our mission, our vision, our core values, I know where that is. I’m at A right here where I am today. The Z is where I want to go, that big vision I have for myself. The B to Y is how we get there, “All right. Now, let’s figure out how we’re going to get there.”

So, I started off by offering up physical products. We started off by selling physical planners, weekly planners, daily planners, all kinds of planners, productivity tools. And then that shifted and grew into having a podcast. And then that shifted and grew into having programs and courses. And then that continued to shift and grow into having publishers reach out to me and offering me book deals which is where I am today.

So, really, it’s all aligned with where it is I want to go. But you can see through every step of that, it’s really understanding that it’s not the actions of today. It’s the actions of today that build into tomorrow, into where I want to go. And I think that’s really when we achieve that extraordinary part of the life. It’s when we’re satisfied, it’s when we’re fulfilled, it’s when we feel successful at the end of our days that we go to bed at night and feel really good about what we did because we’re working towards something bigger than just checking something off our to-do list.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. So, there we have it. You are the case study, and we walked through those stages. So, let’s zoom into each of them then in terms of what are some of the best practices or questions to engage in each of these phases when we do want to understand where you want to go? How do you go about getting after that why to uncover that clarity?

Tanya Dalton
Yes. Well, that’s why I think it’s so important, I think reflection is one of those things that’s really important to do but it’s something we will avoid doing. We would rather clean the cat’s litterbox, we would rather start the vegan cleanse we’ve been putting off for six months, we’d rather do just about anything than reflect back because our past is often filled with lots of great moments but there’s also failure and trauma and frustration and things that we don’t like, and we want to push those underneath the bed. We want to just sweep them underneath the rug and pretend they’re not there, but, really, reflection is so important because that’s the fertile ground from which we grow.

I often tell people that it’s the regret that we can push against that gives us and builds up that resilience that we have. So, when we’re looking back, looking at the things that we have learned, the failures that we’ve had, the trauma, what have we gained from that? Because out of every one of those things, we gain lessons. We have a backpack that we all wear, it’s invisible, but we’re piling it full of these heavy lessons that we’re learning. And those backpacks help us in moving forward.

People will ask me, “How did you grow your business to seven figures in less than 18 months?” I had a backpack filled with experience. I had a backpack filled with knowledge and learning that I pull from teaching, from my first business I’d grown, from parenting, from all of those things. That’s what I used to allow me to grow and I think we tend to discount some of that.

And, really, it’s important to recognize that in a lot of those hurtful moments, those things that were hard, those things that feel like we don’t want to think about them, when we know what we don’t want, it’s so much easier to see what we do. We will move away from pain so much faster than we will towards pleasure.

We don’t go on the diet till our pants get too tight. We don’t stop working long hours till we recognized and realized we’ve missed dinner with the family again for the second week in a row. I know, for me, I had a period of time where I was working way too hard, and that’s a whole another story, where I was working every day, seven days a week, for 12-hour days minimum, and the kids were coming to the warehouse after school. They were coming and they were there on the weekends, and I ended that season of time and I reflected, “How do I feel about myself?” and I felt terrible. I felt like the world’s worst mom.

And it would be really easy to just say, “I’m the world’s worst mom,” and let that be the end of it, “I’m not going to think about this ever again. What a terrible mom I am.” But I realized out of that season, “If I feel like a terrible mom, how do I not feel like a terrible mom? What do I need to do to shift and change so I never feel this way again?”

So, because I had this oozy hurt that I didn’t want to think about being the world’s worst mom, how can I push against that to get to what I want? Well, I made the decision, “Okay, no more of these days where I’m working these insane hours. I’m leaving work every day at 3:00 o’clock. I own my own business so I can make that work. I’m going to leave every day at 3:00 o’clock.” That’s now a boundary for me.

And that’s been a boundary for me ever since, that’s years of me leaving work at 3:00 o’clock every day. I probably wouldn’t have believed it was possible, I probably never would’ve done that except for the fact that I didn’t want to go back to where I’d been. I didn’t want to feel like the world’s worst mom again. So, that’s what’s so beneficial and beautiful about reflection is the trophies we hold up, the beautiful things that have gone well. Those are amazing and they show us how amazing we are.

But the things that aren’t trophies, the things that feel like awful and terrible, those are amazing too because they also tell us how amazing we are, how strong we are, and how resilient we are. And we can build off of those things to get to that life we want.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really powerful in terms of it can very much be a temptation to not think about that at all and then move along.

Tanya Dalton
Yes, easily.

Pete Mockaitis
I think when you talked about working a lot and with the kids, I saw an episode of the Supernanny. I pull things from everywhere. And so, there was a couple, a mom and a dad, they were working a lot, and their strategy was to, well, I guess for the Supernanny to come over. I don’t know.

Tanya Dalton
That’s a strong strategy right there.

Pete Mockaitis
But before that it was just buying them a lot of stuff. And so, yeah, that’s a lot easier in terms of, “Oh, I feel kind of guilty because I’m working a lot and my kids are disappointed. And so, I’m going to buy them something because I can.”

Tanya Dalton
“Because I work so hard, I can afford it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. And I think that’s common in terms of whether it’s a like a little feel good, quick Band-Aid option that doesn’t get after the stuff. So, it may be like, “Well, I’m going to have a drink. I’m going to play some video games. I’m going to have a smoke. I’m going to…” I don’t know, fill in the blank, whether it’s a healthy or not so healthy means of making yourself feel better in the moment. What they all share is that they don’t experience that pain full on and allow that to be a force for powerful motivation.

Tanya Dalton
Yeah, we don’t want to pull back the bandage because it looks gross. When we pull back the bandages, that’s when it gets air, that’s when it heals, that’s when it feels like it’s better, it scars over. And scars are not ugly, scars are beautiful because they’re part of our journey, they’re part of our path. And I think that when we start to recognize and realize that we’re all so beautifully human, which means that we are imperfect in a thousand different ways.

When we can embrace that in ourselves to know that we’re not alone, the frustrations we feel with ourselves, the negative self-talk, the trauma that we’ve experienced, we’re not alone in that. That’s a collective human experience that we share together. It really is about the healing that we do with the moving forward. Having hard things in our past does not make any one of us unique but it does make us human, and it means that we’re able to grow and we’re able to heal. And I think that’s really important to understand and to acknowledge. It’s not easy. I’m not going to pretend for anytime here on this show that that’s an easy process.

I go into some of the deep dark trauma that I’ve experienced in my life in the book to kind of show how we can overcome it, how we can dig in and understand why it happened to us, and where we want to go in moving forward, because I think it’s really powerful to understand that we have that ability. And I think it’s just believing in yourself, choosing to believe that you can move forward, that tomorrow is a brighter day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. So, we have a powerful distinction and an action we could take that many people don’t, to take a hard look at that which you’re not liking in the reflection and trying motivation.

Tanya Dalton
I can give you an easier one if you’d like because that was a tough one.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, we’ll take an easy one too.

Tanya Dalton
Okay, here’s an easy one for reflection. You can also look back at your past and think about what did you love when you were a kid before you started adulting. Because what happens is we lose sight of what we love in the pursuit of adulting. We got to pay the rent, we got to pay the mortgage, we got a car payment, we got all those things, and so we lose sight of what it was that used to fire us up, that used to light us up and get us excited.

So, really, going back and revisiting what were the things that you loved as a kid, what were the things that you got fired up about, not the piano lessons your mom dragged you to. That doesn’t count. The activities that you wanted to go to again and again? Maybe it was softball, maybe it was playing the violin. What was it? And then go a little bit deeper why did you love that.

If you loved softball as a kid, or a sport, was it being outside? Was it the camaraderie? Was it the competition? Was it the physicalness of it? Use that as a little bit of fodder to get you started because, oftentimes, our passions, even as adults, can be found in our childhood. We just lose sight of them because we’re so busy doing, we don’t stop and recognize and realize. And a lot of times, those things that we did as kids, we can build upon and grow that into what it is we want to do in moving forward. So, that one is a lighter one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. Beautiful.

Tanya Dalton
A little less trauma, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s move onto the next step. We did a reflection. And then what comes, projection

Tanya Dalton
Projection, yes. So, reflection tells us why, why it is we want what we want. And projection answers that question of what, “Well, what is it that I want? What do I want in life?” And I think what’s really interesting is we have a hard time knowing what that is. I can guarantee you have some listeners right now who are thinking, “I have no idea what an extraordinary life looks like. I have no idea what it is I want. I have no idea what goals I should set.”

And so, what happens is we look left, we look right, we look over the fence, and we see where the grass is greener, and we go, “That’s what I should be doing.” And what we really want to do is understand what it is that you want and what you look like in the future. But here’s, really, what’s fascinating, I think, is that our brain has an extraordinarily hard time seeing ourselves in the future. Our brain is hardwired for today because that’s what’s kept us alive and allowed us to avoid the saber toothed tiger, it’s what allowed us to get to the next day.

And there’s this really fascinating study where they’ve used fMRI machines on people’s brains, and they would have them talk about themselves today, and certain areas of the brain start pinging and lighting up and really showing that they’re active. And then they would have the people talk about themselves in the future. Now, the future could be three weeks from now, it could be three years from now, it could be three hours from now. But when they talk about themselves in the future, it lit up a very different part of the brain, not the same part of the brain when they talked about themselves.

What’s most fascinating is when they had these same participants talk about Natalie Portman and Matt Damon, those same areas of their brain lit up as it did with when they were talking about themselves in the future. So, in other words, to our brain, you in the future is not you. It’s a stranger who looks like you, has the same name as you, is you but it doesn’t recognize you as being you. And this is why we often fail at our goals. This is why we splurge on the Paris shoes instead of investing in the 401(k) or why we eat the cookie instead of eating the carrot because the person in the future who has to pay for that, or has to deal with the outcome of that, isn’t you, and so our brain prioritizes today over the future.

And I think when we understand that, it’s incredibly powerful to understand, “Oh, this is why I’ve struggled in the past, and, again, I am not alone in this. This is how my brain works.” So, it’s really understanding, “Now, if I can start to picture myself in the future and I can start really projecting forward into what I want in the future, then I can see myself, and then I can connect to my actions from today to what I want to do in the future.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s fascinating in terms of that fMRI study.

Tanya Dalton
Isn’t it? I found that so interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, that would seem extraordinarily powerful is that if we can view “future self” as sort of just as real and valid and important as “current self.” And so, it seems like you’re hinting at a pathway that’s very different other than just, “Buckle down and get to the gym.” It’s sort of like…

Tanya Dalton
Yes, that’s not what it is at all.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s more about know what you really need to see and adopt and embrace the future self as yourself. And so, how do we do that?

Tanya Dalton
Yeah, that’s the big question, right? Because it is, it’s a mental game. It is. And we love to blame willpower on why we haven’t gotten things done, “Oh, I don’t have the willpower,” or, “I’m not disciplined enough.” And it’s not discipline that you need. In fact, if we know that our brain is prioritizing wins for today over wins for tomorrow, it’s our brain that’s hijacking this, that’s causing us to do that.

So, what we can do is we can really look forward into the future and create a map for ourselves. I call this wayfinding in the book where it’s really looking forward into the future to what is your potential. Okay, what is your potential? “Like, ten years in the future, what could I possibly have in my life? Like, what could that possibly look like?” What is your potential? So, figuring that out, and then we back it up a little bit. So, that’s your potential, you want to back it up to what is possible, “Okay, if that’s the potential in ten years, what’s possible in the next three to five years on that map to get to that?” what I’d call your cathedral. What’s possible?

Then if we back that up even more, “Okay, if that’s possible in three to five years, what’s practical? What would be practical for me to accomplish in the next 12 to 18 months?” So, here, we’re talking now about long-term goals, a year to 18 months. Well, let’s back that up a little bit more on our little map. And in the book, I literally make it like a little map of, like, “You are here and there’s a roadmap.”

If we back that up any more, we can figure out, “What do I need to prioritize in the next three months, the next six months, the next nine months?” That’s how we decide what our goals are because then those goals are on that path to get to that potential that we’re dreaming of. And there’s lots of things that we can do to really help solidify that in our brain. As I just said, we have a hard time seeing ourselves in the future so we can do things.

There are all kinds of amazing technology now. You can do these things on Snapchat even and Instagram where you can use a filter to age yourself and put yourself. Let’s say that your potential is that you want to be on the cover of Forbes magazine. All right, you can create a picture of yourself in the future on the cover of Forbes magazine. Put that someplace where you can see it and then start solidifying it in your brain. Start mapping that out and seeing who you want to be in the future.

When we back that up, that’s when we begin to see, “Oh, this is the action I need to take right now. This is the goal I need to set for myself right now. If that’s where I want to go, here’s where I need to be in a month, here’s where I need to be at the end of this week, here’s where I need to be today.” And that’s when we start to make motions and take action towards that big potential out there, that big extraordinary life when we’re making those connections, when we create that map for ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I think make connections is the phrase because with that pathway in place, with all the dots connected, it really does feel real as opposed to, “Sure enough, I did this thing and I saw some improvement. And, thusly, I can see that if I do all of the things, they will lead me into that place, and, thusly, the future-aged person on Forbes magazine is not Natalie Portman but it is me.”

Tanya Dalton
“But it’s me,” yeah. I think it’s really incredibly powerful when you start to recognize that and you realize that. I think this is why we set goals and we’re never quite satisfied. We build into that someday syndrome, “Someday, when I accomplished this goal,” or, “Someday when I cross the finish line,” but that finish line keeps moving back, doesn’t it? Like, we never really get it crossed.

And even when we do, we have this fleeting moment of satisfaction and excitement. It’s called the goal-setting paradox, where you get a fleeting high when you accomplish a goal, and it’s followed immediately by a question of, “Now what?” “Okay, I finished the marathon, now what do I do?” “All right, I just climbed…”

I actually spoke to someone who’s climbed Mt. Everest who’s blind, Erik Weinmeyer, and he said after he summited Everest and he went on his way down, someone said to him, “Okay, now what?” He’s like, “I just summited Everest. Isn’t that enough?” But this is what we go through in our life. We accomplish a goal, and then we’re like, “Now what?” But if that goal is to connect to something bigger, to a brighter future, it becomes just a stepping stone to get us to the next one, so we get that satisfaction and we’re ready to go to the next step. And that’s how we continue on the daily basis to feel happier, more satisfied. And isn’t that really what our goals are all about?

I would argue that every goal, every dream, and every aspiration is steeped in happiness. You want to cross the finish line in a marathon? Why? So you can feel that pride and joy, that happiness of crossing the finish line. You want to lose 15 pounds? Why? Because you want to feel happy when you put your pants on. You want to get that promotion at work? Why? Because you’ll be happier when you have more money and when you have a team underneath you.

All of those things are tied to happiness. Let’s stop waiting for happiness to happen to us. Let’s make happiness happen on a regular daily basis. That’s absolutely achievable. That’s what makes life extraordinary.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well said. All right. Well, this is so much good stuff. Can you give us maybe the quick greatest hits in terms of action and alteration? What should we be doing to do those masterfully?

Tanya Dalton
They go hand-in-hand because alteration is really woven throughout. Alteration really is about building in that flexibility and that grace to allow life to happen because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we all know life is messy. And the best-laid plans allow for detours and re-routing and all of those things to happen because life demands flexibility.

So, as we’re creating action, action answers the question how, “How are we going to do this? How are we going to accomplish this?” it’s really about breaking it down into bite-sized milestones. So, you have this big thing off in the distance. It seems really far away in our future self because we know we’re not connected to it. It feels like it’s not us. So, how do we back that up even more to create little milestones we’re working towards, little stepping stones to get us closer to that life we want.

We do that by creating an action roadmap for ourselves. You’ve heard me say before here on the show, I’m sure, overwhelm isn’t having too much to do. It’s not knowing where to start. When we know where to start and we know what actions we want to take, it’s incredibly empowering and it’s incredibly confidence-building. And so, that’s really powerful for us to do.

But really, it’s about creating a plan for ourselves so we feel confident to step over our fears and create time in order to allow these things to happen in our lives, to allow ourselves to get closer to those big goals and dreams and aspirations.

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

Tanya Dalton
Yeah. Well, I would say we kind of touched on that whole idea of discipline earlier, here’s what I would say. When we people talk to me about needing discipline, I really want to encourage more people to let discipline go, to stop worrying about needing more willpower, or feeling like they have to force things to make it happen. Discipline is really just a series of small actions.

So, when you recognize that and realize that, that it’s really just small actions, little tiny steps on a regular basis that build up, that begin to look like discipline, it’s just habits that we build over and over again over time. When we start to do that, that’s when we start to get that momentum we need. So, just focus on the next small action you can do. That is honestly the way you get on that path to that extraordinary life.

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

Tanya Dalton
Oh, a favorite quote. I would say probably one of my favorite quotes is actually from Harry Potter, and it’s when Albus Dumbledore tells Harry that, “It’s our choices that show us what we are far more than our abilities.” I think, really, when we understand our choices, it’s incredibly powerful.

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

Tanya Dalton
Oh, I have a study I just stumbled upon not that long ago that I love, where they took these men out of a retirement community and they separated them into two groups. One group went to another retirement community, and the other group, they fashioned everything in the place where they were so it looked 20 years earlier, and they encouraged them to talk about things that had happened 20 years earlier, all the appliances were 20 years earlier. And so, they encouraged them to really think about who they were 20 years ago.

After less than a week, they took the control group who’d gone to the retirement community, they were still in the same place, still have the same aches and pains and all of that. They took that group who had just kind of time traveled 20 years mentally, and they found that within those seven days, they had built more muscle mass, they had gotten rid of a lot of their arthritis. Not only did they feel better, but their bodies have physically reacted.

I think a lot of times we think that mind over matter thing is just a bunch of woo-woo, but, truly, our bodies are able to change and shift when we get our minds set right, when we really think about what it is we want.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Tanya Dalton
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That’s a great book because it really is, again, really how strong your brain is and how it can really get you where you want to go.

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

Tanya Dalton
Well, I use inkWELL Press products but that’s kind of a no-brainer there, isn’t it? I have to be honest with you though, so I do a lot of my planning obviously using inkWELL Press but we use a lot of Google Docs and we found some ways to kind of hack them so they work for us. I felt like I was using far too many different tools to do all the different things. So, we’ve kind of created a little hub in our own system within Google Drive and Google Docs so that we can make that work to get rid of a lot of our project-planning tools and all those things.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m intrigued. Can you share a particular Google Doc hack that maybe many people might benefit from?

Tanya Dalton
I don’t know if I can give it really quickly, but we have a whole system that we use and we use, it’s kind of funny, because we use like emojis to kind of signify the different steps we’re in in a project. And what I love is that all the conversation happens within the Google Docs because we were getting things from Asana, and we were getting things from Slack, and we were getting things from email, and I felt like we were going far too many places.

So, we started using this icon system where if something was in process, we give it a thumbs up. And if it’s something that’s completed, we give it a check mark, if we’ve shared it. So, there’s a whole system of using these little symbols, and it’s made it, it’s so insanely simple that I think sometimes we overcomplicate things. So, that’s what we’ve done is just using all these different symbols within Google Docs.

I create a table of contents for every project that we do, and that’s our main Google Doc. Everything is, that’s become the hub. So, everything that we create off of that, other documents, other spreadsheets, other things, that table of contents becomes almost like our little bible where we click on it and it sends us exactly where we need to go, so everything is succinct and together inside Google Docs.

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

Tanya Dalton
I would tell them to go to TanyaDalton.com. You can find links to my podcast, The Intentional Advantage, there. You can also find information about both my books The Joy of Missing Out and my newest book On Purpose. TanyaDalton.com is probably the best place to find me.

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

Tanya Dalton
Yeah, I would say that extraordinary life is there. And I know where you are right now, it might seem like that’s impossible. But what I would challenge you to do right now is just take a moment and start with that reflection step that we talked about. Go the easy route. Let’s not worry about the hard things or the difficult things or the things you don’t want to think about. Let’s start with the easy things.

Let’s start by thinking about who you were before you started being an adult, like before the age of 16, we’ll say, and just make a list of the things that you loved. And then ask yourself, “Why did I love that? What was it about that that I loved? I don’t want that stuff there.” Ask why again, and then maybe ask it one more time. Get to the heart of why you loved what you did and start to rediscover your passion. Because when you start to remember and recognize that passion has been there all along, it’s so much easier to build that fire.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Tanya, this has been a treat. Thank you. I wish you much luck and fun and purpose.

Tanya Dalton
Thank you so much. This is great, Pete. We always have a good time together.

Oct 07
0

709: The Eight Superpowers You Need to Thrive in Change with April Rinne

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

April Rinne reveals eight key skills that prepare us to thrive in a world of constant, relentless change.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The key mindset shift that helps us thrive in flux 
  2. How to escape the trap of a more mentality
  3. How to re-script your mind to prepare for change 

About April

A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and ranked one of the “50 Leading Female Futurists” in the world by Forbes, April Rinne is a change navigator: she helps individuals and organizations rethink and reshape their relationship with change, uncertainty, and a world in flux. She is a trusted advisor to well-known startups, companies, financial institutions, nonprofits, and think tanks worldwide, including Airbnb, Nike, Intuit, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, NESTA, Trōv, AnyRoad, and Unsettled, as well as governments ranging from Singapore to South Africa, Canada to Colombia, Italy to India. April is the author of Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. 

Resources Mentioned

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  • University of California Irvine. Chart your course to career success at ce.uci.edu/learnnow 
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April Rinne Interview Transcript

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

April Rinne
Thank you so much. I’m delighted to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about the wisdom you have to share about flux. But, first, I want to hear about your notorious handstands. What is the story here?

April Rinne
Oh, I’ve been outed. So, I have been doing handstands for most of my life. Learned to do them as a child, as a gymnast, and then kept doing them. And then, at a certain point in my life, realized that none of my friends that I was doing them with as a child were doing them anymore, and it became a bit of a, like, signature, I suppose. So, I travel a lot, I work internationally, and back in my 20s, actually, some family members challenged me to take a photo of myself doing handstands when I would go to interesting places. They did not realize how seriously I would take them on that challenge.

And so, here we are years later, have visited more than a hundred countries and have handstands in the most random but also most interesting of places. And so, my goal is to keep doing them when I’m hopefully in triple digits. We’ll see.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. I sort of imagine you, I don’t know, you’re at the Taj Mahal or something doing handstands, and then like you’re gathering a crowd, and so that you are also the tourist attraction. Has that happened?

April Rinne
It’s funny you bring that up. Yes, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids of Giza, the Coliseum in Rome, take your pick of well-known but also really off the beaten path places as well. And what I love is that the vast majority of my handstands over the years have been done when I’ve been traveling on my own. Now, my husband does travel with me and he knows the drill. He’s a wonderful photographer. But most of the time, I actually have to find somebody to take this picture, which means introducing myself to a stranger and trying to explain to them, and often their native language is not English.

So, I’m trying to explain to them in a foreign language that I’m going to stand on my hands and they need to take a picture. And, of course, you get this look of like, “I don’t think I understand what you’re saying at all. And if I do understand what you’re saying, you’re crazy.” And then we sort of go through the paces and they get it, and then, oftentimes, yes, a small crowd gathers, which is just fun in terms of meeting locals. But kids start tumbling and joining in, people start laughing and shouting, it becomes a bit of just like a little celebration, I suppose.

And, for me, it’s not, at that point, about the handstand. It’s about immediately getting to break the ice with people I wouldn’t otherwise get to meet. And it has often led to cups of coffee or tea afterwards, or like, “Tell us about your family,” or, usually, “Where is your husband? Why are you travelling alone?” those sorts of things as well. So, thanks for asking. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s just cool. Well, I don’t have a clever segue but maybe there is one.

April Rinne
Upside-down perspective on the world is what I call it, which leads into how we navigate change.

Pete Mockaitis
You do the work for me. This is perfect. Well, yeah, let’s hear about your book, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. What is the big idea behind this book?

April Rinne
Yeah, the big idea is that in a world and a future that is full of change and constant relentless change, that we, as humans, need to radically reshape our relationship to uncertainty to have a healthy and productive outlook.

Pete Mockaitis
Well-said. So, radically reshape our relationship to uncertainty, I’m sure there’s variability and variation quite a bit from person to person. But if you had to generalize, what would you say is the “typical” relationship to uncertainty? And what is an optimal transformation of it to where are we now and where “should” it be?

April Rinne
Yeah, great question. Well, let’s just pause for a minute and think about change, which includes uncertainty, but just a sense of something what is or was something is becoming something else. Change is messy, it’s complicated. Humans tend to love change we opt into. So, a new relationship, a new job, a new adventure, a new haircut. We tend to really resist change we can’t control. So, the kind of change that blindsides you on a Tuesday afternoon, it goes against your expectations, it disrupts your plans, and it creates an environment of uncertainty.

Now, a change that’s easy for you might be really, really hard for me, and vice versa. We know that more change and uncertainty is around the corner, yet knowing this often freaks us out. So, you sort of get these layers of like it’s complicated and it’s really messy. But when it comes to uncertainty, there’s also this piece, like humans really want to be able to know what’s going to happen. We want things to go our way. We want to command, predict, control, engineer the future. And the last 18 months, but we can come back to this, I didn’t write the book about the last 18 months. The last 18 months, however, have been an incredible kind of wakeup to just how unfit, how outdated that way of seeing the world and our place in it is.

And so, this radical reshaping is like, wow, we have structured, and we can come back to this, part of it is neurobiology, neuroscience, part of it is psychology, part of it is just the human condition, we have in many ways, I think, deluded ourselves into believing that we can predict and control and command the future, and that we can have certainty, and that we can, yeah, predict things and know what’s going to happen. And nothing could be farther from the truth.

And in a world in flux, and when we think about flux as constant relentless change, and before you’ve responded to one change, something else has happened, the list goes on and on and on. And that’s actually what the future looks like. More of that, not less, that there is this kind of, “Oh, this isn’t just a wakeup call. This is also a kind of warmup for what’s ahead. And how can we get ahead of that? Instead of constantly reacting to change that something happens and you’re trying to triage it? How can we reshape our relationship to change from the inside out to be fit for this world in flux which is very different than the kind of world many of us were taught to believe we lived in?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is quite a question, and part of me wonders, “Is that even possible?” I take it you think the answer is yes. Could you share with us an inspiring example or case study of someone who’s just a flux master?

April Rinne
Well, I love that you bring this up because, by and large, humans are really pretty bad at this, and that’s part of why I wrote the book. I like to say that I’ve been working on this book since 2018, so it’s been the better part of three years, like in the writing, but it’s really been more like three decades in the making, in the seeding of these ideas. And a big chunk of that time was spent both as a futurist and a strategist, also just as a human and observing that, on the whole, humans, we can adapt to change pretty well when we’re forced to, when our back is against the wall.

But as a proactive, kind of, “I’m going to lean into change because it’s good for me, or I’m actually going to see a change I don’t want to have happen, I’m going to see that nonetheless as an opportunity for growth and learning and improvement,” we don’t do that naturally. And what was making me and, candidly, continuous to make me very concerned about humans moving forward, both individually and collectively as humanity, is that we are, in many cases, stuck in mindsets and with what I call scripts that are not fit for a world in flux, and we need help.

And so, I can point to individuals that are good at certain of the flux superpowers, let’s say. But on the whole, and at the risk of generalizing, are we really fit? Are our mindsets grooved for a future of constant relentless change? I reckon they are not. But in that is an enormous opportunity for each and every one of us to level up. So, we can come back to some of the examples, but I want to put that out there. Now, you might prove me wrong here, Pete, but I’ve never met anybody who’s like, “Change. Tick that box. I’m good.”

Everyone struggles with some part of it, but we’ve all developed our own unique ways of dealing with it, talking about it, feeling about it, etc. There’s a lot we can learn from one another, but I believe we are very early into this journey into a future full of flux but, as such, we will all have homework to do but we’ve all also been given, I look at it, almost like this gift of growth and improvement by upgrading our mental muscles about change.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, sure. Could we hear an example of someone who has got at least a couple of the superpowers of flux going for them that seems to be doing pretty good when it comes to constant relentless change in their world?

April Rinne
Yeah. An example that I often talk about in regards to flux, and again it’s not all eight superpowers, it’s a couple of them, but it is Airbnb and founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. And if you go back, and here I’ll tease out a few of the flux superpowers, they built this company that’s home-sharing.

They saw value in empty space in people’s homes that hotels wrote them off as crazy and foolish, said, “This is never going to go anywhere.” Lo and behold, one of the eight flux superpowers is to see what’s invisible. They saw value in what other people couldn’t see. They saw invisible value, basically, and tapped into that and unlocked it, and created a company that is more valuable than the five largest hotel chains combined. That’s a very flux-y way of seeing one’s business model, if you will, to see what’s invisible, find what other people can’t see, and unlock the value that’s in that.

But, at the same time, another one of the flux superpowers is called “Start with trust.” Again, go back to Airbnb, what were people telling them? “This is crazy. People will never stay in other people’s homes. Why would we trust other humans?” And I’m looking at this always against the backdrop of, “How do we navigate change?” and think about who you turn to when change really hits. You turn to your trusted relationships. And if you don’t have many, you’re in a world of hurt far greater than if you do.

And Airbnb, early on, signaled, “We actually think humans are trustworthy. This isn’t blind trust or naïve trust, but we actually think that we can build a business around humans trusting one another.” Lo and behold, they have. And that, too, I’m looking at this from the perspective of, “How do we navigate change together? How do we navigate change better?”

So, I’ll pause there but those are some of the superpowers start kind of surfacing as we dig deeper.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, maybe let’s have a quick overview of the eight superpowers and maybe have your definition and a sentence or two for what that means, and then we’ll see where to dig deeper.

April Rinne
Yeah, sure. So, there are eight flux superpowers, and I always like to say they’re a menu, not a syllabus so you do not have to do one before two, or two before three, but they stand on their own and they also enhance one another. So, the first flux superpower is to “Run slower,” which says that in a world with an ever-faster pace of change, your key to success is to slow your own pace. And I’ll put in a quick caveat here too. Each and every one of these is counterintuitive in some way. It goes against what, oftentimes, society teaches us. We can circle back to this if you’d like.

The second flux superpower is one that I was just talking about, which is, “See what’s invisible.” And this says that when the future feels uncertainty or blurry, rather than focusing on what’s visible and what’s straight in front of you, we need to focus on what’s invisible. Now this includes both identifying your blind spots but also uncovering new forms of value, new forms of talent, new ideas, new forms of inspiration.

The third flux superpower is “Get lost,” which is all about going beyond your comfort zone and your relationship with the unknown. The fourth flux superpower is “Start with trust,” that says when trust seems broken, assume good intent. And this is all about, as I was mentioning, how we navigate change better together.

The fifth flux superpower is, “Know your enough.” And this gets at our quest for happiness and satisfaction, and really the tension between our obsession with more, kind of more, more, more everything, and how that’s mostly making people miserable, in my experience. The way I like to put it is when you’re always after more, you will never ever find enough. And, yet, when you know you’re enough, you’ll immediately begin to see abundance. And, again, more, we can think of as more income, more power, more prestige, more love, more likes, more clicks, more everything.

So, what does it mean to “Know your enough”? And that’s Y-O-U-R. People often ask me if that’s a typo, and I say no. Knowing your enough includes knowing that you are enough just as you are without doing anything more. So, we can come back to that if you’d like.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny when I read that, I guess I didn’t even think about the apostrophe, and I was like, “Know your enough. Like, your number, your level. And what is the level at which it is enough?” which could be different for you versus me versus another. But, yeah, layers. Thank you. Okay, what’s next?

April Rinne
So, the sixth flux superpower is “Create your portfolio career.” This is about designing your professional development and identity in ways that are fit for a future of work in flux. And the punchline here is that I firmly believe that the career of the future looks far less like a singular path to pursue and much more like your portfolio that you create and curate as an artist or an investor would.

The seventh superpower is “Be all the more human,” which gets at our relationship to technology and the tension that we have in spending ever more time with our devices, yet ever less time with one another. And last, but not least, the eighth flux superpower is “Let go of the future,” which is all about our relationship to control, something I have found is tricky for most everyone today, and I always put a caveat on this one as well.

Letting go of the future does not mean giving up. It does not mean failure. It does not mean doomsday-ing. It actually means quite the opposite. So, again, going back to this counterintuitive-ness, even this contrarian-ness, that pervades much of the thesis of flux.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Ooh, so much fun there. So, tell us then, when it comes to professionals seeking to be awesome at their jobs, what’s your take on what is the most important yet also most rare of these superpowers that we should really zero in on cultivating?

April Rinne
Well, I’m not sure that I would put the most important and the most rare…

Pete Mockaitis
We could take two. We’ll take two.

April Rinne
Yeah, I think we’ll do two because I can definitely tell you which ones are most popular. Let me do this, I’m going to put out a few because they’re all very, very sticky for professionals in the workplace of how to be awesome at your job. No question.

So, no doubt, no question, or perhaps no surprise, the first superpower “Run slower” absolutely popular and difficult because this is burnout, this is exhaustion, this is anxiety, this is “Why am I doing what I’m doing? Why am I constantly…? Why am I in this rat race? Why am I on this hamster wheel? How did I end up here? This is not what I had planned for my profession, for my livelihood, etc.” So, “Run slower” for sure.

Interestingly, as soon as you start getting into “Run slower” you do end up often over at “Know your enough,” and that’s sort of, “How do we define what is valuable and important? And what metrics are you using not just to judge how you show up at work and what you ‘do’ but also how you show up in life?” And so, it really starts to unpack some of our values and whether or not those values are reflected at our organization, so on and so forth.

And then the third one, which, not surprisingly, it is the one superpower that is related to work and the workplace, and that is “Create your portfolio career.” So, any of those would be ones I would start with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, when we talk about “Knowing your enough,” Y-O-U-R, no apostrophe, tells us, how do we arrive at that knowledge?

April Rinne
Arriving at that knowledge, I think there’s a process of kind of peeling back the layers of your unique onion around this. And I like to ask people, and this does relate to every one of the superpowers in some way, kind of getting your flux baseline is what I call it. And most people haven’t really thought a lot about their relationship to change as a whole. We’re busy reacting to change, “Something happened and I need to do something about it.”

But we’re not really thinking about, “What are the things, what are the emotions, and the feelings, and the experiences, that are driving me to react in the way that I am? And what is…” what I call in the book, “What is my script about change? What are the stories and the narratives and the norms that I’ve been taught about how the world is supposed to work, and what my role in it is supposed to be?”

And I share this because a lot of our scripts, really, it’s directly related to knowing your enough, a lot of our scripts are increasingly being shown to be not that fit for a world in flux. They’re quite good for worlds that we can command and control, and sort of tie up in a neat tidy bow, but they’re not that good for when the future you thought you were going to have just sort of melts or falls apart or doesn’t work out like you thought it would be, like you thought it would, which I think many of us had experienced in different ways over the last 18 months.

So, back to knowing your enough. For a lot of people, and here I would include myself, we were taught that more is better, and like inherently better, and that the more you had, the more important you were, the more valuable you were to society. And I think, for a lot of people, that’s more money but also more power, more prestige, more love, more choices, more clothes, more clicks. Like, I was saying, it’s more everything.

And, yet, look around and ask yourself, “What is that getting me? Is more actually…?” and here I would say in the workplace, the more meetings you have, the more productive you are. The more productive you are, we can come back and question, meetings are not a good metric for productivity, but the more hours I work.

Pete Mockaitis
The more emails you get, the more important you are. The more emails you send, the more productive you are.

April Rinne
Yes. Yes. And, yet, and again, we can put this on a financial metric, an emotional metric, a workplace metric, take your pick, more is mostly making us miserable. It’s not necessarily leading to greater happiness or satisfaction. It’s not necessarily…it might be making us feel more productive if you’re measuring your life in how many emails you send, but not if you’re measuring it necessarily in outputs, impacts, ways, number of people that you’re able to serve and better, and the quality of your own life that you’re living.

And so, what I like to ask people, the punchline, the metric for this superpower is, “What is your enough-ness? Have you thought about your point of enough?” Because what I find a lot of times, and I’m generalizing a bit here, but we are, particularly in Western culture, we are really over-indexed on stuff. We have more. A lot of people have more than they need in terms of stuff, and whether that’s cars or clothes or physical possessions. But we’re kind of under-indexed on a lot of the humanity stuff. We actually don’t have enough human connection. We don’t have enough dignity. We don’t have enough tolerance. We don’t have enough integrity. So, we’ve got this kind of too much and not enough but not really a sense of what’s in the middle.

And so, I ask people, “What do you have too much of and what do you have too little of?” And too little can include, “I have too few hours in the day,” “I have too little time to spend with my family,” “I have too little…” and you get into this sense of where we have a culture of insufficiency. And so, finding your enough requires getting clear on, “What are you over- and under-indexed on?” And, partly, I’m not giving one specific answer here because everyone’s equation, everyone’s relationship is different because each of us has a different lived-experienced and different things that we’re strong at, weak at, etc.

And so, it’s interesting because even on the enough factor, “Did you grow up with enough love in your household?” I know it sounds a little bit woo-woo but, in fact, not enough love and care as a child will show up in all kinds of ways as an adult but don’t actually get you closer to your enough. You start to compensate for love with money, etc. And so, all of this, I throw out to get people to start peeling back the layers of their own onion around enough.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, that’s really thought-provoking in terms of what you have too much of and not enough of. And it’s funny, when it comes to money, maybe nobody would say they have too much money but they might say that they have more than enough money, so you can just change the words around a little bit.

April Rinne
Well, what’s interesting, can I…? Oh, sorry.

Pete Mockaitis
Go take it away, yeah.

April Rinne
So, this cycle of more. And, again, to be really clear on all of these things, I am not saying that more is bad or anything. I’m just saying let’s get clear on what’s really what here. I’m not saying that for any of the superpowers, I’m not saying like the counter is not good or bad. It’s more like, “Have you thought about this that there are more options on the table than you might realize?”

Here’s the thing about more though, how many people do you know that say, “I will be happy when…” “I will be successful when…” “I will be…” fill in the blanks, when? When implies that you don’t have something you need. You need more. And, yet, when you get to that point, so let’s just say more money, “When I have more money…” then what do you need? You need more money. It’s no longer enough. You need more.

And you get on this kind of vicious cycle that feeds on itself and that never allows you to acknowledge and rest and be easy with enough. And that’s the part we get stuck, call it a hamster wheel, call it our own monkey brain that’s kind of running laps around our minds, but it keeps people from realizing that, actually, a decision to be happy, it actually can happen right now. And when you realize that you might already have enough, and that’s kind of that’s your point of sufficiency, satisfaction, again not too little, not too much, that’s the kind of contentedness. And we can talk about the difference between happiness and contentedness, but that sense of kind of peace and comfort as opposed to this drive for ever more.

Now, I’m not saying don’t strive, don’t try to do things, and I’m not saying…What’s interesting too is if you want more and more and more, okay, what’s that more going to get you? And this is where it gets super interesting because of the belief that if you want more, let’s just use money, you want more money so that you can hoard it or keep it for yourself, okay, I’m not sure how much better that’s going to make the world.

But if you want more in order that you can share it with others, in order that you can gift it, be generous, help better the lives of others, that’s actually a pretty good more but you’re not keeping that for yourself. So, you start getting into issues around ego and generosity as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. And I guess if we talk about hoarding it, like you probably won’t feel much impact in terms of, “I want more money because, I don’t know, going in an unsafe neighborhood with my children, and I’m worried that they’ll be shot.” Okay. Well, if you have more money and you get to a different neighborhood, you’ll probably feel that as an upgrade in the happiness and peace and contentment parts of your life versus, “You know, I’ve got one million in my mutual fund account, and two is just so much cooler,” then you probably won’t even feel that impact at all except when you refresh the page and go, “Oh, two. Nice. Now it should be three.” There you are.

April Rinne
Yeah. And it’s interesting and, if I may, I’m going to share a personal story here because it factors in exactly into what we’re talking about. And it is interesting because a lot of times people are like, “Oh, I want more money because it’s actually a hedge against uncertainty.” And I totally get that. It is kind of the more money you have, the more options you have, the more ways that you can potentially navigate uncertainty and change. That’s somewhat true.

I also would say that that way of thinking can blind you to what’s really needed when we navigate change. And the story I have to tell, it relates to why I ended up writing the book as well, and I sort of mentioned that I bring the lens of a futurist to change, I bring the lens of a global traveler and global citizen, if you will, to change, but I also bring other human and lived-experience with change and uncertainty. And I often say that my journey or my baptism entry into flux began more than 25 years ago when I was in college and both of my parents died in a car accident.

And I share this because I was 20, and speaking of careers and jobs and all of that, 20 is a really interesting age because I was old enough to be living on my own. I was at college. I could take care of myself day to day, but I was young enough, I really did not know how the world worked or my role in it, all of that. And it had a profound effect on how I thought about my career and how I thought about more versus enough.

Now, back then, I never would’ve expected that I’d read a book about this kind of thing. That wasn’t in the plan at all. But I started asking questions at the age of 20 that I now see, many years later, people going through some kind of a mid-life crisis or some kind of real-life, “What is my purpose on earth?” kind of thing. And the question that I would ask myself every day was, “If I were to die tomorrow…” because look what just happened. No one knows how long we have, “If I were to die tomorrow, what would the world need me to do today?”

And it wasn’t about me, like, “What do I need?” my ego. It was, “What does the world need?” because we all have finite time, and we all have a lot we want to contribute and can contribute to others. So, I keep asking myself this question, and then the answer was never “Get more money.” It wasn’t. It was this sense of, “Yes, I need enough money, for sure.” At that point, I was 20, I became, overnight, self-sufficient. There was no back stop. There was no house to go home to, so to speak, when my parents died. It was like, “Okay, I’ve got to figure out a way to move forward.”

And so, it was very clear to me that I needed enough money to be able to take care of myself, but anything over that became like this, “Is that what the world needs from me today?” And it’s interesting because I spend a lot of time talking to people about grief and loss and this kind of change and uncertainty, and, “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?” as well. And never, never has the answer been, on someone’s deathbed, that, “Oh, I wish I’d earned more money.” It has definitely been, “I wish I’d prioritized my family more. I wish I’d gone after that job that spoke to my heart, but maybe I would’ve earned a little bit less,” kind of thing.

And so, it’s interesting because even when it comes to how to become awesome at your job, these are the kinds of value judgments and value assessments that we’re doing all the time. And I think one of the best ways to be awesome at your job is to make sure that you’ve got a job that aligns with some of these bigger even existential questions, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, thank you. That’s powerful and a lot there. And so, it sounds like you’ve worked through some powerful questions that really get you places. Can you maybe give us a rundown of some of the most insight-provoking questions and how you recommend sitting with them effectively?

April Rinne
What a great question. So, I don’t mean for this to be a pitch for the book but it’s going to sound that way, and that is simply that, at the end of each chapter, I wrote the books because I wanted to help people ask these questions. And these questions that don’t…they don’t have easy answers, and the point is not to come up with the answer. The point is to actually sit with them and think about, “Wow, I’ve been so focused on metrics A, B, C, I hadn’t even paused to consider what might be behind that or this other set of questions.”

So, at the end of each chapter, there are a series of five questions for each chapter that are designed to provoke exactly this kind of thing, and, again, each one tailored to the superpower. So, I’m wondering which one you want start with. What’s interesting is the “Know your enough” is kind of the questions that we were just going after. Like, “What do you have too much of? What do you have too little of? Have you ever thought of that before?” And, also, “Could you draw what enough looks like to you? Don’t write it. Could you draw a picture?”

That gets really interesting because if you have somebody who’s drawing a bunch of houses and cars and stuff, that’s one view of what is more. But then, actually, if you see somebody who draws a kind of Earth where humans are connected and it’s sort of peaceful, that’s still enough but it’s a different worldview. So, that’s “Know your enough.” But let’s just take another one, “Start with trust.” It gets really interesting.

So, generally speaking, are you quick to trust or to mistrust? Just your default, like, if you don’t know otherwise, do you trust or mistrust? And why? Where does that come from? Most people, our tendency and the script that society has taught us is that humans should not trust one another. That, candidly, Pete, I shouldn’t trust you right now and you should not trust me. That’s what society says. And, yet, where did that come from? Like, really? Because we’re in the midst of a trust crisis and trust is the way forward and yet we’re doing everything we can to undermine it.

And so, you start unpacking questions around trust and you start realizing how often, without our even noticing it, we have a narrative in our mind that humans, on average, are not trustworthy. And what’s worse, very few people actually trust themselves. I mean, we learn to. But, like, how does it feel, do you trust yourself? How does it feel when others don’t trust you? Oh, it turns out, you don’t actually generally trust other people.

So, we’re trying to reset our relationship to trust because, as I was saying earlier, trust is the path forward. If we don’t figure out that one thing, there is not a future in which any of us actually can have a lot of hope. But when we learn to start with trust, and what I call design from trust, a whole new universe of opportunities and goodness of others shows up.

So, those kinds of very essential questions. Back to “Run slower” do you feel like you’re running faster today? Why? Where did that come from? When did it start? Is it something you’re driving yourself to do or others are driving you to do it? You got to get this baseline and then you can start saying, “Okay, how do I need to kind of bring the pendulum back, bring more balance, harmony into my life?” And then, in the book, the superpowers are kind of the how-to and what are the practices and disciplines and exercises that you go through to improve that part of your relationship to change.

Pete Mockaitis
And on that trust stuff, it gets me thinking of Dan Ariely’s work, and it’s not bad. Yeah, people do cheat but humans are pretty good. It depends on the context and all kinds of variables that you modify but it could be a lot worse.

April Rinne
Right. Well, I love that you bring that up because I am not saying there aren’t bad apples out there. I’m not saying blind trust, or naïve trust, or just like willy-nilly trust but don’t verify kind of thing. But what’s fascinating to me is that we have designed so many of our structures, institutions, systems, from the basic premise that the average individual cannot be trusted, and that’s the key. Because when we design that if we don’t know, we do not trust.

A minor flip of the switch that, again, you need to account for bad things happening and some people not being trustworthy, but if you treat that as the exception not the rule, you design a different system. And that’s where it gets fascinating because what happens when we design from a premise of mistrust, we throw out so much goodness in people. When I think about, “Would I rather assume that people are good and have an abundance of goodness and generosity show up, and, yeah, I may have to pay a price every now and again, bad calculation, didn’t work out,” versus, “I’m going to live my life assuming that no one is trustworthy, and live in a system that is designed for untrustworthiness?” you’re basically sucking the life out of you and the people around you. So, you do have to be willing that you won’t always get it right, but that price you’re going to pay is worth its weight 10,000-fold over for all the goodness and generosity that you’re going to see instead.

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

April Rinne
Oh, goodness. FluxMindset.com? No, it’s a joy to join you today. I’m really just happy to be able to share more about it. And, yeah, the way I like to put it is when everything is in flux, everything can benefit from a flux mindset. So, there you have it.

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

April Rinne
One of my favorite quotes is inspired by the last superpower, “Let go of the future,” and it’s by Lao Tzu who wrote the Tao Te Ching, and it is, “When I let go of who I am, I become what I might be.” So, I love that. Lots of good quotes from Lao Tzu.

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

April Rinne
I think one of the books that shows up in Flux, and I continue to refer to time and again, is called The Body Keeps the Score and it’s about the relationship between mind and body, particularly around trauma, but there’s a lot around just anxiety and mental health. And the body of research that’s in this book around how our body holds what our minds and hearts and souls are feeling, but without necessarily words, the ways that shows up and how much we need to pay attention to our bodies, and the kinds of things that we’re holding that we’re often burying, absolutely cannot recommend that book enough.

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

April Rinne
I was thinking about this because it’s so basic and yet so powerful. I use Post-its. I use Post-its for absolutely everything. I have a wall that’s covered in Post-its on any given day. If you ask my husband, when I travel, what’s the first thing I pack on a business trip, it’s actually Post-its. So, it’s simple but it has been my super tool over the years.

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

April Rinne
There are increasingly ones about flux but I actually kind of want to come full circle on this one, back to the handstands. And it does show up a little bit in the superpower “See what’s invisible,” but this whole notion of the upside-down perspective on the world. So, I do have people often quoting some aspects of my handstands and upside-down perspective. Why bring this up is that we are trained to see things, literally, figuratively right-side up. There’s one way that you look at something.

And, yet, this goes beyond change. When we flip our perspective, and here I’ll say literally and figuratively, when we look at something upside-down, we see it completely differently. And what I can tell you is sometimes it looks even better. So, I love this like flip your perspective, go upside-down, see something you’ve been struggling with in a fresh light, you might not only see it better but you might find your solution in your path forward.

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

April Rinne
FlexMindset.com is for all things Flux and book related. AprilRinne.com is my personal site where you will find the handstands.

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

April Rinne
I’m going to show my bias but it is all about think about get clear on your flux baseline, groove a flux mindset, open a flux mindset, harness your flux superpowers, and reshape your relationship to change from the inside out from here on forward.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. April, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you lots of luck in your fluxing.

April Rinne
Thank you very much, Pete. And may the flux be with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you.

Sep 02
0

699: Redefining Success for More Fulfilling Days with Brad Stulberg

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Brad Stulberg says: "There is hardly, if any, correlation between more money and more fulfillment, more happiness, more health."

Brad Stulberg discusses the fundamental mindset shift that helps us feel more fulfilled every day.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The deeply-rooted belief that explains why we’re often dissatisfied 
  2. The simple secret to feeling more fulfilled every day
  3. The hidden costs of efficiency 

About Brad

Brad Stulberg is an internationally known expert on human performance, well-being, and sustainable success. He is coauthor of the bestselling Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Wired, Forbes, and more, and he is a contributing editor to Outside Magazine. In his coaching practice, Brad works with executives and entrepreneurs on their performance and well-being, and he regularly speaks to large organizations on these topics as well.

Resources Mentioned

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Brad Stulberg Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Brad, thanks for joining us again on How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Brad Stulberg
Hey, Pete, it’s great to be talking with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes. Well, I’m looking forward to digging into your latest, your book, The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success That Feeds—Not Crushes—Your Soul.” I just get a kick out of that subtitle Feeds—Not Crushes. That’s fun. So, yeah, I want to get there. But, first, it’s funny, I am prepping for a camping trip actually and you are a contributing editor to Outside Magazine, which I have looked at several times.

And it seems like you guys always get cool gear sent to you to check out, to test, to review. I’d like to hear if there’s been any just straight up, silly, ridiculous, noteworthily, hilarious devices that have been sent your way in the years you’ve been doing this.

Brad Stulberg
Oh, my gosh, the list is infinite, particularly around so-called wellness products. Most of my writing for Outside is around health and wellbeing, and the amounts of products with such broad claims, all containing CBD, is just outrageous. You’ve got CBD for your sore knees, CBD for your anxiety, CBD for your dog’s sore knees, CBD for your dog’s anxiety, CBD for your child. So, I think we’re in like peak CBD wave.

Now, whether or not CBD does any of those things, I can’t say. I’m quite skeptical. But, perhaps, more helpful for your camping pursuits, the one device that I find so helpful that so many people often overlook is just a really good light that you can strap onto your head, so like a headlamp for reading at night without keeping everyone else up, for navigating the camp ground when it is late or pitch black, and for just getting around. You don’t have to find a flashlight, it’s just there on your head. So, that is my recommendation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. I sprang for a fancy one, I think it was a Black Diamond, and, yes, it has served me well. I have fond memories of everyone having their little headlamps on playing cards at night on the campsite, and it’s a fun little picture. Cool.

Well, so let’s talk about groundedness what’s the big idea behind this latest book?

Brad Stulberg
Right. So, the big idea is this. If you look at charts showing the performance of the stock market or the national GDP in America but also in most Western countries, you see a trajectory that looks very good. It is a pretty consistent rise. But then if you look at charts of depression, anxiety, loneliness, burnout, you see the exact opposite. You see a pretty steep and consistent decrease.

So, the book asks, “How do we reconcile these two things?” The measures that we have show that people are doing really well in terms of GDP and stock market, but these other measures show that we’re not. And I call this problem, or at the least the problem is a function of something that I call heroic individualism, which is this notion that the only arbiter of success is external measurement and it’s a constant race for the next thing, to constantly one up yourself, one up others, and it’s like this never-ending game that is very much fueled by consumer marketing to be better, have more, do better, succeed, and it’s leaving people feeling pretty miserable.

And the solution that I proposed is this framework of groundedness which is based on modern science, ancient wisdom, and concrete practices from individuals who have done well but, more importantly, felt low along the way and had fulfilling lives.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds lovely. I’d like that. And so then, it’s intriguing, you’re right. So, one would think that in a world in which folks, individuals, are wealthier, we ought to be happier and better off. And I guess there’s been a host of research on that which seems to suggest that there’s really kind of a cutoff point. Like, once your needs are pretty well met and you’re not like worried about, I don’t know, housing or food, or you can buy the basics that you need to be fine and not be freaked out, it seems like right around that point, you don’t get much benefit from being wealthier. Does that tie into some of this as well?

Brad Stulberg
It does, yeah. There are some research that shows just that, that once your basic needs are met, I’ll throw healthcare in there as well, but shelter, food, healthcare, that, generally speaking, more money is not tied to more health or more happiness. I think if you’re a double-minimum wage worker that’s working those jobs so that you can meet those basic needs then, yeah, more money would help. But for the average knowledge worker or business professional, there is hardly, if any, correlation between more money and more fulfillment, more happiness, more health.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, with that established, then we’re going to talk about groundedness a lot. Could you give us a definition for what is groundedness? What is the opposite of groundedness? What does that kind of look like?

Brad Stulberg
Sure. So, the opposite of groundedness is to be pushed and pulled by the frenetic energy and fast-paced-ness of the culture of your life. So, it constantly feels like you’re falling behind, you’re all over the place, you’re treading water, you’re seeking some kind of contentment, you’re not sure where to find it, so you don’t feel firmly rooted where you are.

And, as a result, even if you’re striving and even if you’re successful by conventional standards, you probably don’t feel very good. Lots of people find themselves in this position. Unfortunately, this was true before COVID, certainly true during COVID, and I think a lot of people are now evaluating, “Hey, as we emerge from this pandemic, how can I craft a life that perhaps feels more wholesome and more fulfilling?”

So, the opposite of that being pushed and pulled around is being grounded. And being grounded is about being firmly rooted where you are. It is not a lack of ambition or a lack of striving, but it is doing so from a place of having a very solid foundation in place. And what tends to happen to pushers, high-achieving people, successful professionals, is that once they start to have some success, they often focus on the overstory of the metaphorical tree, so the bright and shiny objects, the next thing, and they neglect the foundation, the core, the trunk, the root system that holds it to the ground, and that whenever rough weather comes, the whole tree is at risk of toppling.

So, this book says, “Hey, here’s how you build that solid foundation that will support you and hold you through highs and lows, and an outcome of that is not only setting yourself up for success but also finding some more fulfillment in life and some contentment and not constantly needing to be chasing the next thing.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds excellent. Can you share with us an example of that in practice, like someone who made the shift, they got extra-grounded and good things came from it?

Brad Stulberg
Yeah. So, there’s five principles that are really key, I think, to talk about that help take this from something that sounds really good to something that is concrete and achievable for so many people. And I’m going to pair each of these principles against the current ethos.

So, the first principle is to accept where you are to get where you want to go. And the current culture very much encourages magical thinking, delusional thinking, things don’t go your way, you’re not happy with your circumstance. And instead of face it, well, what do you do? You buy something, you numb it with a substance, maybe you go on social media and you post and you tweet, but you’re never really fully confronting what’s in front of you. And whether things are going well or going not, you have to be where you are, accept what’s happening, and confront what’s in front of you because, otherwise, you’re never working on the thing that needs to be worked on.

The second big principle is cultivating presence so that you can own your energy and attention instead of have it be all over the place. So, what is the current ethos all about? It’s about distraction, busyness, overscheduling, being everything to everyone everywhere all the time. Groundedness asks to say, “Hey, my presence, my attention, my time is actually my life. That’s all that I have so I need to take ownership of it. I need to be more intentional about how I use it.”

The third principle is this notion of being patient to get where you’re going faster. Again, let’s compare this to heroic individualism and the current ethos, which says that you should move fast and break things, you should strive for hacks, for silver bullets, for overnight breakthroughs. What I argue in the book and what the research shows is that all of that tends not to work, and, if anything, it sets you back. If you move fast and break things, what tends to happen is you end up broken. So, groundedness calls for patience, for giving things time and space to unfold, and for really committing to staying on a path and not getting off and on it and off and on it as the next bad comes out.

The fourth principle is vulnerability to build genuine strength and confidence. Particularly with men but with women as well, the current ethos is very much about invincibility. I think there’s a bestselling book by a guy whose last name is, ironically, Asprey, and the book is called Bulletproof, and there’s this whole notion about becoming bulletproof. But humans aren’t robots. We’re not machines that are hardwired. We’re actually quite soft. And the more vulnerable that we can be with ourselves and with others, the stronger and more confident we become because we’re no longer hiding anything. When you’re not hiding something, then you can really own your strength.

And then the fifth, and perhaps the most important, principle is to build deep community. So, the temptation is to prioritize optimization, the hustle culture, road efficiency, more, more, more, and what often gets cannibalized is the time spent forging a true sense of belonging and community, yet we know what makes us happy, what helps ground us when we soar, and what also provides a safety net when things aren’t going well is a sense of belonging to something that’s beyond ourselves, to a community, to strong relationships.

So, those are the five principles that yield the sense of endurance, unwavering strength, ability to be where you are, find fulfillment and still strive for success.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, there’s a lot to dig into in each of these. What are some practices associated with accepting where you are while also not being sort of resigned, like, “Well, that’s who I am. That’s the way it is”? Like, what is that practice of accepting where you are in an excellent way look, sound, and feel like?

Brad Stulberg
I love that you asked that question. So, thank you for asking that, Pete, because so many people hear about acceptance, and they immediately think passive resignation, and the truth couldn’t be farther from that. The best way to move forward and to excel, to pursue excellence, to get better, is to start from a place of fully accepting where you are. And the reason for this is twofold.

The first, as I mentioned earlier, is if you don’t accurately appraise your situation, whatever steps you take to improve are not going to be the best steps because you’re not working on reality. The second is you actually want to be pretty confident and content to get better. If you feel the need to get better, the compulsion to get better, “If I don’t get better, everything is going to go to crap,” for most people, that leads to tightness, constriction, fear. If you feel okay where you are, you don’t even have to like it but you just have to be okay with what’s happening, then you can drop your shoulders, you can perform from a place of openness, from a place of love, and most people perform better from a place of openness than from a place of tightness and constriction.

Something else that I think is really important to talk about here is this notion of acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a huge part of the book. And acceptance and commitment ask you to do two things. The first, accept where you are, be clearheaded about it. The second is to know your core values, the things that define you, that make you who you are, and really commit to practicing them day in and day out. And by merging an acceptance of the current situation with the ability to practice your core values, that’s how you get where you want to go.

The final story that I’ll tell, it’s an old ancient Eastern parable about the second arrow, and this is so applicable to so many people today. So, the first arrow, you often can’t control. This can be an illness, it can be being laid off at work, it can be a global pandemic. The second arrow, your judgments about that situation, your denial of that situation, your fear of that situation, your resistance of that situation. The second arrow often hurts worse than the first arrow.

So, what acceptance asks you to do is not be all rosy and deny that there aren’t plenty of first arrows, but instead of wasting the time and energy judging it and resisting it and deluding yourself about it, to say, “Hey, this is what’s happening right now. Here’s what I need to do to improve the situation.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, that’s the acceptance piece. And when it comes to cultivating presence, yeah, I think that just about all of us are feeling it in terms of in ourselves and in others, folks don’t seem as present. There’s a boatload of distractions, and we can wax poetically about the doubling of information and omnipresent devices and social media, yadda, yadda. But what are the best ways to get more present?

Brad Stulberg
All right. So, here we go. There’s a study that I wrote in the book by some researchers from Harvard, and they, very ironically, had people download an app on their phones that allowed the researchers to ping them throughout the day. And what the researchers found is that, excuse me, they pinged them and asked them what they were doing and their level of concentration and their level of happiness.

And what the researchers found is it wasn’t so much the activity that someone was doing that made them happy or not, it was their level of presence. So, if someone was fixing their car or mowing their lawn, but reported being quite present while they were doing it, versus someone that might’ve been having sex but not present, the person that was mowing the lawn actually reports being happier in that moment.

So, we often think that we need to be doing the right activity to be fulfilled to be happy, but often we actually just need to be present for what’s in front of us. So, then the question, of course, becomes, “Well, how do you cultivate presence?” And I like to use an analogy of brown rice and M&Ms. So, if you’re ever faced with a bowl of brown rice and a bowl of M&Ms and you’re quite hungry, if you’re anything like me, and like just about everyone I’ve ever asked this question to, you’re going to go for the M&Ms, especially if they’re peanut M&Ms. And the M&Ms are always going to taste really good on that first bite, much better than the brown rice.

Ten minutes later, if you’ve just been eating M&Ms, it might still be pretty good, you might be happy with your decision. But if you choose M&Ms for hours, days, weeks, months, eventually you’re going to start feel gross and sick. And M&Ms are like all the things that encroach upon our attention when we’re doing stuff that matters.

So, the stuff that matters is the brown rice. Working on a big report, writing a book, creating a song, trying to do deep focus brainstorming with colleagues, that stuff is brown rice. M&Ms, social media, refreshing emails, CNN.com, the list goes on and on. All those things feel better in the moment because we’re getting some dopamine hits, some thrill, some excitement but, over time, you get on this huge bender of distraction.

So, much like with real M&Ms, with distraction M&Ms, the best thing that you can do is try to keep them out of the house. So, you design your environment to avoid distractions. And then, also, have this mindset shift that realizes that, “Hey, the deep focus, fully present work that I’m doing might not feel as good at first as engaging in distractions, but I know if I just stick with it, I’ll feel much better.”

And then what happens is you get enough positive feedback and enough reinforcement that, eventually, you start to prefer brown rice to the M&Ms, you prefer presence to distraction because you know how much better it makes you feel.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so that sounds sensible in terms of, yup, that checks out in terms of those being the consequences of going there, and so keep them out of the house is great. So, just think about shaping your environment such that the enticing distractions aren’t as available. I guess what I’m finding in my own distracted life is a lot of the distractions, they come from within. It’s like I’m really curious. I got a lot of curiosity. It’s good for a podcaster.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’ve got some curiosity and so I’m doing something, it’s like, “Well, what about this?” And so, the personal practice, when it’s really firing hard, like I find my favorite notebook for this purpose and I write down, “I am doing this.” And then for all the distractions that pop up, it’s like, “Okay, I’m very curious about that. I’m just going to write it down. It’s there so I’m not going to forget about it.”

And then it’s almost like it kind of feels like a workout in terms of, “Well, hey,” actually I got this from you and I think about it all the time, “stress plus rest equals growth,” in terms of like, “I’m focusing. I’m focusing. I am getting kind of tired in focusing and I’m getting all the more tempted but I’m going to hold out for my 30, 60, 90 minutes, whatever,” it’s like, “Ah.” So, it’s like the end of a workout, I get to have a beverage, get in the shower, or whatever.

So, anyway, that’s one thing I figured out but you got the book. Tell me, when distraction comes from within, how do you recommend we cultivate all the more presence?

Brad Stulberg
So, writing it down was the first thing I was going to say, and you beat me to it, so you’re already on track, Pete. The only thing I’ll add to what you said is when you write that thing down, you’re actually offloading it from your brain, so not only do you give yourself permission to stop thinking about it but you also don’t have to worry about forgetting it, because we want to remember our really interesting insights and curious ideas. Someone like who’s a creative, it’s core to your work, to your identity.

What you also just described is almost like a working meditation. So, mindfulness meditation is the practice that always comes up with training presence. And why is that? Because meditation is doing exactly what you just said. Instead of the paying attention to whatever you’re working on, you’re paying attention to your breath, you have thoughts and feelings that arise from within, they distract you, you notice them, non-judgmentally you say, “Oh, interesting distraction. Back to my breath.” In your case, “Oh, interesting thought. I’m going to write it down. Back to what’s in front of me.” Practice that over and over again, and it should get much easier to pay attention.

Something else that helps a here is to schedule blocks of deep focus work. So, oftentimes, what I find people will do is they’ll say, “Oh, this sounds great. I’m going to have an entirely deep-focus present day.” And unless you are a motorcycle mechanic in a room with no digital devices at all, it is extremely hard for people in the 21st century to be distraction-free. What ends up happening is you cave in. You check your email, you check your social media, blah, blah, blah. And negative; you fail.

So, rather than try to avoid distractions all day, what I like to do, and what I tell my clients to do, what I write about in the book, is just to schedule times for deep work, for full present work, and then whatever happens, the rest of the day happens. If you schedule two 90-minute blocks to be present and direct your energy to something that really matters to you, only three hours, you would be amazed at how much you get gone and how good you feel.

I have some entrepreneur coaching clients who are in companies, a stage, where there’s a ton of operational work to do, constant fire drills; keeping the doors open and closed is really hard work. And a common issue that they’ll come to me is they feel empty at the end of the day. They feel like they didn’t really accomplish anything. And for these really busy operators, even just one hour of deep-focus work where they can take something that is at point A, exert energy and presence and get it to point B, leaves them feeling so much more satiated at the end of the day.

So, that’s why I think scheduling, it can be really important. I want to get in the weeds because I know that your audience tend to be business professionals that really enjoy the concrete. In addition to scheduling deep-focus work and fully present work, you want to know what you’re doing ahead of time. Because if you don’t, and that free hour or 90 minutes pops up on your calendar, you have a greater likelihood of filling it with email or with scrolling.

Whereas, if you know ahead of time that, “Hey, today, during my deep-focus work, I’m going to read Brad’s book,” or, “I’m going to work on the PowerPoint deck for this client,” or, “I need to draft this memo,” or, “I really need to write these three important emails.” Well, then you’ll actually do that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. And it’s funny, I used to resist that in terms of it’s like, “Oh, no, something really important might come up.” But I find that when I schedule the thing, and then I say, “Okay, that’s the thing,” then I actually know I can trust myself. It’s like, “Well, no, Pete, that was the most important thing when you scheduled it. And now there is a thing that has greater impact. It’s not just urgent. It straight out has greater impact that’s true.”

And so then, I can, in good conscience, say, “Well, this deep-work time was scheduled for important thing A, but in the last four days, important thing B is now clearly way more important than important thing A, and so I’m going to do that instead.” And I can do that as opposed to, it’s like, “Well, no, I feel like catching up on the news instead.” It’s a different substitution and I know it.

Brad Stulberg
But you’re pausing and you’re deliberately making that decision, and I would argue that that’s the value of the pause. And the pushback is always to my coaching clients, “Is it really more important or impactful or is it just something that you happen to be more excited about now?” Because, I’m not saying this is happening with you, but what can happen in really high-achieving professionals is that the long projects where you don’t see immediate results that take a lot of time tend to not get worked on for that very reason.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true, yes. And so, I think it’s so great to have some clear metrics. And for business, I think about expected profit created per hour invested, or wealth generated if we’re going broader in terms of thinking, “I really do need to get a financial planner.”

Brad Stulberg
And then what I would also say, back to measuring what actually matters, is some level of fulfillment. And if you spend an hour doing X or an hour doing Y, there’s also a question of, “Hey, when you get home and you’re with your partner or you’re with your kids, what’s going to make you feel like you’re satiated, like you had a good day at work?” And something that I talk about a lot in the book is so many people that are frenetic and all over the place, and don’t own their energy and attention, they come home from work and they’re super short with their kids or their spouse, and they don’t know why.

And it’s because they feel guilty that they weren’t productive during the day, and they were pushed and pulled, and they had no time, and, “Now, I’m at home and now I can’t even own my time because my partner needs it and that my kid needs it.” Whereas, if you just set aside an hour to do something important that fills up your cup, the rest of the day you can release from that need. And, ideally, you go from an hour to an hour and a half, to two, to three, to four. And some people can do five hours of deep work in a day. They have the capacity to do it, and they have a job that lets them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so let’s talk about fulfillment in terms of values, clarity, what do you really want. What’s your top perspectives in terms of arriving at that clarity, of determining the answers to that, and what one’s values truly are?

Brad Stulberg
So, fulfillment is an inside game, that’s the first thing. There’s a concept in the book that I write about called the arrival fallacy, which basically says that so many individuals will say, “I’ll just be content, I’ll just be fulfilled, I’ll just be happy when I get X, Y, Z; that promotion, that car, that beautiful partner, my book sells this many copies, my podcast is number one and its category, blah, blah, blah.” And it’s a fallacy because we never really arrive. The goalpost is always 10 yards down the field, “Oh, your podcast is number one in personal growth or in learning. Well, why isn’t it number one overall?” “Your book sold a thousand copies. Why not two?” “You got promoted to be VP. Well, now, I want to be the CEO.” You never really arrive so you cannot find fulfillment from chasing something outside of yourself.

Brad Stulberg
And it’s a very human thing to do.

Pete Mockaitis
That is so true. When those numbers, they resonate. And that’s sort of my joke whenever I catch a download milestone, it’s like, “Ooh, I’m at 15 million downloads but, you know what, I’ll truly be happy when I’m at 16 million downloads.” It’s an absurdity and I just sort of check myself with that little joke every time we hit the next million.

Brad Stulberg
And I catch myself doing the same thing. Like, none of this is bad. This is human nature. I write books for myself as much as anyone, so that’s why the practice of groundedness is in the title. This stuff is an ongoing practice. So, yes, very human to catch yourself saying, “If then, then I’ll be content. Then I’ll be able to just sit down in the easy chair and be happy,” but that doesn’t happen. Research shows it, all the ancient wisdom traditions point toward it, and stories of people like me and you say the same.

So, rather than try to achieve fulfillment externally, if you can shift the focus internally, then you’ll have a much better chance of doing it. And this is where core values become so important and why they’re such a big part of the book. So, I think about core values as the qualities that you most want to embody, that make you who you are, and if you’re not sure of what those are, you look at people that you really respect, and you say, “What do I respect about this person?” And it’s rarely, “Oh, they sold three million books.” It might be that they are a hard worker, or they’re kind, or they’re compassionate, or they’re present. Those are core values.

So, I think it’s good to come up with between three and five. You don’t want to have a laundry list because then you end up not really doing any. You don’t want to just have one because that’s not very specific. Then for each value, again, things like creativity, family, reputation, grit, determination, persistence, love, kindness, you want to individualize it and define it. So, what does something as broad as love mean to you? What does reputation mean to you? What does grit mean to you?

Then here’s where the rubber really hits the road. For each of those things, in addition to a definition, you want to come up with three daily practices, or weekly practices, monthly practices, where your day-to-day concrete actions align with those core values. In that way, regardless of what’s happening externally, if you can show up and live, in alignment with your core values, then you can feel really good about yourself, not just because “succeeded at the game,” but because, again, these are the things that make you who you are, that you want to embody. When you’re living in alignment with these things, you tend to feel good.

So, an example of this is someone might have the core value love. Okay. Well, this is super esoteric. And let’s say that they define love as “Caring deeply and paying close attention to people and pursuits that matter to me.” Okay, that’s getting a little bit better. Now let’s get to daily practice. “Well, one of those people and pursuits is my relationship with my partner. And this might mean that every night during dinner, I’m going to turn my phone off and put it in another room so I’ll have a better chance of being present for her.” Boom! That’s a practice. It might mean that, “Hey, I’m a creative person, and when I write music, I want to bring all of my loving energy to that. So, I’m going to schedule three-by-one hour blocks a week of distraction-free time to write music.” Now you’re practicing love.

Let’s say the core value is grit. The daily practice might be, “Every time I’m really tempted to stop something and quit what I’m doing, I’m going to say, ‘What’s the cost of just giving it 10 more days to play out and see if it can’t work out?’” That’s the practice that embodies grit. So, you go from these very noble, high-level, lofty, ambitious qualities, down to the minutiae of day-to-day, and that is ultimately how you become more grounded and how you achieve fulfillment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. And I like that extra level of the practices, and you’re right.

Brad Stulberg
I’ve heard people call it an internal dashboard.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like it.

Brad Stulberg
So, it’s like, okay, if your end goal is profit, well, in a business sense, where you have all these steps to execute on to get there. So, here, if your end goal is groundedness or fulfillment, well, here are the three to five things that ladder up to it, and then here are the process measures that are going to get you there.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I like so much is that you can, I don’t know, for better or for worse, I don’t know. Brad, maybe you’ll coach me. I really like feeling like a winner and I really hate feeling like a loser. And so, there’s some little bit of growth mindset, fixed mindset, precariousness there associated with doing things that I’m not good at. I seem to have a heck of a time navigating the medical landscape in the United States, it’s like, “What? My appointment was cancelled. Why? I didn’t do that thing. Well, what?” Whatever. So, that makes me feel like a loser.

And so, what’s cool about this notion of the internal dashboard and fulfillment being an inside game is that you can be a winner no matter what the external results are, “I got dozens of medical appointments cancelled.” It’s like, “But you know what, I still nailed those daily practices associated with the values of who I want to be. So, I’m probably not going to feel all that down about it. It’s like, yeah, that’s annoying and that’s a bummer, and I guess I’m going to have to do it again. But, hey, I’m being who I want to be, and that’s pretty awesome.”

Brad Stulberg
Yes. It’s the ultimate F-U to all the voices in your head that are like, “Oh, you didn’t do good enough. You’re not enough. This isn’t…” And it gets back to what we’re saying. The more you practice those values, that actually, the paradox is the better chance you’ll have of conventional success because you’ll be doing it for the right reasons from a place of strength and confidence.

It also gets back to that practice around presence and scheduling time for very focused presence. Because if you just say, “I’m going to be present all the time,” well, you’re going to be a loser because you’re a human being in the 21st century where distractions are everywhere. Whereas, if you say, “Actually, just for three 90-minute blocks a week I’m going to be present,” well, that’s a game that you can win at. And winning feeling is good. So, you win then maybe you say, “Four by 90-minutes,” and you keep the ball rolling.

So, so much of this is shifting from the more traditional self-help, hustle culture, crush it, be bulletproof, be great always, never be content, to more of a research-backed look, that actually says, “Hey, contentment and achievement go hand-in-hand. The more that you can live on your values, even if they have nothing to do with career success, the more successful you’ll be in your career.” The less you need to buy something outside of yourself to feel good or to numb what’s happening, the better you’ll feel and the more effective you’ll be in addressing whatever it is that’s happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s cool. Thank you. Well, Brad, tell me, any other huge things you want to make sure we don’t skip before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Brad Stulberg
Yeah, I think that we didn’t talk as much, really at all, about community, and I think that that’s a really important practice as well. And I’ll just say that what happens to just about everyone, myself included, is that we can get into a really good groove with whatever it is that we’re working on. And when we’re in those grooves, we want to be efficient. And it’s so easy, easier than ever in today’s day and age, to go from meeting up with friends in person to a Zoom, to go from Zoom to a call, to go from a call to a text, to reschedule it because I can just send you a new calendar link. And we tend to do all this stuff because it makes us “more efficient” with what we’re doing.

And, sure, day to day, like schlepping in the car to go meet up with your friends in person, or joining an actual physical book club, or going to the gym instead of working out at home, that takes time and it will make you less efficient. But when you look back over the course of a year, or a decade, or a lifetime, those relationships and those communities that you’ve built and belong to, that’s the stuff that gives your life meaning, and that will help you find fulfillment. And when you’re experiencing a bout of anxiety or depression, no amount of efficient work is going to help you get out of it but your community will.

Or, if you crush it and you go from 15 million downloads to 40 million downloads, guess who’s going to be there to be like, “Hey, Pete, don’t get drunk off your own success”? Your community. So, it’s this thing that is so foundational to being grounded that’s so often gets overlooked when we’re doing well because it takes time and energy and effort, but it always pays back.

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

Brad Stulberg
“You don’t have to feel good to get going. You need to get going to give yourself a chance to feel good.” And so often, people think that you need to be really motivated or inspired to get started, but then good luck getting started because most people don’t wake up super motivated and inspired every single day of their life. But if you can just get going on the stuff that matters to you and the stuff that’s in alignment with your values, often motivation and inspiration follows.

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

Brad Stulberg
So, I think from this book certainly, and maybe just now in my life, I find the convergence of ancient wisdom tradition thinking and modern science to be just absolutely fascinating. So, for instance, for this book, talking about deep presence and flow, being absorbed in something, losing your sense of self, ego-lessness, everything that the modern scientists describe about these great flow states that we chase, the Buddha described as nirvana, the Tao Te Ching described as the way, and the ancient Greeks described as arete.

So, you could put like a scientific description of a flow state next to what the Buddha called nirvana and they’re the same thing. And I think that, particularly with more of these Eastern wisdom traditions, we’re seeing so much modern science just empirically proving what these thinkers have been pointing to for thousands of years.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Brad Stulberg
I forgot what I said the last time I was on your show, so I don’t want to repeat myself. I will say Middlemarch, which is a novel by George Eliot. It’s a big book. It’s like a door stopper, probably about a thousand pages. But if you’ve got a month or two of your life where you really have a good time to read and you just want to get completely lost in a story about a community and characters and people’s struggles, I highly recommend it.

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

Brad Stulberg
It’s going to sound crazy but a barbell.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Brad Stulberg
So, I’m a writer and a coach. I use my brain to do my work, but my physical practice is just so integral to my being able to sit still, focus, think creatively, solve problems, so, yeah, for me it’s probably a barbell. I’m not really any good at lifting weights, but I firmly believe that movement is a part of my job even though I’m not a pro athlete.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Brad Stulberg
Reading. I just freaking love reading. I can never read enough. It’s a big part of my life. It fuels my own writing. And my wife is constantly probably telling me to stop chattering about whatever book I’m reading but I can’t help myself.

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

Brad Stulberg
Yeah, I think, particularly in most of my coaching clients, it’s just this identification or language of heroic individualism, “So, I need to be productive. I need to be efficient. I need to keep striving. If I just get this thing then I’ll finally be fulfilled,” and realizing that that’s not your fault, that doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make you weak. That is just the water that we swim in in the 21st century here in America and the Western world.

And realizing that that game is ultimately not going to lead to fulfillment, so kind of flipping it on its head and saying, “Hey, what are these principles that will lead to fulfillment? What are my values? How can I live them? How can I accept where I am? How can I be present? How can I be patient?” and so on. So, it’s catching yourself playing the game. And I catch myself playing the game at least weekly. We all do. Realize when you’re playing it and then try to go back to living in alignment with your values to being more grounded.

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

Brad Stulberg
Well, first thing I’d say is please consider the book if you find this interesting. The book goes super deep into all of this. And my website is www.BradStulberg.com, just like my name. And the only social media that I’m really active on is Twitter where my handle is @BStulberg.

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

Brad Stulberg
I do. I think that it would be pretty simple, and it is to be honest with yourself right now if you’re listening, and saying, “Hey, how much am I playing the game of heroic individualism?” And if it feels like hardly at all, great. But if it feels like more than you’d like, try to identify some of your values that are the inside game, define what practices work in alignment with them, and then start building your life around those values. It can be very gradual. This is not about quitting your job. It’s about still being awesome at your job but also making sure that you’re doing it in a way where you’re living in alignment with your values that will, hopefully, leave you not only a high-performer but also fulfilled.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Brad, this has been a treat. Thank you. And good luck in all of your groundedness.

Brad Stulberg
Yeah, thank you, Pete. I hope you stay grounded as well.

Aug 02
0

690: How to Get Luckier and Create Serendipity with Christian Busch

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Christian Busch says: "No matter what situation we're in, there's always something we can still do even if it seems powerless."

Christian Busch reveals how to create good luck.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to connect the dots for smart luck 
  2. How to turn random incidents into serendipity moments
  3. How serendipity develops grit 

About Christian

Dr. Christian Busch is the director of the Global Economy program at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, where he teaches on purpose-driven leadership, impact entrepreneurship, social innovation, and emerging markets.  

He is a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the co-founder of Leaders on Purpose, an organization convening high-impact leaders, as well as the Sandbox Network, a global community of young innovators active in over 20 countries. Previously, he served on the faculty of the LSE’s Department of Management and as the inaugural Deputy Director of the LSE’s Innovation Centre. 

Resources Mentioned

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Christian Busch Interview Transcript

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

Christian Busch
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your book The Serendipity Mindset: The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck.

We previously had on the show Annie Duke who was a former poker world champion and now teaches a lot about decision-making. And she’s had quite the statement which was that, “All the results in your life are due to your decisions and your luck. And so, you can’t do much about your luck so I’m going to get really great at decisions.” I thought that makes so much sense to me.

But, here, Christian comes along, and is like, “Well, actually, perhaps we can do some things to create good luck.” So, let’s make sure we cover both sides of that equation. So, tell us, maybe as we dig in, could you kick us off with one of your most particularly surprising, counterintuitive, fascinating discoveries you’ve made while researching and working on this serendipity stuff?

Christian Busch
Yeah. It really comes based on the premise of saying usually when we think about luck, we think about this blind luck, to your point, as opposed to skill. It’s like, “Oh, my God, it’s just something that happens to us and we didn’t really work for it.” And serendipity is really about smart luck. It’s about that luck that we have to work for in some ways.

So, take the quintessential moment, if you have your really calm movements like I do, imagine you’re in a coffee shop, you spill a coffee over someone, and you sense there might be some kind of connection. You don’t know what it is but you sense there might be some kind of connection, professional, personal, whatever it is, and now you have two options.

Option number one is you just say, “I’m so sorry. Here’s a napkin.” You walk outside and you think, “Ah, what could have happened had I spoken with the person?” And then option number two is you start a conversation, that person becomes your co-founder, your next investor, the love of your life. The point here is the way we react to the unexpected, the way we connect the dots in that moment, essentially leads us to that smart luck.

And so, if you think about everything from Viagra, to potato washing machines, to how we find the love of our life, a lot of times that is based on our own actions. And so, what I’ve been working a lot on is the question of, “Is there a science-based framework that allows us to create more of those meaningful accidents but also makes accidents more meaningful?”

And so, to give you one example that I’m fascinated by because I think it’s a very tangible approach of how we can better our lives for doing this is the hook strategy. And the hook strategy, essentially, is all about saying if you would ask Oli Barrett, who’s a wonderful entrepreneur in London, “What do you do?” you know, the dreaded question that’s essentially putting you into a box. He would not just say, “I’m a technology entrepreneur.” He would say something like, “I’m a technology entrepreneur, recently read into the philosophy of science, but what I’m really excited about is playing the piano.”

And so, what he’s doing here is he’s giving you three potential hooks where you could say, “Oh, my God, such a coincidence. I recently started playing the piano. You should come by,” “Oh, my God, such a coincidence. My sister is teaching on the philosophy of science at university. You should give a guest lecture.”

The point is we can use every conversation to see the couple of information in there that essentially allows other people to connect the dots for us, and that’s how serendipity starts to happen more and more. And it’s almost like this multiplication of serendipity that we can have through this kind of practices.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, the hooks then is you’re providing multiple opportunities for connection or things to be latched onto there as opposed to just sort of like following the script, “This is what I do and that’s that.” And I guess, likewise, with Viagra, so I’m a little familiar with the story. So, how about you share? The discovery of Viagra was not quite what they originally starting to try to figure out. Can you share the story in how that connects to serendipity?

Christian Busch
Absolutely. So, that was really a couple of researchers giving people medication against angina, the disease, and they realized, “Oh, my God, there was some kind of movement happening in male participants’ trousers.” And what would we usually do? We’d probably be like, “Oh, my God, that’s embarrassing. Let’s look away, or let’s find a way to cure that kind of side effect, or let’s get that off the table.”

They did the opposite. They said, “You know what, that’s unexpected but there’s a lot of men in the world who might have a problem in that department. So, why don’t we try to figure out how that could turn into a medication?” And so, that’s how serendipitously Viagra evolved.

And that’s actually, to give you one more example that maybe shows exactly that kind of effect is the example of the potato washing machine. And the potato washing machine was really a company in China that sells refrigerators and they were essentially…they had farmers call them up and say, “Oh, your crappy washing machine is always breaking down.” And so, they asked them, “Well, why is it breaking down?” “Well, we’re trying to wash our potatoes in it and it doesn’t seem to work.”

And so, what would we usually do? We’d probably look at that unexpected event and say, “Oh, my God, why would you wash your potatoes in there? Don’t do that.” They did the opposite. They built in a dirt filter and made it into a potato washing machine.

And so, it’s really that idea of, “How do we react to the unexpected moment, that kind of random events that happens? And then how do we connect the dots to something meaningful?” And that’s where we imbue meaning in it, and so that’s really what serendipity is about. It’s about somehow finding this kind of meaningful accident.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, so that already seems to be a theme here in terms of not being so maybe rigid, fixated, on the thing I’m trying to achieve or how it’s supposed to go, or the protocol or the rules, but rather having kind of an openness to what might emerge from this. Yeah, any tips on how we’d do more of that?

Christian Busch
You know, it’s interesting. So, one kind of part of our research is focused a lot on that question of, “What makes people more successful than others in their careers, and when they run companies, or when they manage groups, or when they run their own life?” And one of the key themes behind that was really that the most successful people seem to have in common that they actually have some kind of sense of direction.

They somehow know, “This is approximately where I’m going. If I’m running XYZ company, a MasterCard, and I want to bring 500 million people into the financial system,” or, “If I am looking for a new job and I approximately know that I want to go into XYZ area.” But then this openness to the unexpected that it might not necessarily be exactly that kind of job that I’m looking for. And that’s really what a lot of them have in common, that they let go of this illusion of control, that you can know exactly what you can do tomorrow, exactly the kind of job you can find tomorrow.

I grew up in Germany, and I love plans, I love everything that reduces ambiguity, that reduces anxiety and everything else. But, actually, one of the things that I’ve realized in my own life, and the life in those people that I’ve studied and worked with, is that exactly that idea of having a certain sense of where we’re going but then unexpectedly, a lot of times, the most interesting things emerge. And so, it’s really about saying, “Let’s redefine that. Let’s redefine the unexpected from a threat into something that actually can make our life even better if we somehow reframe those moments.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, cool. Well, that sounds swell. And maybe to help pull that off, having some extra awareness of what you call three core types of serendipity might help. What are they?

Christian Busch
Yeah. So, it’s really about, “Is there something we’ve already been looking for?” So, let’s say you’re Archimedes and you know that the king asked you, “Hey, can you tell me if this crown is pure gold or if it is something else, some kind of fake type crown?” And Archimedes wanted to solve that problem but he couldn’t find a solution, and he was like, “Okay. Well, let’s forget about it for a second. Let me go to the baths and just kind of chill out for a moment.”

And then when he went into the public baths, he realized, “Oh, the water seems to go up when I go into that, so maybe I can use that logic to figure out if there’s actually gold in that crown because the gold will probably part water in different ways or volumes than it will be if it will be some kind of other material.” And so, essentially, he unexpectedly found a way to solve the problem he already wanted to solve.

And so, that’s a lot of times, if I know I want to have a job in McKinsey and I want to apply to that exact job, and I always think I’d do that via XYZ application or XYZ contact, but then actually the niece of my father’s brother unexpectedly tells me about this one kind of person that I should connect with and I get the job via that person. That, essentially, is kind of that Archimedes serendipity that is one.

The other one really is the kind of more Post-It note where we realize we’re looking for one thing. So, in the case of Post-It, the beautiful notes, someone was looking for solving that in some way, like, “How do we essentially develop a stronger glue?” They were experimenting with strong glue. And then they realized, “Actually, a weaker glue is much more fun because we can then use that on these kinds of Post-It type notes.”

And so, it was something, they were looking for one thing, but while looking for that, something completely different happened. And so, that’s how when we look for one job, and then we might find a completely different job on that journey, and it’s just unexpected.

And then the third one, which is my favorite, is really when it’s completely unexpected, the kind of thunderbolt that comes from the sky where that’s the way how we fall in love a lot of times. We’re in those coffee shop moments, we just bump into someone, we didn’t see it coming, and it just happens.

But what all these three have in common, really, is that it’s all a process. It’s all a process. Rather than just like something that happens to us, it’s always the process of there’s some kind of trigger happening, something happens to us, but then we have to do something with it, we have to connect the dots and turn it into something. And so, that’s the beauty of serendipity.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, how can we get better at kind of spotting those triggers in terms of, I think, depending on your mood? I mean, in my own experience, in terms of like it’s something just sort of like a frustration, an irritation, a headache, or just kind of weird versus is it, “Oh, a wondrous opportunity”? So, how do we spot them and jump on them?

Christian Busch
You know, it’s interesting. I’d cluster it probably in two different types. The one is really, in a way, the way we frame the world and the way we look at the world. And there’s this beautiful example of the lucky and unlucky person where researchers essentially took one person who self-identifies as very lucky and someone who self-identifies as very unlucky, so someone who says, “Bad things always happen to me and I’m always in accidents,” and so on. And we probably all know people in both kind of camps, people who are considering themselves to be very unlucky versus very lucky.

And then the researchers tell them, “Walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, order a coffee, and sit down, and then we’ll have an interview.” Now, what he doesn’t tell them is that there’s hidden cameras along the street and inside the coffee shop, there’s a £5 note, so money in front of the coffee shop, and inside the coffee shop, there’s this extremely successful businessman and there’s this one seat next to that businessman that’s empty.

Now, the lucky person walks down the street, sees the £5 note, picks it up, goes inside the coffee shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, has a nice conversation, they exchanged business cards, potential opportunity coming out of it, we don’t know that. The unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the £5 note, so doesn’t see it, goes inside, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, ignores the businessman, and that’s that.

Now, at the end of the day, they asked both people, “How was your day today?” And so, the lucky person says, “Well, it was amazing. I found money in the street, made a new friend, and potentially an opportunity coming up.” The unlucky person just says, “Well, nothing really happened.” And that’s the interesting thing, that there were two of those moments. The one is the moment of, “If I expect that things can happen that are good, I open my mind more to it. Once I believe that there could be good things out there, actually I see more of those dollar bills. Like, I found I’m consistently and constantly finding money in the street,” because people actually surprisingly drop a lot of money in the street.

But then, also, when you are in the coffee shop and talking with the businessman, that’s more the kind of extroversion piece, that the more we interact with people, of course the more there’s potentially opportunity coming out of it. But closet introverts like myself, like a lot of times serendipity comes from silent sources. It comes from reading a book and then saying, “Oh, my God, people haven’t talked about this for a while. I should do a podcast about this. This is kind of different.”

So, I think the one pocket is really around this idea of overcoming the bias of, “Oh, life doesn’t have something there for me,” because actually life can have something everywhere, and that’s the fascinating thing. If we talk about Viktor Frankl, and so this idea of you can imbue meaning everywhere and there’s always something interesting everywhere.

But, also, then the second piece, and that’s the one I’m much more interested in, actually, is the deeper psychological questions, “What are the self-limiting beliefs that we all have that really hold us back?” And that really is, you know, imagine you’re in a meeting and people talk about something, and you have this random idea come up but you hold back, you don’t talk, and then you go outside, and you think, “Ah, I should’ve talked about it.”

What was it that held you back? Was it, “I’m not worthy enough”? Was it, “I’m not ready, it’s not mature enough, the idea”? And, really, working on these deeper underlying biases because a lot of times we might see the idea, we might see something, but we might not act on it, and I think that’s the bigger piece. So, it’s both the kind of, “How do we train to see more things by not underestimating actually how likely the unexpected is?” But then the second piece, also, “How do we connect the dots and allow ourselves to do that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Cool, yeah. So, you mentioned self-limiting beliefs, are there a few in particular that kind of rise to the top of the list as being prominent and widespread serendipity killers?

Christian Busch
One that I’ve certainly, myself, for a very long time, I’ve struggled with this fear of rejection. I think when you think about that a lot of times in life, the reason why you don’t reach out to someone, the reason why you don’t do XYZ, is because you’re afraid that you might get negative feedback, that someone might say, “That idea is bad,” “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to date you,” “No, I’m sorry, I don’t want to offer you that job.” And so, it’s that kind of idea that we anticipate the worst case, and we’re like, “Yeah, okay, maybe not.”

And one thing that I’ve realized in my own life, and that I’ve seen with others as well, is once you redefine that away from the worst thing that can happen is rejection, to the worst thing that can happen is that feeling that you have afterwards if you didn’t try, that feeling of when you go outside and you’re like, “Aargh, I wish I had done XYZ,” and, really, that regret that comes from not trying. And that’s very Mark Twain-ish in terms of we won’t regret the things we have done, but we will regret the things we haven’t done a lot of times.

And it’s really that kind of overcoming, that fear in some ways, and it’s not easy but I feel like the more rejections we get in life, the easier it gets in some way to work on that. So, I think the fear of rejection is a big one.

One of my absolute favorites also is, I think, because we, or a lot of us, might have that tendency to kind of control things, we, in a way, then imbue a lot of meaning and trying to have everything under control. And so, as soon as something unexpected happens, imagine you go on a trip with your colleagues, and you organized the whole trip, and now there’s a tire that breaks down and that’s unexpected, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, no, this can’t be. We’ll be late for lunch or dinner, and that will ruin the whole day.” Or, “Hey, maybe this can become a bonding experience for this team. And, like, is there something in that moment?”

And so, I think, in a way, once we let go of this idea that the way we planned it is the ideal way, to, “Hey, actually, if something goes wrong, maybe that’s a great bonding experience, maybe that’s something in that moment that we can do something with,” I think then it gets really interesting. And one thing I’ve always found fascinating about presenters, for example, great presenters, I feel they always have this kind of line if something breaks down because they know the likelihood of something breaking down, the likelihood of a projector not working, of the moderator not appearing, whatever it is, individually it’s very small likelihoods. But if you add all this out together, it’s very likely that something unexpected happens.

And so, if they have a sentence at the beginning where they’re like, “Oh, my God, XYZ ha, ha,” that’s the way how they pull the audience on their side because the audience says, “Oh, my God, like they really can cope with that situation well.” And so, I think those situations, in a way, show real leadership but I think, again, we can all build that muscle for it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Christian, now I want to have a few of those sentences ready to go. Can you recall some of those?

Christian Busch
Yeah, my favorite, really, so a friend of mine, she used to get very red. So, when she would go on stage, she would turn red, and so she would literally then kind of build that into a sentence, and say, “Hey, look, this is the warning signal that we’re about to start.” And this is kind of like something that directed her and something that could’ve been seen as a weakness, or something that where people would’ve talked about anyways. Everyone in this room would either have thought it or would’ve told the person next to them, “Oh, look, like this is very red.”

But by turning this directly around, she actually turned that into something that made her, like made the audience really be on her side. And I think, in my case, being German, we have a lot of anti-jokes. There’s a lot of dumb ones. There’s a lot of like when a projector doesn’t work or something, it’s like, “Oh, the slides were crap anyways, like it’s much better if we talk XYZ.” Things where it’s not necessarily funny in that sense but I think just having a sentence that allows us to bridge that, I think, that shows the audience, “Okay, great. This person is still in control. That person somehow tries to figure out how to just make that work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s interesting, that theme there in terms of, “I am not freaked out by this not having gone to plan. In fact, maybe I find it amusing or I am somehow charmed or enchanted by it working out the way it has worked out,” really does put other folks at ease because it’s like if a presenter is in all awkward, nervous, feeling uncomfortable, well, then the audience is as well. And so, if you go there, that’s cool.

I guess, in some ways, this all seems a little bit easier said than done, I think, particularly maybe when the stakes are high when you really want the thing that you’re really going after, and you have invested a lot of yourself in terms of the time, the money, the resources, into making something unfold the way you want it to, and then it just doesn’t: there’s a flat tire, the slides don’t work, nobody shows up to the thing. Yeah, any pro tips on how to get better at that?

It sounds like you’ve already mentioned previously that the more we can believe and accept that things not working according to plan can be in our best interest and truly an asset. That’s great. And I guess it’d be helpful if maybe you should make a list of such things that happen in your life, like, “Hey, here is some evidence.” But how else do you recommend that we get there when, yeah, when the stakes are high?

Christian Busch
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve seen a lot with my students who, when COVID happened, a lot of them had their jobs lined up after graduation or their internships. They always wanted an internship in XYZ bank, and they worked so long for it, and they worked all their contacts work out, and then COVID happened, and it just didn’t. And so, it was this kind of very high-stake first-job type situation where you really felt, “This is what I really want to do. This is what I really need at this point in time.”

And what I found fascinating, and now one and a half years in. Having conversations with some of those students, it is tough. Like, I remember when I graduated in 2007, we had the financial crisis hit. I had so much mapped out, and then that crisis hit, and you just got it emotionally and cognitively, you’re just like, “Oh, my God, life is over and that is it.”

I think one of the things that I’ve always been fascinated by is that kind of question of, “When we look at it in the long run, like when we look at this kind of two, three, four, five, six years, like what does it really mean?”

I’ve seen the same with my jobs, for example. I was on a consultancy track and then, essentially, serendipitously fell into the startup world first, and that was very kind of…it felt like in that moment, “Oh, my God, there’s something going wrong here.” But actually, it turned out, when looking back now, I wondered, like, “Why would I ever even consider that?”

And so, I think to your point, like in the moment it always feels very tough and rough, that’s kind of moments of, “Oh, my God, this is exactly what I wanted. I worked so hard for this for years.” And then I think with a bit of distance over time, what happens a lot of times is that we’re saying, “Oh, actually, I only had limited information at that time. Actually, at that time also, I was another person than I am now because I went through this kind of tough period.”

And so, I think a lot of times, when looking back, it’s this beautiful saying that if it’s not a happy ending, maybe it’s not the ending yet, and maybe we shouldn’t stop the story too early. And I’ve seen that with a lot of people who I consider to be extremely successful, that they essentially have a certain story stop at some point, but then they develop that grit and that persistence. And that is my kind of, on the more actionable side.

I’ve always been a big fan of that perspective-taking, or that kind of when we are in this emotional moment where we say, “Oh, my God, the world is going down. I didn’t get the job I wanted,” saying, “What would I tell a friend now?” And the friend probably usually would say, “Hey, look, that’s really not nice but, actually, hey, have you considered XYZ?” and really taking ourselves out of that purely emotional and into the kind of perspective, which a lot of times, then I think helps with this kind of developing grit.

And I think Adam Grant has done some amazing work around this. I highly recommend it for everyone to check out around grit, resilience, and perseverance.

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

Christian Busch
Yeah, I think, look, at the end of the day, serendipity is about potentiality. It’s about, “What could be?” And I’m a big fan, there’s this amazing organization that’s in Cape Flats in Cape Town.

I went there around a decade ago for the first time. I went in there and I was like, “What is the one question I should never ask you? I come into your context here but what should I never ask you?” And they were like, “Never ask us first question, ‘What do you need?’ because if you ask us, ‘What do you need?’ you put us into this weird role of, like, someone who needs something, a victim, a beneficiary, whatever it is, versus asking, ‘What’s already here? And how can we make the best out of this?’”

And so, that really shaped my perspective in terms of how people, even in the most resource-constrained of environments, want to create their own luck. It’s not about saying, “I’m just waiting for resources here,” and I think a lot of times we have this reflex, “Hey, here, here is some money, here is this. Like, let’s apply for a budget or a grant.” But actually, that dignity that comes from creating your own luck is really at the core of this.

And so, this organization, what they do is they go into different contexts and they ask, “What is already here and how can we make the best out of it? Oh, there’s a former drug dealer. Interesting. That person has a lot of creativity, that person has a lot of contexts, so if we can turn them into a teacher, it becomes cool now to be a teacher. If we look at an old garage, we can look at a potential training center.”

And so, the point here is that we start connecting the dots differently once we get away from looking at resource constraints and the things we don’t have and into the potentiality of it. And so, it’s a lot of banks and others now who apply exactly that thinking. Imagine you’re organizing an event at your company, and you write your budget, and you’re like, “Oh, I need 20 chairs for this event.” Well, what this organization would do, they would first ask you, “Well, do you really need the chairs or can people stand, whatever it is? If you need them, can you ask the restaurant next door, if they can borrow you the chairs, which might also nicely kind of give you some new contacts there, whatever it is. And only if you say no to all of these things, then go ahead with it.”

And what happens a lot of times is that we’re like, “Oh, my God, we don’t even need all this budget. We can make stuff happen much more resourceful than we thought.” And that’s where serendipity starts to happen because we get away from thinking about budget constraints, and things that don’t work, and scarcity, and really think about more, “Wow, what could be in this situation already? And maybe I have more here than I think I have, more kind of context than I thought I had, more kind of resources than I thought I had.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s exciting and, yeah, it makes kind of sense that when you…I think I remember from like a college psychology class, there’s a name for this, being fixated on the lack versus what you have. There’s a name for it. Do you know the psychological term here?

Christian Busch
Well, I think it’s a lot around framing. Like, essentially, how do we reframe a situation? And I think that goes very deeply into psychology. How do we essentially understand that’s it’s not about resource scarcity always? I think it’s, actually, you know what was really interesting, I had a couple of conversations recently with psychologists.

And for them, actually, the mindset is interesting because they’re saying it helps us to get away a little bit from the anxiety, from the feeling that we’re losing control because, actually, maybe there’s something in there that still helps us. And so, I think, to your point, I think there’s a lot of psychological linkages there, I think, all in terms of, “How do we approach life and see less scarcity and more as abundance?”

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

Christian Busch
My absolute favorite is a Goethe quote. I grew up in Heidelberg, and there’s this Philosopher’s Way where Goethe wrote some of his poems. And he had this idea that if you take someone as they are, you make them worse, but if you take them as who they could be, you’ll make them capable of becoming who they can be.

And that’s, actually, Viktor Frankl took that idea at some point, and he talked about it in the context of a flight instructor. The flight instructor told him, “Well, Viktor, if you want to fly like this or just a little bit up, you always need to start a little bit higher than you want to fly because the wind will always pull you down.” So, if you start as a realist, you end up as a depressionist, but if you start as an optimist, you end up as the real realist.

And Goethe’s point really was to say, “If we always see a little bit more in the moment than there is that meets the eye, we start seeing serendipity happen after and after and after and after again.” And I think that’s also what good leadership is about. Good leadership is about looking at a former drug dealer and not seeing just a former drug dealer. It’s about looking at them and saying, “Wow, you could be a teacher,” “Wow, you could be XYZ,” and then people start also seeing it themselves and seeing other potentialities as well. So, I would probably quote Goethe in that regard.

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

Christian Busch
Well, one absolute favorite is about rabbits. So, essentially, a couple of decades ago, two researchers at approximately the same time, they were injecting rabbits with a protein, with papain, and the rabbits’ ears flopped. And both of them saw that, that the flop was surprising, it was interesting, but only one of them followed up on it, and only one of them went through and realized, “Oh, wow, that has to do with bloodstream. It has to do with the blood flowing better.” And then that led to amazing arthritis and other medications and got a lot of prizes.

And, to me, that has always been a beautiful example of how we can really understand serendipity and how we can understand the kind of effect of this. What could have happened had the person acted versus not? So, in this moment, it’s really the one person acted on that unexpected thing, connected the dots, did something with it, versus the other had the same thing happen but they didn’t. And so, it’s similar to what we talked about earlier, these other experiments that are about you can give people exactly the same situation but the way they react to it and what they do with it will lead to extremely different results.

And so, I think that, to me, is always, as an academic, I’m always thinking about, “What are science-based ways that we can understand serendipity?” And one is really about tracing back different types of decisions, and then saying, “Oh, this decision unfolds differently because of that and that action.”

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Christian Busch
Oh, my favorite book, definitely Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. This book is next to my bedside table. I’ve been re-reading it so many times and, essentially, the core idea is that he was in a concentration camp, which, as you can imagine, is the toughest of environments that one could ever be in. You’re being stripped of any dignity that you’ve ever had.

And he said, “Look, but I still can do something here. I can still…” He had this idea of, “I can still converse with other prisoners every day. And by making them feel better about life in general, I have some kind of meaning here. I can still write this book after I come out here.” And so, he had this duality of meaning, this kind of meaning in the day-to-day that he built, and this meaning of, “I still want to do this later.”

And so, I found that in my work to be extremely effective to have this idea that you both have something that’s in the day-to-day that gives those meaning but also something to look forward to that gives us a broader meaning.

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

Christian Busch
That’s a good question. Probably the coffee machine. I need a lot of coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a key nugget you share that seems to connect and resonate with folks, they quote it back to you frequently?

Christian Busch
It’s probably a lot around that idea that comes back to Viktor Frankl, that we cannot always choose a situation or a stimulus, but we can always choose our response to it. And so, that is really our agency, that is where our growth comes from, that’s where our freedom comes from. And so, really, this idea that no matter what situation we’re in, there’s always something we can still do even if it seems powerless.

And so, I think that’s very…something that I think resonates particularly, I think, in tough, I mean, during COVID periods like now. I had COVID last year, the severe form of it, and it’s the kind of period where you just feel complete despair, I just feel like, “Oh, my God, what is this all about?” And then this idea of, “How do you still find some kind of meaning in some way?” And I think that is a lot around this, “How do we respond to stimuli that we didn’t choose?”

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

Christian Busch
It’s on Twitter @ChrisSerendip, and the homepage is SerendipityMindset.com.

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

Christian Busch
Yeah, I would really suggest set up a serendipity journal where you write down, “What are the key themes, three key themes, interests, you have at the moment?” And then, every conversation you have during the next days and weeks, seed a little bit into this and just see what happens when people start connecting the dots for you.

And then doing the same for kind of like the self-limiting beliefs, so really saying, in those moments when you’re out there, where you feel something could’ve happened but it didn’t, “What seems to be the pattern behind this?” Really writing this down and then seeing what it is. And I think what you’ll see is that it’s very relieving to then kind of start tackling this and seeing how many, how much multiplication that has in that area as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Chris, this has been a treat. I wish you many serendipitous moments in the future.

Christian Busch
Thank you so much.