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Dec 19
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2024 GREATS: 925: How to Stop People-Pleasing and Feeling Guilty with Dr. Aziz Gazipura

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Dr. Aziz Gazipura explains the dangers of people-pleasing tendencies and shares actionable steps for overcoming it.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The massive costs of being a people-pleaser
  2. How to not feel guilty when saying no
  3. A surprising strategy to build your discomfort tolerance 

About Aziz

Dr. Aziz is a clinical psychologist and one of the world’s leading experts on social confidence. In 2011, Dr. Aziz started The Center For Social Confidence, which is dedicated to helping everyone break through their shyness and social anxiety.

Through confidence coaching, audio and video programs, podcasts, a detailed blog, and intensive weekend workshops, Dr. Aziz has helped thousands of people all over the world increase their confidence and lives out his mission: To help every person who is stuck in shyness liberate themselves to pursue the relationship, career, and life they have always dreamed of.

He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Candace and son Zaim.

Resources Mentioned

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Dr. Aziz Gazipura Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis

Could you kick us off with a dramatic tale about the dangers of people-pleasing?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah. Well, I don’t need to make anything up here. And it’s the kind of, like all good dramatic stories, it’s a slow build, where maybe it’s like imagine a character in a movie where they go out and have some drinks, and they really like it, and it just seems like a good time. And then, flash forward many years later, and they have the shakes in their hands because they have to have a drink of alcohol. And that’s actually what niceness is like, or people-pleasing, specifically.

So, you basically make a choice to not be yourself in order to smooth things over or be liked or be accepted. And maybe a classic tale would be you did it when you were young, you did it to fit in at school, you did it to fit in with family. And that was not all horribly off-kilter then. But then I talk to, man, dozens of people every week, where now they’re 37 or they’re 43 and they’ve done pretty good, like inauthenticity and fitting in works. It’s this somewhat adaptive strategy, but it works the way that that drink worked to take away your anxiety, but it doesn’t actually give you what you really want.

I was just speaking with a woman just two days ago, she’s about mid-40s, successful in her career, has a family, has a husband, and feels incredibly lonely, and doesn’t even really know what to change out there anymore because, “I have all the things.” And she’s lonely because no one, not even her husband, really knows her. And that might not sound bad. Some people might hear that and say, “I’ll take the family and the money and the career, and then I’ll be fine.”

But actually, when you get there, and you don’t feel like anything out there is going to change it, and inside you feel profoundly lonely, it’s a story of a lot of suffering. And it’s a story that hundreds of millions of people live out, and feel like they’re the only one, but they’re not.

Pete Mockaitis

So, can you make that all the more real and clear for us? To feel like no one really knows you, what might be some examples of the false impression others on the outside have in contrast to the reality that is within?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Well, the impression people have on the outside is what you learned will keep them close to you, and it might be different. And I call them the roles that you’re going to play. So, at work, you have a certain role that you play, “I need to be confident-sounding, in charge, certain with my partner. I need to be pleasing. So, what do they want me to be? I’ll agree to things that I think that they’ll want me to agree with. I’ll focus on the things that they want. We’ll talk about what they want.”

“I also know that they don’t like it if I’m irritable, or if I’m sad. So, I’m going to downplay that or hide that.” And that’s true for friends as well, “I got to be up. I got to be on. I don’t want to be boring. I don’t want to be a sad sack. I don’t want to bring people down. I don’t want to burden people with my feelings, and my woes, and my problems.” So, therefore, at work, you’re going to be that way. And inside you might feel nervous, you might feel insecure, you might question yourself but you don’t show any of that.

And that, people can tolerate a certain amount of inauthenticity at work. But then where it really starts to get to them is when they can’t even be themselves around their friends, their loved ones, their family. You got to hide it and pressure yourself, and so you can’t reveal that you’re feeling sad. You can’t reveal that you feel like something is missing. You can’t reveal any of these things. And that’s where the loneliness comes from for people.

And it might not be these big dramatic things, like, “I can’t reveal that I’ve secretly wanted to leave.” Even just, “I am feeling sad today,” and it’s so simple but it’s a world of difference when you have to keep it all inside, all hidden. And sometimes people, really good pleasers, and I know this because I lived this for many years, you’ll even hide it from yourself, “I’m not sad. Everything’s okay. I just have a stomach ache. I just am tired.”

And it becomes this vague thing that you don’t even know. You don’t even know where you are in all of it because then it’s scary to know what that is and maybe share it with others.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, this loneliness, what are the knock-on, follow-on consequences of that?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

There’s a variety of different studies around loneliness, but loneliness is pretty much associated with all negative health outcomes and a much shorter lifespan. That’s like the big hammer, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Yup, dying.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

And quality of life, but sometimes people hear that, and like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s about everything in life. Too much peanut butter kills you. You got to live.” But actually, not only is it a shorter life, but let’s just talk about the quality of life. And there’s the longest study in the history of human psychology, it’s decades. It’s been going so many decades that they’re now the second generation of people.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, Waldinger.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

This is the one done with Harvard students, yeah. And the short version is, it’s relationships. That’s what makes us feel good in life, that’s what makes us feel happy in life, that’s what protects us from hard times in life. And not just you got somebody in your house that’s your roommate. No, we’re talking about confidantes, real relationships, people where you’re in life together.

And so, the loneliness, the cost is you don’t have that, or you have a very limited amount of that, and that is the biggest determiner of true success, which, for everybody, I don’t care what they value in life. True success for everybody is actually to feel rich inside, like feel full of success, of love, of meaning, of resources. And so, you can have external success and feel empty inside, and not have the thing that we all really want, which is those real connections with people.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

But other than that, it’s great that we should just keep doing it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, can you give us a ray of hope then, an inspiring tale of a people-pleaser reformed?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, the ray of hope is people-pleasing is not who you are. It’s a pattern that you run. And that’s fantastic news because any pattern that you run you can change. It’s an active process, it’s a verb, like walking or eating. And so, you can put down the fork and no longer be eating. You can put down the people-pleasing pattern and no longer be pleasing. And you can still be very loved by more people than you could ever need to be loved by. And you could be more boldly yourself and actually enjoy who you are and stop trying to be somebody that you’re supposed to be for others.

And I think this is the biggest risk, this is the leap of faith, and that’s why I think people who read my books or work with me because there’s some part of them that says, “That sounds a little too good to be true. You’re saying I can be me, and have love, and belonging?” And the good news, the ray of hope is absolutely yes, and it’s on the other side of that risk, the other side of what we fear, which is, “If I’m really me, everything is going to fall apart, and no one’s going to love me.” But that’s the whole source of the problem to begin with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, warm, loving relationships, longer life, higher quality of life, that sounds swell. And then your organization is called the Center for Social Confidence. Tell us about what that confidence picture looks like on the other side of the people-pleasing.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. Well, there is the outer layer, which I think we all may be focused on at first, which is, “I want to be more confident.” What does that mean? Well, that means I can be more bold, I can walk up to people and talk to them, I can initiate conversations, I can network with people, I can just walk into a room and not feel afraid of what people are going to think, I can really just be myself. That means more power in leadership, and influence, and impact.

You can share your idea more directly, more broadly. You can advocate for something. You can advocate for yourself, for your ideas, for your team. Also, that shows up in relationships and love. You can go approach someone that you really are drawn to, who you really want to spend your time and your life with, and you can let them actually see and know the real you. So, those are the outer observable effects.

And then the inner effect as a result of that confidence is that you feel like you belong in this world, and that sense of insufficiency, not enough-ness, and all the scarcity, there’s not going to be enough love, there’s not going to be enough people, like, that dissolves. And that is worth way more than all the promotions, and all the dates, and all the stuff but sometimes we have to start with that outer stuff, and then realize, like, “Wow, me just really feeling that peace inside, that is worth its weight in gold.”

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that does sound absolutely delightful, yes. So, lay it on us, how do we pull this off? I imagine it’s easier said than done.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura
Yes. So, the good news and the bad news. The good news is this is all possible, the ray of hope stuff we were just talking about. The bad news is you probably are going to feel like you’re going to die on the way there. That’s all. But it just feels that way because, let’s rewind, what is people-pleasing? People-pleasing is a survival strategy that you picked up that’s based upon an idea, a conclusion, that’s not even true. But the conclusion you came to is, “I’m not okay as I am. There’s something just me as I am being totally lovable, I don’t buy it.”

Maybe someone told you that. Maybe you interpreted that. Maybe someone wasn’t there for you. Maybe you were abused. I don’t know, but there is some messaging that you picked up, and you’re like, “Wow, just me being me is not enough, and so now I have to do something. And what I need to do is I need to observe you, and if I can keep you happy, then you’ll probably stick with me. And I got to observe if you’re upset, and make sure that I don’t do the things that upset you. I got to see what makes you smile, and make sure I do more of those.” And now a pleaser is born.

And so, it’s rooted in fear, in the fear of abandonment, fear or not surviving, “Because I’ll be left, I’ll be lost. So, now I’m going to live that out for much of my childhood but as a personality, as a whole life strategy.” And so, why it feels like you might die is because it triggers this kind of fight-flight survival response inside to challenge you, which is why most people don’t.

But if you get up to that, like, fed-up point enough, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t want to keep living this way. All right, let’s take the leap,” you don’t stay in dying forever. You don’t actually die but it feels very ungrounding because there’s a sense of certainty and familiarity in that way of being, and you are going to challenge that. That’s why most people don’t just say, “Oh, I’ll do it,” and then actually execute on it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, so then what does the execution look like in practice? What are the step-by-steps? Do I just go give people a piece of my mind, Dr. Aziz, “Let me tell you what I really think”?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

So, I have two books on the subject. One is called Not Nice and the newer one that just came out is called Less Nice, More You. And I talk about the pendulum, where people who have been overly passive and pleasing at some point can swing, “Now, I’m going to let the world have it,” and that’s okay.

Maybe that’s a phase to go through but, ultimately, there is a set point that’s much more effective. And I think the key steps from a higher level are these. Number one, you have to decide that you no longer want to be so people-pleasing and nice. And that might seem like a strange step, but it’s like, “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?” Well, no, because many people have a lot of their identities wrapped in, “But being nice means I’m a good person, and I don’t want to be a bad person.” No one wants to be a bad person.

And so, the first thing we need to do is we need to upgrade our understanding of being people-pleasing is not the same thing as being kind, or generous, or loving, or whatever it is that you actually value as a human. And that people-pleasing is more of a compulsion and not a choice, and so you have to be giving, you cannot say no, and that can be very detrimental.

So, someone is struggling, you take an extra hour to support them seems kind, right? The nice person and the people-pleaser doesn’t have that choice, so they could be being eaten up inside. They’re all stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Eaten up inside and bitter, they’re like, “This jerk is always hogging my life.”

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

“I got too much on my to-do list.” So, now you’re talking about resentment. So, the compulsion part of it, the “nice” person feels like they have to. And any time we feel like we have to do something, and we don’t want to in that moment, that’s a formula, a human formula for resentment. So, now we’re going to start that.

Now, the kind choice is like, “Okay, this person wants this. Do I want to give it? Does it feel right to give it?” And it doesn’t mean it’s comfortable. Your kid is sick or something is happening, and you’re just like, “You know what, but it feels right, it feels like I want to do it.” Then you do it, and you say, “I want to give it.” Then we won’t feel resentment.

Kindness, true kindness leaves a glow inside, you’re like, “I feel good about that.” Whereas, when we’re like, “I couldn’t say no. I mean, look at them, they need me.” And the nice person likes to create this elaborate world in which everybody is super dependent, like, “They would die without me. They would be, oh, my gosh, if I left this partner, or this boyfriend, girlfriend, they’d be devastated for years,” and they don’t even see how it’s a little bit of a…it’s a way that we’re trying to get some sense of significance, perhaps.

The truth is that people have many ways to meet their needs, and you’re just one of them, and you’re not the only one. So, yes, that’s exactly what you’re talking about. That’s the stew of resentment that can form. And so, back to this first step of, “I need to decide I’m not going to be so nice and pleasing” is actually an important first step because, otherwise, we remain in this pattern where this is the only way to be, this is the right way to be as a good person, everything else is bad. And then we will perpetuate that indefinitely.

Pete Mockaitis

And that decision, boy, it just seems like the distinctions and the commitments are so myriad in terms of the boundaries that we’re down with, in terms of “I am committed to doing this and being generous or loving in these domains. And I’m not so much down to do these other things.” It really kind of feels like we got to go, behavior by behavior, or relationship by relationship, when  we determine what that decision really means in practice.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura
Yeah, that’s a great point. And, yes, it is, and there’s a shortcut to doing that, which is it can be distilled into one question, which is an extremely liberating question but it also, if you’ve been living a people-pleasing life, can make you very uncomfortable. And the question is, “What do I want? In this situation, what do I want?”

And even just asking that can push a lot of the buttons for someone who thinks that that’s selfish, “Your life shouldn’t be about what you want. That’s the problem with the world, is too many selfish people.” But actually, we’re just talking about asking the question. You might still choose to say, “Well, what do I want? I want to not take care of my son.” “Well, he’s five and he needs someone tonight. So, you’re going to find a way to work with it.”

So, it doesn’t mean you instantly just, “I do whatever I want. I don’t even care about anyone.” It’s like, no, but you start that behind that question is not just the data of the answer. It’s actually caring about yourself just like you would with someone you love, “What do you want, honey? It doesn’t mean you get everything you want, but I want to know. I want to know. Maybe we can work with it. Maybe we need to compromise here. But what do you really want? And what do I really want?”

I was just talking with a friend earlier today, and he has some friends visiting out of town, they said, “Hey, we want to come have some dinner with you.” And he’s like, “Oh, that sounds good.” And then they’re like, “Oh, also, we’re flying out somewhere the next day. Can we spend the night at your place then we’ll go to the airport?” And he said, “Well, let me talk to my wife and we’ll make sure.”

So, he’s about to go talk to his wife, and he’s like, “Hold on a second. Before I even talk to my wife, what do I want here?” And that’s such so small, we could just steamroll right over the moment and go on with our lives, and that might seem so trivial but, man, you add up those trivial moments, that’s your whole day, that’s your whole week, that’s your whole life.

And you might say, “Well, that’s horrible. How could you not have your friends stay the night? They need a favor. What a bad friend.” Ah, now we’re looking at the roles of the rule of friend, and many people have extreme rules, “You must always say yes to a friend.” But instead, if you tune in and say, “You know what, it feels kind of, I don’t know, confining.” And he got curious about himself, “Why? Well, I was just hoping to have the one evening a week that I can spend with my wife, one on one. She’s so busy. I’m so busy. I just don’t really want to give that up.”

So, now all of a sudden, we discover that the saying no there is actually a loving act for himself, for his wife, for his relationship, so we’re prioritizing something else. We would not even discover that. Now he’s trying to please his friends, so he says, “Yes,” and then he’s feeling maybe his wife is going to be upset with him, so he’s trying to please her. And then the whole evening, he’s just anxious and secretly resentful, which is a disaster.

So, yes, we want to go, day by day, decision by decision, slow down and start to really ask, “What do I want here?”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. And what’s interesting is by surfacing that, and if you do make the choice, and maybe, well, one, I think that can generate kinds of creative options that you didn’t even think about to start with, it’s like, “Hey, you can come over between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. and, yeah, it’ll get you to the airport on time.” And so, there it is. So, you had your cake and eat it, too.

Now, sometimes you can’t but then I guess if you do choose to make a sacrifice on behalf of another, I think you can do so all the more eyes wide open, it’s like, “I am choosing to do something for this other person, knowing it’s inconvenient for me, but because I value this relationship more than I value binging Netflix, or whatever I was in the mood to do that evening.”

And then, as you said, there is sort of a glow. You can feel good about that choice. You made a values-driven decision and chose that which is good in your value system above that which is expedient, and you did so, knowing full well the consequences that could flow from it.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, I love that nuance. And sometimes people hear this, and they think you’re going to become this very stingy person, not just with money but with your time. And that’s actually not the case. It is very much more intentional and you’re linking it with your values. My younger son, who’s eight, we eat a pretty similar breakfast every morning. And one of the ingredients is from downstairs, and he doesn’t like to go downstairs because he’s afraid of whatever, monsters. That’s what lives when you’re eight years old, that’s what lives downstairs in the basement, is monsters.

And so, there was this time when we were trying to help him face his fear, but that one was just so kind of just an uphill battle, and I was like, “You know what, as a loving act, I’m really okay just going downstairs to get the thing. I’ll help him fight his fears in other places, and he doesn’t need to tackle every fear because his dad freaking is obsessed with confidence.”

So, I just decided that, and it’s this kind of sweet act of generosity. He’s not going to be eight years old forever. And when he’s a big hulking teenager and could care less about going anywhere in the house, then that’ll be a sweet memory.

And so, you can actually be really loving and generous in all these different ways. It’s just not coming from this pressure that you have to or else. I think that’s the biggest freedom.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, walk us through the next steps.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

All right. So, you’ve decided, “I don’t want to be nice,” and then you start to ask yourself, “What do I want?” Then the next step is going to be you do the things that are “not nice.” And that might be saying to your friends, “Hey, I’d love to see you. You guys can come. We’ll get some dinner. It’ll be awesome. And then you’re going to be staying near the airport or something. I want to have the evening to myself with my wife. It’s our one night and I really want to preserve that.” And it’s, “Oh, my gosh, so you’re saying no in that situation.”

Yeah, another not nice thing might be to inconvenience someone by asking them for something, “Can you help me with this?” or, “Can you do that?” There’s disagreeing with somebody, “Ooh, that’s real unpleasing of you.” So, maybe you have a different opinion, it’s relevant to something in business, a decision, whereby it feels high stakes and it’s important to share it.

It might even be just a different idea or preference that doesn’t even seem that important to share but you just share it instead of smiling, and saying, “Oh, yeah, me, too. Me, too.” You’re like, “Yeah, I actually like the person that you seem to dislike. Hmm, that’s interesting.” So, whatever it is, it’s just a small smattering of the potential behaviors of you being more you, more authentic, more real, more bold.

That’s all the “not nice” behaviors. And every single one of those is going to produce probably some level of anxiety at first because that’s me being testing out what could happen, which is going to be some sort of calamity, “If there’s conflict, the relationship is over. If I say no, the person is going to never do anything for me ever again. If I ask for what I want, they’re going to hate me.”

So, we have these dramatic predictions, and we test them out. And it’s a form of exposure, really, like behavioral training where we need to do the steps, which tends to bring about the discomfort. And then there is another step about working with that, but I’ll pause there to see if there’s anything you wanted to ask about this step.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s good. That’s good. And what’s funny, though, is the asking for help, we think that’s not nice or imposing or burden, yadda, yadda, but, in reality, when I’m asked for help, I often am delighted to be trusted, relied upon, to be confided in on the matter, and I really like it. And I guess not all the time. Some things are like, “I really don’t want to do that.”

But I think that’s interesting that sometimes these not-nice behaviors are, in fact, what people really value. Maybe some people don’t get people who disagree or challenge them enough.

So, it’s interesting what we think might be not nice could, in fact, be just what the doctor ordered on the other side of the table.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, and that highlights something really important, which is this strategy of people-pleasing is not a very well thought out effective model of human relations. It’s like, “This is the best predictors and most intelligent, socially intelligent model I can…” No, it’s a cautionary model. It’s, “Hey, any of those things might be a problem so don’t do any of them. That person might respond well to that but they might not, so just, no, don’t.” So, it’s not a very sophisticated or intelligent interpersonal model. It’s just safety-oriented.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, thank you. You got some more steps?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. So, after you spoke up, you did the thing, and you’re freaking out inside, then it’s time to do the work, which is to upgrade something inside of yourself. That’s where the real transformation is going to occur. People think the real transformation comes from the action, which is part of it, but then we have to upgrade, otherwise we just keep beating our head against the wall. And you can leave that situation, you say, “Oh, I feel so guilty I told them no. I’m so bad.”

If you just grind yourself through that meat grinder for two days, and then you come out of it, you haven’t probably really learned anything. And so, the next time someone asks you for something, and you think, “I should say no because that’s being less nice,” then you might remember the meat grinder, and you’re like, “I don’t want to do that.” And so, then you probably just go back to the old pattern.

So, to really change, after we say no, and then all that stuff starts to come up, then we get to upgrade our map of relationships. And there’s one that I really love, which is I call your bill of rights, so what you’re allowed to do, and the rules, basically. And so, when you feel really guilty, you can examine it, and say, “Wait a minute, what rule did I break? What did I do that was so bad there?” “Well, you said no to people.” “Okay, so what’s the rule?” “You should never say no.” “Well, to who? My friends?” “Yeah, you should never say no to your friends’ requests.”

“Okay. Wow, that’s a pretty extreme rule. Is that how I’m going to live my life? Are there some downsides to that one?” And then we upgrade with much more healthy, and nuanced, intentionally chosen approaches to life, rules for life. So, for example, you might say, and this is where the bill of rights is, “I have a right to say no to requests.” And that might sound like a simple statement, but if you really start to believe that and live that, that’s a whole different life, not just in terms of the behaviors but how you feel on a daily basis.

I don’t think we can totally upgrade these in a vacuum, where we just sit down with a sheet of paper, and we upgrade our bill of rights, and then we venture forth into the world, and everything is perfect. No, we kind of have to go through this process where we take the action, we feel bad, and then that’s the motivation to say, “Whoa, it’s time for something different.”

But if we do it, and we change, and we upgrade, it’s like a step-by-step. It’s almost like pulling out the faulty coding of the pattern and putting in a new coding, new software, that runs so much better. And it’s the software of more authenticity, more boldness, more actually being you in the world. And it turns out to work a lot better on your system than the nice people-pleasing software.

Pete Mockaitis

And it’s interesting, it seems like those exposures, those reps, really do build up over time when you work through those steps. I suppose I am a people-pleaser myself, and I’ve just sort of gotten clear that I’m disappointing people every day. Like, there are people, maybe this very minute, Dr. Aziz, someone might be unfollowing this podcast or unsubscribing from the Gold Nugget newsletter, which I don’t recommend taking those actions. But, nonetheless, they are taken.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Someone out there. There’s a loose cannon out there.

Pete Mockaitis

By the hundreds, by the thousands, and so this happens. And so, what’s empowering is to just, for me, as I just sit with that, it’s like, “Yeah, I have displeased someone, and that’s okay. I have not sinned, I have not violated my values, I have not been, I don’t know, fill in the blank: selfish, greedy, lazy, any number of things that seems to kind of be at the core of a lot of this, is we have these value judgments associated with what you’re calling rules. It’s, like, “I feel bad, therefore, I must’ve done something bad. So, I’ve done something bad. I’ve broken a rule. What was the rule? Oh, wait, that rule is kind of ridiculous. Huh.”

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yeah, and there’s what I found, and one of the reasons why when I work with people, and the main ways that I work with people, is in a group environment is because we can identify that rule, and think, “That seems kind of intense,” but it has such momentum of history that I find a lot of this is almost like we’ve been running a propaganda campaign inside of ourselves for 20, 30, 40 years.

And when you’ve heard something for 40 years, it doesn’t matter what’s true or not. It’s hard to challenge. I was working with a gentleman in the program, who has had a hard time, even his relationship with his wife, he’s saying, “This is what I’d like to do on a Saturday.” “I don’t know if I want to do that. Here’s what I want,” like basic stuff.

And so, it almost felt like for the first couple of months he’s in the program, he was, “Hey, it’s okay for me to ask for what I want.” And in some part of the lecture, I’m like, “Of course. Of course.” And then he looks, like, around the room, and like, “Is it really okay for us to do that?” And we need to hear that, we need to get reinforced from outside.

And, hopefully, it’s just reinforcing some new beliefs that are just more sane and healthy. And I think that’s really a key thing to come back to, is, “Hey, is the way I’ve been living really serving me? Is it serving others? Is it really? If I’m getting burnt out, and hurting inside, and experiencing all these mind-body issues, and pain, and illnesses, like is this really how it’s supposed to go?” And I would challenge that, I’d say, “We’re not meant to live and help others at the expense of ourselves.” I think there’s really a beautiful, a much more abundant, win-win way of going through life.

Pete Mockaitis

That is beautiful. And I’m wondering if you recommend starting, if it feels scary, starting big or starting small? Like, “Asking my wife what I want to do on a Saturday,” in that example, is it that you recommend that you have, I mean, a small request might be…?

I guess I’m thinking small might be like you can give a lot of advanced notice. Like, let’s say on a Tuesday, you say, “Hey, honey, I think it’d be really fun on Saturday if we got lunch at Jimmy John’s.” Like, “Okay, that’s an inexpensive restaurant. It’s four days notice. It’s lunch, not dinner. It doesn’t seem as big, primetime of a meal.” So, I’m wondering, is your professional advice to start with some of those smaller, non-pleasing moves or requests, or to go for the bigger ones right off the bat?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

I would say both are beneficial and it’s going to be based upon your discomfort tolerance, which, by the way, is akin to a muscle that is worth building, and you will build it by doing this. And so, if one is going to just completely blow you out of the water, because our goal here is sustainable. Think of it like strength training over many months, and so you don’t want to go to the gym and just blow yourself out where you can’t work out for three weeks. So, maybe you do the lighter weight at first, then it’s a little easier, and that’s great.

You start to build momentum, and success builds on success, so you have a couple wins, and you’re like, “Well, that didn’t go so bad, so I think that’s a completely valid approach.” And if you want to go faster, you feel like, “I have been in this cage for so long that I’m just ready to do whatever. I got to get out,” then you might feel excited and exhilarated as you really test the edge quicker. But I don’t think there’s one approach that’s better or worse.

Pete Mockaitis

You say discomfort tolerance is a muscle, when we work that muscle doing exactly this. If people-pleasing is a diagnosis, that is apt for you. Are there any other pro tips you have on building the discomfort tolerance muscle? I’ve been into cold plunges lately, so if you can justify me that I’m not a weirdo, and this is actually super beneficial to all sorts of elements of my life, I’ll receive that, Dr. Aziz. But, is cold plunges one of the activities that increases the discomfort tolerance muscle? Or what are some of the other top prescriptions here?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

As a matter of fact, the cold plunge is.

Pete Mockaitis

Thank you for that.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

It’s actually cold showers for clients that I work with. And I, about six to eight months ago, invested in an actual cold plunge to take my cold to the next level. And there’s a lot of physical health benefits to them but, honestly, the biggest draw for me is that discomfort tolerance. It’s a training, it’s a visceral training to go into the uncomfortable every day, or however often you do it.

And the cool thing about discomfort tolerance is that it actually does generalize. So, if you took a cold shower that morning, and then later in the day, there’s an opportunity, someone at work is sharing an idea, and you have something you want to add to it, and you’re like, “Well, actually, I think this. I don’t know if they would think that that’s disagreeing, or I’m not sure.” And that back-and-forth kind of hesitant energy, when you’re in the cold shower, about to go in the morning, you’re like, “Uh, should I go into it?” you’re like, “Ah, let’s just…all right, here we go.”

And whatever that is, that ability to go into discomfort, and then withstand the discomfort, it translates because the circumstance might be totally different, one seems physical, one seems social, but on a physiological level in your nervous system, discomfort is discomfort. And when you increase your capacity to do it, you can actually transfer it.

And so, yes, physical feats of discomfort, whether it’s a cold plunge, or just going doing, you know, people will take the elevator instead of the stairs when it’s two flights of stairs. There’s just this unconscious addiction to comfort that we’re living in. So, finding ways, I’d say once a day, on purpose, you could go do a wall sit where you sit against a wall with your back against the wall, and your legs, or your thighs are at parallel to the earth. Hold that for 60 seconds and you’ll be quivering.

Is that going to make you ripped? No, but it’s saying, and it’s all about the framing of it. So, right before I go into a cold plunge, I remind myself, “This is going to make me stronger.” So, it’s framing. It’s the same thing with the wall sit. I’m not doing this just to build muscle or something. I’m doing this to say, “Hey, I can do things that are uncomfortable,” and that will exactly translate over.

And then, of course, there’s dozens of opportunities in your interpersonal social life. And how do you find them? You just know. We all have a radar going on all the time, and saying, “Is that going to be comfortable or uncomfortable?” And most of us are using that radar to say, “Well, if it’s uncomfortable, then go the other way.” And what we actually want to do is you don’t have to go crazy with this. It’s all in the dose. You don’t need to go insane on your dose of medicine here, this discomfort medicine. But a daily dose, even if it’s small, will radically accelerate how quickly you can make these changes in your life.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Well, this one I like, this is Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is directly proportional to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably tolerate.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Ah, favorite has got to be The Boulder Study of Back Pain of 2021. There’s a book called The Way Out by Alan Gordon where they talk about it, but the Boulder Back Pain study was done to compare back pain treatment, treatment as usual, medications, physical therapy, and then also something called pain reprocessing therapy, which is treating the back pain with the mind and emotion, which has been fascinating for me with my own history of back pain and chronic pain, as well as nice-people developing pain.

There’s a whole chapter in the book, why it’s not nice about that. And so, randomized, controlled trial, gold standard evidence that we can use these mind-body approaches to not just reduce but completely transform back pain is revolutionary for the chronic pain world, and something I’m really excited about getting out into the world in a big way.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

There’s one I’m reading right now that I really enjoy, it’s called Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt, and I’m finding it really refreshing for how to reclaim your focus and your time.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

It’s the best and the worst, it’s the cold plunge.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes, go to DrAziz.com, that’s D-R-A-Z-I-Z.com, and the goal is for there to be a wealth of resources for free. So, there’s a podcast on that page, under the Resources tab. There’s also a mini-course, a video mini-course called “5 Steps to Unleash Your Inner Confidence” also for free. I have a YouTube channel, you can get a link there as well from the Dr. Aziz’s homepage.

So, lots of resources for free. And then if you want to take things further, we have some training courses, and I also work with people in a 12-month life changing yearlong program. So, however far you want to go, I’d love to support you. And if you just want to start with the free stuff or get a book, that’s a beautiful way to really learn that there’s a pathway. There’s a proven pathway out of this stuff, and I’m here to help as many of us as we can to get across that.

Pete Mockaitis

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

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Yes. Whatever is going to make you the most awesome at your job is also the thing that’s probably either scary or uncomfortable. It’s, like, really practicing that boldness and facing what we fear will not only produce just beautiful results in your career but will also make you feel good at your work, you’ll feel way more engaged.

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Dr. Aziz, this has been a treat. I wish you much fun and minimal people-pleasing.

Dr. Aziz Gazipura

Thank you, Pete. What a fun and interesting and dynamic interview. Really appreciate it.

Dec 16
0

1019: Achieving More with One Bold Move per Day with Shanna Hocking

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Shanna Hocking shares transformative mindsets to help you advance your career and achieve your goals.

You’ll Learn

  1. How daily bold moves increase confidence
  2. Powerful mantras to keep self-doubt at bay
  3. How to stop dreading difficult conversations

About Shanna 

Shanna A. Hocking is a leadership consultant and coach, fundraising strategist, speaker, and writer. Shanna spent 20 years in fundraising leadership at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Alabama, and Duke University.

She is the author of One Bold Move a Day: Meaningful Actions Women Can Take to Fulfill Their Leadership and Career Potential. Shanna’s expertise has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, The Muse, and Harper’s Bazaar UK. Shanna was named a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2024.

Resources Mentioned

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Shanna Hocking Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Shanna, welcome.

Shanna Hocking
Pete, I’m so glad to be here together with you.

Pete Mockaitis
I am so glad to be here as well. I think you’ve got so much really cool wisdom associated with career advancement and strategy and wise goodness, and I’m excited to dig in.

Shanna Hocking
Great. Let’s do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you kick us off with a particularly surprising or counterintuitive insight you’ve come to about us professionals trying to advance? What’s something you know that most of us don’t?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I’d like to believe that my job is to bring out things that people already know about themselves and maybe just need that encouragement. So, I think people need a reminder that they belong exactly where they are. We get to the table, the role, the seat, whatever it is, and then we start to think that maybe we didn’t belong there in the first place because it’s new and it’s challenging us. So, I think the reminder I want to give is that you belong exactly where you are and you’re meant to be there right now and your voice is important.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very encouraging and hopeful. And I’m curious to hear, what happens if we don’t have that message in our hearts and minds, and we think something’s amiss? What are the implications for us in terms of how we show up and advance or fail to advance in career?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I think, first, it’s very important to say that most everyone feels this feeling when they’re in that role. It’s very normal. And so, if that’s something that you’re experiencing, you’re okay, you’re still in the right place. I think what happens if we don’t hear that voice of encouragement or that peer mentor or mentor to support us, we start to let that voice become much bigger than our expertise and our initiative. And we miss a chance to shine, to share ideas, to add value, and then, really, we are missing out, but so is our workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And can you share us, you’ve got a book called One Bold Move a Day, which is fun. I like bold moves.

Shanna Hocking
One Bold Move a Day is a message to you that you can achieve all of your personal and professional goals through a single intentional and meaningful action that you choose for yourself each day.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. You’ve done this before, Shanna.

Shanna Hocking
I have done this before, and I really love telling this story about bold moves because people hear those words, bold and move, and they make a decision about what that means. And a bold move, as I define it, is a meaningful action that helps you move forward, learn, and grow. And with that mindset, you can see how this is attainable for you and worth trying.

Pete Mockaitis
I like it. And it also feels manageable and yet also meaningful and potentially transformative when strung together over many days in consecutive sequence. Could you share with us a cool story so we can get a taste for what exactly is the transformation that might be in store for us if we do one bold move a day?

Shanna Hocking
Sure. Well, I was delivering a workshop at a university this week, and I had been on campus with this team before, and at the break someone came over to me and she said, “Shanna, I had been waiting to tell you that I made my bold move.” And for her, there had been something she had been reluctant to do. I mean, every one of us has that thing on our to-do list that we need to do or want to do, but we feel hesitant for whatever reason.

Maybe we’re anticipating a negative outcome, or maybe we’re unsure if we have the capacity to do it, or we just really put it aside because it’s not our favorite thing to do. And so, she used this framework as the motivation to do the thing that had been on her to-do list for a very long time. And after she learned it, she felt compelled to make that bold move the next day.

And it was really meaningful for me to hear that story in real time from her because I think it’s important for us to realize that a bold move can be the big billboard moment in our career and in our life, or it could be just that thing on your to-do list that you need to move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you tell us what was that thing and what happened as a result of doing it?

Shanna Hocking
Sure. So, for her, she needed to reach out to someone to have a conversation, and I think we often think about these as difficult conversations, and so when we put that kind of language on the anticipatory feelings about the conversation, we create these self-doubts and worry in our mind that it might not go well.

And the bold move framework reminds us that it’s an opportunity to grow and learn from it, and so I like to redefine this as an important conversation to have. And when she was able to do that, she was able to move forward a project that had been stuck because she put herself out there and followed through. And even if it hadn’t gone the way that she wanted, she would have learned something from that experience.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that example so much in terms of reaching out to someone to have a conversation that you’ve put off. And I’m thinking there have been times in my life I could think of, there were two key emails, and I thought, “Oh, you know what? If I could set up a partnership with this person, that could just be so huge.” And I thought, “Oh, but he’s such a big deal. I don’t know. Like, why would he pay attention to little me?” and, “Well, hey, it can’t hurt.”

And so, I put it off. I put it off, and then I did. And that led to, literally, a partnership with thousands of hours of coaching and then hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.

And I almost didn’t do it because I got scared, or thinking to myself, “Oh, no, it’s not going to go anywhere. Why bother?” or, getting too perfectionistic with it. It’s like, “Okay, this could be huge, so I really got to make sure this message is the most amazing thing ever,” but then, “Oh, but now it’s too long. No one wants to look at that wall of text.” And so, so back and forth, and yet, that was massive.

And then another time, I read an article about someone who had a cool business in the Wall Street Journal, and I was like, “Huh, you know, we could help you guys with that.” And so, I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, this guy is, you know, a founder/CEO of a billion-dollar company. He’s probably going to ignore his messages.” The same thing! You think I would have learned my lesson, but over a decade later, I guess I forgot. It’s like, “You know what, let’s just go ahead and do this thing.” And then, like, 14 minutes later, he’s like, “Yeah, we should talk to our VP of whatever.”

And so, we got the meeting and, hopefully, that works out. But, yeah, I like what you’re saying there. It’s, like, one bold move a day, that is attainable, writing a tricky email or reaching out to someone that you kind of been a little skittish about or procrastinating, can really be transformative in terms of the doors that it opens up.

Shanna Hocking
Yes, and I love both of those examples. Do you happen to remember, Pete, what motivated you to do that most recent bold move that you told us about?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s funny. It’s really silly and idiosyncratic, but I’ll share it with you anyway. I was fascinated by Kalshi.com, in which they gained regulatory approval to enable people to, essentially, bet on the election. And I was like, “Wow, this website is so fascinating. There’s all these things that you can bet on. Everyone, be very careful. Don’t get carried away.”

And so, I was getting carried away in terms of, like, you could bet on the weather, and I was like, “Oh, well, how could I get an informational edge about the weather? Where are some personal weather stations I could access that other people don’t know about?” And so, I was kind of getting obsessive about this, and I came to realize, “You know, Pete, even if you, like, clean up on betting on the weather, you’ll be so much better off just spending that time obsessing about and figuring out stuff to make your businesses work better.”

So, I was having a conversation with one of the executives, and I said, “Hey, so you knowing me and my strengths, like what should I be obsessing on that can improve our business and that’s not the weather because this is not really healthy or valuable?” And he’s like, “Well, how about partnerships?” And I was like, “You know, I read something about partnerships, and I had this idea. Let’s go ahead and do that.” So, it was sort of sharing that with someone else.

And I guess maybe there’s a little bit of vulnerability there too, it’s like, “I realize I’ve been wasting my time and life. You tell me how I might spend it better,” and then that kind of brought the idea right back up to the surface.

Shanna Hocking
Well, I think what’s so interesting about the way that you did this is that sometimes we go down a path, we don’t even know we’re going down this path maybe too far or wherever we are, and the power of having someone in community with us to offer reflection or insight about either a different path we need to go down or a different way to look at that path. And I think that that’s really true of bold moves. People may never know the bold moves that we make unless we share them, and there’s a lot of power in doing this together with others that you care about and care about you.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so could you help us think a little bit more about these bold moves? It seems like one category might be reach out to somebody or do the thing you’ve been procrastinating. Can you share with us any other guiding lights or shortcuts which might suggest, “Here’s a likely valuable bold move for you”?

Shanna Hocking
I would say that it could be sharing your idea in a meeting, or giving difficult feedback to your boss or another senior leader when you have a different perspective that’s important to share. Connecting and meeting with your mentor is a bold move, whether that’s a peer mentor or an aspirational leader that you’d like to be more about.

Learning is a bold move. Saying, “I have something that I can contribute to the world, but I have greater capacity to learn about it,” that’s a bold move too. And so, this reframe is, “Oh, not only am I able to do this today, but I’m going to give myself credit and celebrate the progress that I’ve made once I’ve done it.”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. And so then, how do you think about the time? If one bold move a day, is there a place on your calendar where it’s like, “Okay, 10:30 a.m. It’s bold move time,” or how does that go down?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I’m not quite as formal as that because I really think that once you adopt this practice, there is the idea that you have to open up those doors to make them happen, and if that works for you to say, “At 10:30 a.m. I’m going to do this,” that’s great. Over time, you’re going to see doors open, and the question is, “Are you going to walk through it?”

And so, what I mean by this is you’re in a networking conversation with somebody at a conference or a work gathering, and they say something that you think, “Should I add this comment? Should I ask more about this?” And that momentary decision that you are considering and the choice that you make accompanied with it is potentially your bold move of the day.

So, you can’t plan that that’s going to happen at 10:30, but you can say, “When I walk into this networking gathering at this conference, I’m going to walk up to someone and talk to them,” first bold move, “and maybe I’m going to ask them a question about something that interests me that they might want to share more about,” and there’s the second bold move of the day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really cool. And one of the top things our listeners say they want to improve on is confidence, and confidence is tricky, because that could mean one of several very specific things. But if we were to generalize a bit, it would seem that continually doing these bold moves is probably one of the top practices for growing a general sense of confidence, self-belief, self-efficacy, “Hey, I can do some things here.”

Shanna Hocking
So well said. People often say to me, “Shanna, I don’t feel confident enough to make this bold move.” And just like you’ve said, I remind them that confidence comes from taking action to move you closer to your potential. And so, in making that bold move, no matter what the outcome is, you’re building your confidence.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And share with us, in the moment when we have those fear or impostor-types of feelings and emotions, how do you recommend we power through?

Shanna Hocking
I find it really helpful to have a mantra to power through, particularly if you’re going to walk into a situation or be faced with a situation that you anticipate will either cause you to shrink back or not speak up, and there’s a whole host of mantras that might work for you. “One bold move a day” is a great one. I really like to say, “I will achieve more than I ever thought possible.” And that kind of reminder in the moment of, “Can I possibly do this?” helps me to move forward and make my bold move too.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Can I hear some other mantras that are really helpful and resonant for folks?

Shanna Hocking
Sure. Well, I’ll tell you a story about a mantra that could be applicable, depending on where you are in your career. If you’ve just stepped into a new role and you’re feeling those feelings we’ve talked about already, Pete, about, “Do I belong here? Can I do this?” you were hired for a reason. And so, there have been points in time in my career where I made this level-up moment. I’m into my first managerial role, for example, and I thought, “I can’t possibly do what is being asked of me in this moment right now.”

And so, I looked in the mirror and I reminded myself of my title and my role, and that alone gave me the confidence to say, “Oh, yeah, no, I am a big deal and I can do this.” So, that’s another potential mantra that might work for you in the moment to remind yourself someone chose you for the role that you’re in.

I really like to think about mantras that motivate you. So, if you’re motivated by gratitude, if you’re motivated by celebrating progress, then you can say, “I will learn something from this and I will celebrate afterward no matter the outcome.” Or you can say, “I’m so grateful for all I’ve been able to accomplish, and I know that I can achieve more.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s good. I imagine this could take so many fun flavors in terms of as many unique people and messages that we find resonant, you know, there could be plenty. And I’m wondering if you have a system or process by which you recommend people go about unearthing an effective mantra for themselves?

Shanna Hocking
I find that mantras are often things that come to us. There are things that we hear from other people or we read in a book and it’s the kind of thing you write into the margin or you write down on a Post-it note or in your phone, and you’re like, “That works for me.” What version of that worked for you? What motivated you? What did it make you want to do? And then, can you apply that directly or adapt it to create the mantra that will be the one that you can most rely on?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that. You could catch it from any number of unlikely sources. I’m thinking, once I was watching this goofy reality TV program, and some guy was trying to psych himself up to ask for a date, and he said something like, “You’re alive for 14,000 more days, and this will not be the one that you look back on and are disappointed,” or something like that. Like, it was intense, like, “Whoa, this is life or death, there’s a limited number of days,” and that’s true, we do have a limited number of days.

And so, he brought that, and, sure enough, he asked for the date, and it worked out, so great job, reality TV guy. So, yeah, just sort of maybe keeping our antennas up for where those bits of inspiration can come from, or maybe where they’ve come from in years past, but maybe we’ve forgotten, from a favorite book or movie or whatever.

Shanna Hocking
Love that. I think that there’s lots of inspiration that we can take in everything around us if we’re looking and listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you recommend folks adopt a few key mindsets. Can you expand upon these?

Shanna Hocking
Yes. So, the bold move mindset is the foundation for making your bold moves each day, and the bold move mindset is made up of four individual and complementary components. The gratitude mindset, being grateful for all you have and all you are. The happiness mindset, reminding yourself that happiness does not come when you reach success. Every day, you are working towards something that’s important to you, and that’s what’s defining your happiness.

The progress mindset, celebrating every step of this journey and honoring what you’ve learned along the way. And the “and” mindset, the recognition that you can experience two different things at the same time, such as joy and challenge, and embracing that you are more than one thing at any given time.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, those are powerful and grand. Do you have any pro tips on how we might cultivate these effectively?

Shanna Hocking
I think the gratitude mindset is a very approachable way to start. Lots of people talk about gratitude, Pete, and the very first time that I read about this and heard about this, I was reluctant to try it. I’m way too practical and way too actionable to think that a gratitude journal was going to change my life. And the idea of writing down three things each day that I was grateful for gave me the pause to think about what I’d already been through and what I’d already learned, and accept that and accept myself.

And I have found that that is a great place to start, and starting to figure out how the bold move framework can apply to you, and whether you do this in the morning or the evening, it doesn’t matter. It is the idea of saying, “I’m grateful for what I have in this day,” not the biggest things that we’re grateful for every day, but, “Today, what am I grateful for?” And that comes with accepting yourself and giving yourself credit too.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Shanna, I’d love to get your perspective when it comes to gratitude journals. I’ve done this exercise off and on at times, and what’s interesting is sometimes it feels very perfunctory, like I’m checking the box, “I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for this. I’m grateful for this. And so, yep, those, in fact, I objectively, logically understand, these are blessings, and it is good to have them. That is special and rare, and, thusly, gratitude is an appropriate response.” It’s almost sort of like robotic.

And other times when I’m doing the gratefulness practice, boy, I’m really feeling it, in terms of like, “Wow, this is just, wow, a tremendous blessing.” And my heart is open and expanded and I could see how this leads to all sorts of benefits and sort of health outcomes and goodness that they say happens when you do a gratitude journal.

So, do you have any perspective on that? When doing the gratitude thing, sometimes I’m really feeling it, and sometimes I’m not, I prefer to be feeling it more. How do you think about that?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I think it’s a really good point because, again, I was the reluctant person when I started this too. And what I’ll say is, at the very beginning, it might feel like a to-do list item that you have to check off, and there was a transformation for me that happened when I realized that it was okay to be grateful for getting to visit my favorite coffee shop. There was nothing silly or mundane about that. It was a recognition of something special that happened during the day.

And like any practice, if we only do it when we’re feeling like the top of our game, then it’s not going to become a habit that will outlast the difficult moments and the difficult days. If we only write when we’re in flow, then we’re not going to be able to be a great writer. We have to be able to do it even when it’s not coming as easily because it’s the practice of the work that we’re putting in.

So, with gratitude, if it’s feeling like, “Today’s not my day for me to recognize these three things for myself,” then practice sending it to someone else, “Pete, I really value that you invited me to be on your podcast. And I especially value your vulnerability in our conversation today. I just wanted to tell you that I thought it was great.” Then I’m expressing gratitude to someone else and I’m still getting the power of that feeling for myself, and I’m sharing the joy with someone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s nice. And how about the progress mindset?

Shanna Hocking
So, the progress mindset for me formed because I was so busy going on to the next thing, the next goal, the next close, the next outcome, the next job title. And every time I got to that milestone, I would high-five myself, but then I’d be like, “Okay, what’s next?” And when you’re constantly waiting to get to this next thing, you’re not being present in the moment, and that’s what I experienced for myself. And I was really hard on myself, and I still am, I have to work through this.

So, what can I do to celebrate the progress that I’ve made? I haven’t finished the project. We don’t have to wait till the end for a celebration. You need to celebrate the progress along the way in order to be motivated to keep going. This is particularly true if you’re a people leader. How are you celebrating progress for your team members so that they can navigate the challenges and keep working through them, and see what the outcomes will be even if it’s not the way that they hoped or planned?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nice. And tell us, when it comes to team leading, one bold move I’ve discovered is the bold move of letting go of some things, and asking another colleague to take it on. And delegation can be challenging in terms of, “Oh, no one can do it as well as I can do it,” or you have some fears, concerns. Can you share with us any of your top tips when it comes to delegating, letting go, empowering others?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I will say that no matter where you are in your career, whether you are working together with an intern or a colleague, or you are a chief executive, delegating is a learned skill and it requires practice. I think that the very first tip in understanding how to approach delegating is changing the mindset from, “I can’t do it all,” or, “I’m not good enough, and therefore I have to do this,” to, “What opportunities can I create for other people around me to learn and maybe get to the place where I am? And how can doing this allow me to focus on my best and highest use of time, which allows me to contribute more to the world?”

That mindset shift is so important. I often hear people trying to hang on to doing it all because they think they’re supposed to. And then from there, it’s really understanding what is important to other people to achieve, and, “How can I help them do this? And how can I help create opportunities for learning? And then how can I communicate clearly about what is expected so I can set someone up for success in this process?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, these things make great sense in terms of a great mindset to have going into it as well as some principles to follow, to have that be more likely to be successful. Can you share with us any nitty-gritty do’s and don’ts within this?

Shanna Hocking
Absolutely. The first thing to know is that if you’re going to delegate something to someone, you cannot micromanage them throughout the whole process if you want this to be successful for you or for them. So, in the beginning, it might take an extra 10 minutes or 15 minutes to say, “Here’s where the outcome is that we’re working toward. Here’s how frequently we’re going to talk about progress. Here’s how you can reach me when you have questions. And we’ll look forward to seeing how this goes along the way.”

But if you say, “Here’s the project. I want you to work on it,” and then every couple of days you’re like, “How’s it going with this? What’s happening with this? Where are we with this?” What you’re saying to someone is, unintentionally, “I don’t trust you. I don’t believe that you have the capacity to do this on your own.” So, having that conversation up front gives clarity to all roles of people who are involved.

The other thing is, it doesn’t mean you’re letting go of everything entirely. Especially if you’re a people leader or if you’re delegating a project to an intern, you are responsible for that outcome, too. And so, that clear communication just creates more clarity for everybody who’s involved in the process, and then you can experience a different kind of pride, too, in seeing someone that you’re working with being able to achieve something and feel good about it for themselves. I think that’s really where growth comes as a leader.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, zooming out, tell me, Shanna, any other key things that make all the difference when it comes to career advancement and wisely navigating things?

Shanna Hocking
Something I often encourage people to consider is how to lead from where you are. I, fundamentally, believe that everyone is a leader. Your leadership is not about your title or your authority, it’s the energy and purpose by which you lead yourself and serve others each day. So, no matter where you are on the org chart, you have both an opportunity and a responsibility to lead in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, any final things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Shanna Hocking
As you are starting on this bold move journey, as I call it, a bold move can be quiet. When you’re talking to two people like us, Pete, right? You and I make a living by being out in public and doing a lot of things to encourage others, and it might seem like, “Well, that’s great for Shanna and Pete.” So, a bold move is defined by you, and it might be quiet, right? You do not have to be extroverted in order to achieve this. You have to be committed to your own success. And I hope that that’s the encouragement to get started on this journey.

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

Shanna Hocking
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”

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

Shanna Hocking
So, I will share with you that the research study I’m talking about most frequently recently is about your team’s collective strengths. So, the study came out last year, and what it’s showing is that when you identify individual strengths and talk about how to leverage those strengths collectively and trust each other’s strengths in the workplace, you can create a high-performing team.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Do we know how to do that or how to not do that?

Shanna Hocking
Well, I lead a workshop on how to do that, so we definitely know how to do it. It is a self-discovery conversation and also a team collective about, “What do we do well? And how do we do it well together? And then how do we apply that?” You can think about this in terms of a project. There’s probably something that you can contribute to a project right now that is going unnoticed in your workplace because maybe it’s not something you talk about frequently or it’s not related to your job title.

But if you can say to your manager, like, “Here’s a strength, a way I would like to add value to this project,” you might be able to unlock some piece of this project that’s been stuck and also your own potential.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Shanna Hocking
My very favorite book to recommend is, What Works for Women at Work by Professor Joan C. Williams. That book changed my life, and I have given it as a gift to many women that I mentor.

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

Shanna Hocking
I just got trained in the Hogan Assessment in order to be able to help leaders understand themselves and their teams better. So, I’m looking forward to using that tool in order to do my work.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Shanna Hocking
I’d say probably gratitude, right? I think it is the most approachable way for any of us to be able to celebrate who we are and where we are.

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 often?

Shanna Hocking
When it comes to one bold move a day, people often feel inspired by the idea that you get to choose what your bold move is every day and nobody else gets to judge it.

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

Shanna Hocking
I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn where I share a lot of leadership insights and, also, I send out a weekly newsletter, which you can find on my website, ShannaAHocking.com.

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

Shanna Hocking
Well, Pete, I think we’re going to challenge people to make their one bold move a day because it will make the world a better place, and it will help them to be the best version of themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Shanna, thank you for this. And I wish you many lovely bold moves.

Shanna Hocking
Thank you, and back to you.

Dec 12
0

1018: The Step-by-Step Guide to Building the Life You Want with Ximena Vengoechea

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Ximena Vengoechea shares her viral three-phase life audit exercise for surfacing and achieving your most important goals.

You’ll Learn

  1. How to transform your life with just Post-Its and a marker
  2. How to turn fanciful wishes into actionable goals
  3. How to stay motivated while pursuing hard goals

About Ximena 

Ximena Vengoechea is a user experience researcher, writer, and illustrator whose work on personal and professional development has been published in Inc., the Washington Post, Newsweek, and Insider, among others. She is the author of Rest Easy and Listen Like You Mean It, and she writes a newsletter about personal growth and human behavior. She lives in New York.

Resources Mentioned

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Ximena Vengoechea Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Ximena, welcome back.

Ximena Vengoechea
Thank you so much for having me back. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to chat through your latest goodies. You wrote a post that really resonated with folks and you’ve now made it into a book. Tell us about this so-called life audit.

Ximena Vengoechea
So, this is a post that I wrote about a decade ago that is now a book, and basically The Life Audit is this exercise, this kind of checkpoint for you to see, “What is it that I want to of this one true beautiful life? Am I heading in that direction? What are maybe some of the deep-seated desires, wishes, goals that I am not in touch with that maybe I need to kind of resurface? What are my core values? And how do I navigate that in this lovely thing called life?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds like, generally, a kind of a prudent practice. I mean, just to confirm, clarify, will Federal agents swoop in if I conduct a life audit?

Ximena Vengoechea
They will not be making you an appearance.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, this is just for you. This is really, you know, I’m sure we’ll get into this but my background is in user research, and a lot of what that role is doing is about understanding other people, and really kind of understanding the psychology of people. What are their needs? What are their motivations? What are their perceptions, usually, with regard to understanding how to design a better product that actually fits those real human needs?

And in this case, we’re taking these same practices, but we’re turning them in on ourselves. So, this is something that is really just for you. It’s a tool to help you reconnect with yourself to uncover some of this inner wisdom and intuition, and then it is practical also to kind of help you take steps in that direction. Yeah, you are welcome to share it if you’d like, but, if not, you don’t have to share your paper with anybody.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so reconnecting with yourself and uncovering wisdom, generally, sounds like something kind of cool, kind of handy. But could you perhaps make an even stronger case for the why behind this?

If folks are thinking, “Oh, maybe, but there’s maybe a dozen journaling kinds of things I probably ‘should’ be doing, along with some mindfulness practices and gratitude, and so on and so on,” could you share perhaps your own story or the story of some of your biggest life audit fans on what kind of impact this can make?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes. I certainly never want this to feel like a chore. So, this is something that you should pursue when the moment feels right. Usually, for most people, that’s at some kind of crossroads or life milestone. So, in my case, I had moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. I was in this phase of just great excitement, of starting this new career, meeting lots of people, had lots of hobbies, interests, things that I could be pursuing, but also felt overwhelmed by the possibility. What a beautiful place to be in but also a little bit scary.

And I remember just thinking like, “Oh, my God, like, I don’t know where to start. And is this career even right? Like, was this move even right?” Just having a lot of doubts about what came next. And for me, it was really an opportunity to kind of step back, assess, not just this moment, but, on a longer term, what it was that I wanted out of my life.

This is something that we usually don’t allow ourselves to do. So, a lot of times when we’re getting those resolutions in for the New Year or setting goals, we’re usually doing it on a much smaller timeframe, or maybe we’re not even thinking about the timeframe, and we just think, “This is a thing that I want to do.” The Life Audit is really unique in that we are looking at a much longer time frame.

So, in my case, I was starting to do user research. I had a bunch of hobbies that I sort of didn’t know what to do with them, you know, design, illustration, writing. These were things I was excited about, but I didn’t really know what to do with them. And 10 years later, “The Life Audit,” that post that I wrote after conducting my own, where I sort of learned these things about myself, went viral. That post was then picked up by Fast Company.

Fast Company then invited me to be a contributor. A literary agent saw my work in Fast Company. I am now a published author working with that agent. This is my third book and, yeah, I had some wishes around writing, writing books, like figuring out how to make a career out of that. And I think that had I not sat down and really taken the time and space to uncover that, but also just kind of sit with it and really internalize that about myself, I don’t know what would have happened.

I mean, maybe life is long, maybe you meander in that direction. But it, certainly, for me, gave me a lot of clarity and purpose and conviction around the things that I wanted to pursue. And I hear that a lot from people who have conducted their own life audits, that it’s really about crystallizing things, things that maybe you’ve buried or maybe you haven’t made space to uncover before, and providing that clarity is really just so key.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that so much. Clarity is something many of us want, crave, and in practice, it seems it’s relatively rare for us to pause from the interesting, the urgent, the impulse to check something, whether it’s the news or social media or email or whatever, but really to go deep and to go internal. So, I think that’s one huge piece right there is to just remember, “Hey, if clarity appears to be missing, perhaps what is also missing is some form of quiet introspection, reflection, be it a life audit process or there’s something different.”

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes, we don’t often make space to ask ourselves these big questions, and there are many reasons for that. Part of it are the distractions that you were talking about. Part of it is also, I think, emotional. It takes a certain amount of courage for many people to sit down with themselves, just with themselves, not with anybody else, not with their manager or a partner or a roommate, giving them advice or telling them what they should pursue.

I think we all have, by virtue of living in this society, we have societal messages, expectations that are put upon us. There’s a difference between, and I think we sometimes kind of lose this distinction, but there is a difference between pursuing things that you think you should pursue versus things that you genuinely want to pursue. And for many of us, those external messages crowd out the internal side.

And I think that’s when we can kind of, suddenly, maybe you’re in this career and you’re at the top of your field and you step back and go, “Wait, but is this it?” you know, or, “Am I happy? Do I like this? My LinkedIn resume is amazing, but is this it?” And so, I think that’s one of the main things that we’re doing, is we’re really trying to set some of that aside. It’s not to say that those voices can completely be erased, but we’re trying to recognize and acknowledge when it’s somebody else’s desire versus our own.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, that’s really handy. And so, in terms of when to do it, it sounds like often it comes with life transitions, a move, turning a milestone age of 30 or 40, new job, new partner, breakups, transitions. These sorts of things are fine prompts, and maybe the New Year or just any reason at all, like, “I just think now would be great to have some extra clarity.” So, that’s cool.

And if we don’t do something along this, we may very well find ourselves swept along into a pathway of, “Oops! Is this really what I want? Uh-oh. Where did life go? Uh-oh.” So, walk us through it then. If we’re thinking, “All right, life audit sounds great,” how do we proceed?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes. So, it’s a very simple process. It’s deliberately lightweight. So, what I mean by that is I’m not going to ask you to get any specific equipment. You don’t have to download anything. Your tools really are quite simple. And we’re starting with sticky notes, so Post-it notes, which maybe you have at home, and Sharpies, permanent marker, which hopefully you also have at home, and if not, that’s at the office, quick Staples run, whatever. But that’s it. It’s very minimal, and that’s deliberate.

And so, what we are doing, there are sort of three phases. The first phase is really generative, and this is when we are brainstorming, essentially, and pulling up wishes. So, I usually recommend that people dedicate an hour and they aim for 100 wishes. So, you’re writing one wish per sticky note. You’re keeping it simple. So, that is why we use a Sharpie. We’re not writing long essays. We’re not writing anything that involves a comma. No, it’s usually just one or two words, a handful of words, and you’re just going to keep going until you hit that hour mark.

The hour is a guideline, just as 100 is a guideline. Some people are going to blow past that and some people won’t hit that number. That’s totally fine. This is just to get the wheels turning, but essentially like this first phase, you know, in user research, we talk about brainstorms, and whenever we talk about brainstorms, we say we’re encouraging wild and crazy ideas. There are no bad ideas. This is blue skies so you don’t want to self-edit during this stage.

And that’s another reason for using sticky notes is they are intentionally disposable. If you decide later that was a dumb idea, you don’t want it, you can just crumple it up and get rid of it. So, we’re really trying to make this less heavy because it can feel a little intense of, “Oh, my God, what am I doing with my life?” No, we want it to feel lightweight, playful. We’re just dreaming during this stage. So, that’s the generative stage.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so we got the Post-its, we got the Sharpies, we’re dreaming and we’re putting a dream or wish on one per sticky. Could you just give us some examples? The dreams can be big or small. Like, give us a few nuggets.

Ximena Vengoechea
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “I want to get good at making barbecue,” all the way to, “I want to live in Hawaii.” Like, anything there?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, exactly. It could be anything from, “I want to launch a podcast someday. I don’t know when, but I want to do it,” to, “I want to write a book someday,” to, “I want to make six figures in my career,” to, “I want to be more patient.” So, it can be a little bit more abstract too. So, there’s a whole variety. And, usually, what happens when you step back and you get to the analysis phase, which we’ll talk about next, usually what happens is you do start to see that your wishes kind of fall into three buckets of, “This is something I can carry with me every day.” I think of these as core values.

So, for example, a desire to be patient, a desire to be generous, to tell your loved ones that you love them on a regular basis, like things that you just want to kind of carry with you, I would put those in the category of core values. And then you tend to also have wishes that are really about things you want to achieve or see through in the near term, let’s say, in the next 6 to 12 months.

And then you’ve got another category which is really kind of someday wishes, like, “I want to do this someday. I want to launch a podcast someday. I don’t know when, but at some point, that seems like something that I would enjoy, that I could be good at.” So that’s a whole other category of wishes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve generated many wishes and we find they fall into some categories. And I guess if they’re Post-its, are you imagining like rearranging them on a big old wall or a giant desk or piece of furniture? Or, kind of visually how does that unfold?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah. So this is something else that I really like about using Post-its is you can manipulate them, and you can move them around and look for patterns. So, this is our second phase where we’re really looking to, essentially, analyze our data. So, this is something that as a user researcher you would do. You have a bunch of data about a study and then you have to make sense of it, and you need to turn the data into insights. So, it’s not just numbers or information, it’s actually telling you something useful.

So, I usually recommend that you just start by doing a simple cluster analysis, which is essentially we’re looking for wishes that are in some way related to each other, and we’re just going to group them. So, it sounds fancier than it is, but we are just looking for things that are related. So, for example, common themes that might come up, you might have a bunch of wishes around family, you might have a bunch of wishes around career, money, volunteering, travel, creative pursuits, spirituality, mental health, physical health. There’s a lot of things that could come up.

But we’re essentially going to go, “Okay, I’ve got my hundred wishes. Now I’m going to start to physically move them and put them in groups so that I get a bigger picture of what’s really happening.” Because, essentially, what we’re looking at here is a reflection of our true desires, is a reflection of today, “Who I am today, these are the things that I want.” These things can change, we evolve as people. But today, this is a snapshot, it’s sort of a self-portrait.

And so, you get to look back and go, just really quickly, see visually too, “Oh, wow, I have a ton of wishes around family. I have a lot of wishes around finance. I don’t have that many wishes around my career. Why might that be?” So, you’re kind of observing and asking yourself questions of, “How do I feel about how this is mapping out? Why might this be mapping out in this way?”

I think one of the interesting things to consider when you have your life audit is that areas that are, let’s say you have a smaller number of wishes, sometimes we think, “Wait a minute, am I not as invested, for example, in my career as I thought I was?” Maybe. But another thing could be that you are investing so much already in that area of your life that you don’t need it as a wish. It’s kind of already taken care of, right? It’s something that you are regularly doing, supporting, pursuing.

So, I always tell people, you know, the life audit, especially at this stage, it’s not a progress report. It doesn’t tell you, like check mark, like, “Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I haven’t done.” It’s really trying to reveal, like, “Right now, what are the things that I’m most interested in pursuing,” and to teach you something about that.

Whether it’s that there are areas that are not coming up because you are really actively embracing them already, or whether there are things that you kind of step back and go, “Wait a minute, that’s actually weird that I have so many things in this column around physical fitness because I hate exercising. Like, where did that come from?” And that’s when you kind of can ask yourself, “Is this a true wish? Is this a should wish? Like, somebody thinks I should do this. Is this really mine?” So, this is a really fun phase too because it’s all about self-discovery and learning something about yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
That is really fun. And, you’re right, when you ask those questions you might say, “Oh, no, it’s just because I was listening to some health podcasts yesterday, and that’s very top of mind.” Or, maybe you don’t have much in careers, like, “Oh, do I not care about career? Well, maybe it’s already taken care of.” Or, maybe, “Well, I’ve got two in career, and they’re hugely important to me!” So, all right, it doesn’t matter so much the quantity of pieces of paper. And when I’m looking for clusters and connections, do I need yarn, like an FBI investigation board? Or do I just let them hang?

Ximena Vengoechea
No, you do not need yarn.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Ximena Vengoechea
If that feels good to you, that would be your own unique modification. I will not stop you. But, no, usually, I suggest doing this either on a wall, a foam core board if you have one, but if not, a wall is great, or the floor is also fine, and you’re just moving things around. So, we’re keeping things flexible. We don’t need to attach anything else to it. We’re just kind of seeing where things land.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then what’s our next step?

Ximena Vengoechea
So, from here, we’re going to start thinking about some other factors to help us understand what’s happening. So, we’re going to look at, okay, let’s say we’ve got however many wishes, we’ve grouped them into themes, we can start to prioritize. Usually, I suggest that people commit to three to five wishes a year, and that’s a guideline.

As you mentioned earlier, you might have two wishes in career, they might be huge. We need to be aware of that. You don’t want to commit to five huge wishes, but you do want to find a little bit of a balance, and that’s where knowing, “Is this a core value that I’m going to live through every day? Is this something I want to do in the next 6 to 12 months? Is this something that I need to work toward eventually, someday?” That’s where having that in mind really helps so that you’re not tackling all, let’s say, someday wishes, like huge wishes. You find a balance, but you’re really going to start to prioritize.

And prioritization can come on multiple axes. So, you might be a really rational thinker and look and say, “Okay, what do I know is achievable, either because I have the right skillset in place, I have the right resources, I have the time and money available to me, I have mentorship?” Maybe it’s geographically feasible, right? But if you’re a really logical thinker that might be a really useful way for you to prioritize.

Some people hear that, and they think, “Oh, my God, that sounds so boring. That sounds like homework.” And they might be more drawn to just intuition of, like, where is their natural heat? Like, “What am I naturally drawn to? I’m going to just follow that instinct.” Other people might also think about this more emotionally of, “What am I afraid of? Like, maybe that’s actually the entry point I want to take in. The things that are scariest to me might also be most exciting to me.”

So, there’s a lot of that you can go into it, but you want to choose whatever feels right for you. Usually, it’s a combination of those things that you might want to ask yourself some questions around before you kind of come up with that short list.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve got our short list, then what?

Ximena Vengoechea
So, at this point, you also want to start thinking about what’s feasible. So, I usually recommend that folks do a little bit of an audit of their time, “So, knowing that these are the things that I want to spend my time on, how am I spending my time today?” And I usually recommend that folks just look at an average day and make a quick list of “Here’s how I usually spend my time.”

You can think of it as like a pie chart, give yourself little percentages, maybe work takes up 50% of the time, child care or pet care or life admin, just start to chart it out, and see what is the delta between where you want to be and where you are. I think, similarly, doing a little bit of a relationship audit. So, thinking about who are the people in your life who you spend the most time with. That doesn’t necessarily mean physically, like you’re in the same room, but like these are the people you’re connecting with the most on an average day.

Usually, these people are somewhat convenient. So, maybe there’s someone you work with, or maybe they live in your building, or you have some reason that you’re seeing them a lot, versus they’re actually someone who can help me see these wishes through, who can help me see these goals through, and I don’t mean that in a transactional sense. I don’t mean, “So-and-so works in the recording industry. Like, I can talk to them about getting a foot in the door for whatever goal.” That’s not what I mean.

I mean people who are really inspiring to you, are motivating, the friend who you have a coffee catch up with and you walk away and you’re like, “Yes, like life is good. I can do anything.” Like, the people who boost you up or genuinely invested in you as a person. person, that’s what I’m talking about. I call them gems.

So, what we’re doing here is we’re kind of taking a look at, “Okay, there are some stuff that I want to do, that I want to pursue. What does my life look like now? Who is kind of supporting me? Who could support me? Where are the gaps?” because that is also going to give us information about where some tweaks might need to be made in order to support our pursuit of these goals and wishes and desires.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Okay, then what?

Ximena Vengoechea
At that point, you’ve got a lot of information about changes that you might want to make. That can feel both galvanizing, energizing, exciting, and daunting. Like, you might look at your lists and go, “Oh, my God, I’m not talking to anybody who I actually want to talk to,” or, like, “My schedule is not really in my control. Like, how can I shift even a little bit?”

And this is usually, I think of this as like a phase where, for example, if you’re setting a New Year’s resolution, we’re often not doing this depth of self-analysis. We’re kind of making the wish or setting the goal and forgetting about the rest, but we’re going so much deeper that now we can see some of the gaps in our own schedule, in our own lives, in our own network, however you want to put it. So, now this phase is about making sure that we don’t get dissuaded or discouraged by what we’re seeing because it’s normal to have some gaps.

If you didn’t have any gaps, you probably would have pursued those goals and wishes earlier. So, it’s normal, it is expected. And now at this point, we want to see, like, “Okay, how do I begin to chart a path forward?” And so, the third part is really all about goal-setting, and how to make these goals more manageable for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how do we?

Ximena Vengoechea
So, I usually tell people, you know, like taking a look at those, let’s say, three to five areas. Like, how do we break those goals down into really achievable goals? So, for example, let’s say you have a wish that’s just to read more. You used to read as a kid, you don’t really read now, like you want to return to your love of reading.

Rather than go to the bookstore and buy 20 books that look awesome and put them on your bedside and go, “Okay, I’m starting tonight,” what if you got one book? And what if you committed to a paragraph a night? And then you work your way up to a chapter a night, right? Like, starting really small, so whatever that goal is, essentially how can you break it down into something really manageable? So manageable that you are virtually guaranteed to succeed because, especially in the beginning, it is important to get that momentum.

Psychologically, when you’re pursuing something new, it’s important to get these quick wins so that you go, “Okay, I can do this,” and then you can continue to make progress against that. So that’s one thing that I suggest.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that a lot. And we had B.J. Fogg on the show talking about Tiny Habits, and that really resonates in terms of in my own life and the results that he’s seeing, in general, it feels good to win and to be able to celebrate something. And it is worth celebrating something new, even if it’s super tiny. And he uses the example of when a child takes his or her first steps, no one says, “Okay, yeah, whatever, you only made it like six inches, dude.” It’s like, no, no, it’s beautiful and wondrous and worthy of celebration.

And so too is it if, “Hey, if we want to read more,” we’ve kind of had that as a hidden desire for years, and then we finally buy book and read a paragraph, that is worth celebrating. That’s something. Go from zero to one there.

Ximena Vengoechea
Absolutely, yeah. We’re making progress. It can feel really small, but that’s what we’re doing, is we’re making progress. The other thing that I recommend is to think about having some kind of accountability partner because it is totally natural, when you are pursuing something new, that things will get hard. Your schedule will be difficult, someone will get sick, like, things will get thrown off, you’ll forget. There are just a number of things that get in our way, as anyone who’s either tried to start a new habit or to stop a bad habit from forming. Lots of uncontrollable factors.

One thing you can do, though, is to have an accountability partner. So, let’s say you have something like, you know, there’s that yoga studio in your neighborhood that you pass by all the time, kind of wistfully looking at, like, “That could be me. Like, maybe someday,” and you’ve decided, “No, I’m actually going to get serious about exercise, and that is where I’m going to start.” Maybe, you find a friend who will go with you to this yoga class. Maybe you guys sign up to do this on a weekly basis. It is much easier to cancel on ourselves than it is to cancel on someone else.

So, when we have somebody else who is waiting for us, excited to see us, there’s just more accountability built in, and we are less likely to bail even if it’s really freezing out and we’d rather not put on our heavy down jacket and head out into the cold to the studio. Having somebody there on the other side really helps encourage us to keep going.

Pete Mockaitis
I dig it. Having been through this and seen other people go through it, have you observed any patterns in terms of ideal mindsets and not-so-ideal mindsets, in terms of the headspace or approach that we take while working these steps? Any do’s or don’ts come to mind there?

Ximena Vengoechea
Yes. I would say that you’ll have more success if you come into this with an open mind and self-compassion, the ability to give yourself some grace for when things are difficult. If you come into it with this mindset of “Everything should be perfect. Why am I already failing? Why haven’t I done all these things in my life audit? I’ve wasted my life. Like, now I’m behind and I have to really like catch up,” that’s a lot of pressure. That’s a lot of, like, emotional pressure to put on yourself. And that means that anytime there’s any kind of setback, with that mindset it’s going to be a lot harder to overcome those setbacks.

So, really, if you can do the opposite, if you can bring a spirit of openness, of curiosity, of, “Why haven’t I pursued that? Oh, that’s interesting. What might have been in the way at the time? Okay, what has changed in my life that maybe now is the right time to pursue this? Why is this getting harder? Maybe I need somebody else in my life supporting me, or maybe there’s a set of skills that I realize I don’t have in order to pursue this.”

But, really, coming in with openness, with curiosity, and a spirit of adventure, of like, “Okay, we’re going to try this, and we’re going to learn some things along the way, and not everything is going to work out, and that’s okay, because we’re trying, and we are still making progress toward living a life that is more aligned with our values,” I think that can be so much more productive and fruitful, and, frankly, more fun. And when things are more fun, we tend to stick with them.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I think just thinking about this as really an opportunity to get to know yourself and to carve out some time for yourself, again, I think we don’t really have many nudges to do this, so if you’ve been on the fence about, you know, or feeling a little bit off, then I would say just like consider this your nudge to dive deep and go for some self-discovery.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite study, or experiment, or bit of research?

Ximena Vengoechea
I’m always interested having my career in user research. One of the things that always comes up is how often participants have a desire to please you as a researcher, right? It’s like you show them study, you show them something, a prototype, a concept, and there’s such a strong…

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, it’s really good.”

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, and you’re like, “No, this is broken. Like, I know it’s broken. It’s broken in all these ways. It is deeply flawed.” So, that always interests me, like this idea that even with a perfect stranger, there’s a pressure to perform. There’s a pressure to please in some way.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And a favorite book?

Ximena Vengoechea
I just read this book by Natalie Sue, I Hope This Finds You Well, and it is a very funny office workplace novel. It perfectly captures office politics at its finest. It’s very funny. If you work in any kind of corporate setting, in particular, I think you will find it funny and a great main character.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Ximena Vengoechea
Sharpies, Post-its, and I love a good notebook, like a Moleskine notebook.

Pete Mockaitis
Is Moleskine your preferred brand?

Ximena Vengoechea
I like them, and then there’s also a German brand which I don’t know how to pronounce. I think it’s Leuchtturm. I’m sure that is not the correct pronunciation. But, yeah, both of those brands, I like.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Ximena Vengoechea
Breaking things down into smaller chunks, but, really, I didn’t mention earlier the fresh start effect. Like, I love that for habits when you start on the first day of the year, or the first day of a new season, or having moved. That’s all, there’s a lot of research around how you can use a fresh start to make habit-building more effective.

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 often?

Ximena Vengoechea
People really seem to connect with the idea of the life audit as a kind of spring cleaning for the soul, is the phrase that I use, and that’s something that comes up in a lot of conversations of, like, “Yes, that is exactly what this is.”

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

Ximena Vengoechea
Yeah, so a great place to start is my website, which is XimenaVengoechea.com, and that is kind of a hub for all ways to connect with me, whether that’s social media or my newsletter, and beyond.

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

Ximena Vengoechea
I think just checking in with that little voice, you know? I think just making space for it and not ignoring it. I think that’s really the main one.

Pete Mockaitis
Ximena, thanks. This was a lot of fun.

Ximena Vengoechea
Thank you so much. This is great.

Dec 05
0

1016: Untangling Identity from Your Work to Rediscover Yourself with Dr. Janna Koretz

By | Podcasts | No Comments

Dr. Janna Koretz reveals the pitfalls of letting your job become your identity and what to do about it.

You’ll Learn

  1. Why career enmeshment harms mental health
  2. The power of protected thinking time
  3. The root cause of workaholism–and how to cure it

About Janna 

Dr. Janna Koretz is the founder of Azimuth, a therapy practice specializing in the mental health challenges of individuals in high-pressure careers. She has spent over a decade helping her clients face and overcome their mental health issues by developing a unique understanding of industry-specific nuances in fields like law, consulting, finance, and technology. 

Dr. Koretz has been featured in many publications, including Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, focusing on the importance of recognizing career/identity enmeshment. She also writes and speaks on the challenges of discovering and living your personal values. 

In addition to therapy, Azimuth provides a set of free online tools that have helped tens of thousands of people, including the Burnout Calculator, Career Enmeshment Test, and Values Navigator. The practice is also developing a values-based journaling iOS app, set to launch later this year, based on the popularity of its Values Navigator tool.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Dr. Janna Koretz Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Dr. Koretz, welcome.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Thank you. So happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be discussing these very important matters. And I’d love it if you could kick us off with a particularly surprising or novel discovery you’ve made about us folks and high-pressure careers and mental health things. What’s something you know that many of us don’t?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Wow, there’s so many to choose from. Well, I think a lot of people on a smaller level don’t realize how capable they are, and how resilient they are, and how much they’re doing despite all of the struggles that they have. I think people really feel the loss. They feel the pain of their emotional burdens. They feel the stress of work. They feel the burnout, but they don’t see it in the background, like, the rest of it, and all the things that they’re doing despite that. They’re only feeling sort of the loss. I think that’s also really important to keep in mind for everybody, is there’s so much and so many strengths and so much to be to be offered.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, tell us, how capable are we?

Dr. Janna Koretz
You guys are so capable. I mean, it’s unbelievable, really, and I mean, I think a lot of people who are in high-pressure careers are high achievers and they sort of assume that everyone can do what they’re doing and everyone is doing it better, and they need to strive to be better and the best, and give more but they don’t see how much they’ve already done.

Most people can’t do, with the clients that we see, most people can’t do a lot of that. It takes a lot, a lot of mental effort, a lot of smarts, a lot of emotional energy. So, you’re very capable, from what we see. Most capable.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, it’s funny, what you’re saying sounds very true, and it also sounds very easy to dismiss and to shoo away, and instead of allowing to truly sink in and allow the good mental health vibes that it can deliver to us be delivered. Is that fair to say? How do people respond when you share this truth with them?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Oh, absolutely, that’s true. It’s so dismissed. It can be so easily dismissed, partly because people, A, are not used to receiving compliments, because the way in which our culture works now is we’re always looking for what’s wrong, and no one’s saying, “Great job,” or things like that, especially in the workplace, especially in a fast-paced workplace, so I think that’s part of it.

And I think that people often feel awkward about that because it’s so dissonant to what they believe that they kind of brush it off because it just doesn’t really serve them in the moment, when, really, it serves them in the long term.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if we do want to sort of brush that aside, like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sure. You know, yeah, I guess I got some good grades, and I got some lucky breaks, and, yeah, I guess it worked out, so, okay. I’m here. And, yeah, okay, fair enough. I guess maybe, statistically, you know, the majority of people couldn’t. exactly pull off what I’ve pulled off, so fair enough. But, I mean, you know what, there’s millions of people just like me, so like, is it really that special?”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Are you really that special? Interesting question. Well, think about it this way, so it’s not really about being special. It’s about having a great capability and applying that in a way that’s useful to you. And so, a lot of people have kind of gone through life and checked all the boxes, that whatever they’re supposed to do, the expectations they were supposed to meet, they’re kind of on this treadmill and they’re not necessarily thinking about it, but that’s a lot of effort and a lot of work.

And so, if you find yourself in a place where you’re burnt out, yes, you need to get away from the burnout to have access to those resources, but these people are very capable. You’re a very capable person. If you use that energy and direct it towards what’s helpful to you and figure out what that is, then that’s the dream, right?

And I had a client once who was like, “You know, my boyfriend says it’s kind of, like, people who do, like, these complicated scams, right? It’s like these really complicated scams, and if only they could apply that to curing cancer, wouldn’t that be cool?” You know, like that’s so much effort and it’s smart in some ways, right?” They’re getting around all these things, they’re using AI, I mean, just not for good, but if you could harness that and apply it somewhere else, that would be pretty great.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, when you say the power, you mean our own capability to dream, to imagine, to figure out, to come to believe things, is that what you mean by the capabilities and the scams?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I mean, partly. I mean, certainly the internal piece, but also just the work, the actual energy, and the mental effort, and the multitasking that people do on a daily basis, I mean, just the inside and the output too, is a lot, and it could be directed in a lot of different ways.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose what I’m really driving at is, if it is a master key to understand and believe that we have vast capabilities, and it feels like it is, is that your assertion as well?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think it’s an important thing to acknowledge for a lot of reasons, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
So, if that’s one key factor, but we’re quick to brush it off and to not allow it to sink in and enrich us, do you have any pro tips on how we can get there? Because what I’m thinking about is, if I truly believe, in deep down in my heart of hearts, that I have vast stores of capability, not that I’m sort of omniscient or the most brilliant person who ever lived, but vast stores of capability, then it would seem like it would naturally follow that a sense of peace could emerge, and think, “Hey, you know what, wow, yeah, there’s a lot of challenges out there, but they are ultimately figure-out-able because I’m pretty good at figuring things out and handling the things that life throws my way.”

So, that seems to me very, very powerful to have that as an interior, internal mental health asset. But if we shoo it away, we don’t have it, and that’s sad. How can we get it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, the first question I always ask is, “Why? Why can’t you access that? Why don’t you believe that? What is hard about that?” And that’s the whole, you know, we do spend a lot of time in therapy doing that, so that’s not a simple question.

But also, I mean, a lot of people’s inability to  appreciate, and believe in themselves and their capabilities is because they don’t have a grounded sense of who they are, and they don’t have a grounded sense of their identity anymore, or their identity is like wrapped up in one thing, work, motherhood, something like that, and people lose themselves so that they don’t feel steady in saying, “Yeah, I do have these abilities and capabilities because I just don’t feel like I do those things anymore. Or I just do them ad nauseam so it just feels like everybody has them.” So, I think a lot of it has to do with really finding your identity again and really knowing who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Working with a lot of folks in high-pressure careers, what are some of the themes or patterns you see over and over and over again with regard to their mental health that we should be clued into and aware of?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, I think career enmeshment for our people is huge, which is just their whole identity is wrapped up in their career. And so, inevitably, when something happens at work, like they don’t miss a promotion, their company gets acquired, they get laid off and things like that, they don’t have any part of themselves to fall back on, and you’re made very uncomfortable by that because it brings up a lot of existential questions, like, “Who am I? What was the point of that? What am I even doing here?” And people can get really upset about that and kind of fall into more of an anxiety, have a lot of anxiety, depression, start using substances and things like that. That’s a really big one.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, our identity is wrapped up in our career. I’m reminded of a couple of things here. One is, personally, I remember once, I, in fact, got a mediocre review, mediocre-to-bad, at work, and I was so surprised and stunned and puzzled. And I remember, I actually said out loud “This doesn’t feel like who I am.” And I later reflected, I was like, “What an interesting reaction because, of course, it’s not who I am! It was one review.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
That’s what I mean, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
One review. But there it is, and then I’m also thinking about, I think it was Ronda Rousey, the fighter, was interviewed, and she was very emotional and powerful. She was crying because she lost a huge match or championship, and she said something like, “If I’m not a champion then who am I?” And I was like, “Oh, man, Ronda, I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down there from that experience I had previously.” So, that’s kind of what it sounds like what career enmeshment might look, sound, feel like, these kinds of reactions to normal career hiccups and setbacks that happen to us all.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yeah, I mean, she said it perfectly. And I think it can apply to other things, too. Like, one metaphor we use a lot, is, for parents, in general, but there’s a lot of talk about motherhood and loss of identity because you’re all consumed into this one thing. And that can be applied, being enmeshed in anything or with anyone is totally possible.

So, it happens a lot in the workplace, and we see it a lot too with our clients who used to be athletes and they spent a really long time, like all of their time really perfecting their craft, getting really good, maybe they’ve made it, you know, they’re doing Olympic trials, they’re doing all sorts of stuff, and then they get injured. And then what, right? Sounds of like Ronda was saying, “Then what? What do I have? Who am I?”

And what we see a lot, too, is because people have spent coming up so much time with that from an early age, sports is a great example, but it could be anything. You spend a lot of time through your childhood playing, I always use soccer as an example, but it could be anything, that you’re missing out on critical developmental periods where you’re supposed to be doing other things, like learning social skills with friends, like the nuances of social skills, or taking small risks to learn about your independence and confidence, learning how to make choices, things like that.

And so, because you’re siloed into this one thing in a very sort of constructed environment with rules, and so within that context, people can get creative and learn those things but the world is a much bigger place. So, then you find yourself in a place where you don’t have that anymore, and you don’t feel prepared or equipped to navigate what’s in front of you because you haven’t had the practice that a lot of people have had to figure that out. And that sort of adds on to the burden of, like, “Who am I? What am I doing?” because it makes people flounder a little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, if some folks are nodding their heads, like, “Oh, my gosh, yes, that’s me,” what do we do about it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
What a big question. I love coming on podcasts because people ask these big questions and they’re so complicated, but we start out a lot of times working with doing values-based work, like what is actually important to you, because, oftentimes, we don’t live in a culture that promotes that. I mean, certainly, when I grew up nobody asked me what was important to me. I was just expected by my family and the culture that I was in to do certain things and be certain ways and achieve certain stuff. And I did it because I didn’t think much about it.

And then as I got older and life happens to you and stuff, whatever, you just get wiser with age, I started to realize that what I was doing wasn’t actually what would make me happy. And what does make me happy? And it took me a long time to figure that out, and that’s what we do a lot with our clients, “What is it that makes you happy? How far are you from that? And how do you start to incrementally get to that place or add that into your life?”

Because, I mean, most people, right, can’t just quit their job, or they can’t just move to wherever. I think there’s this idea of, you know, one of the exercises we do is, without any constraints, what would your life look like? And people have, like, things that are very far often from what they are, where they are, and they think they just have to go to that place, but, really, that’s not reality. Reality is still important, too.

But we can slowly start to figure out how to turn in that direction, how to enter into that lane, and if we can get there, great, but what if we could get 70% there? That’s still much better than 0%. So, it’s kind of, like, working in that gray area. But I think values-based work is the crux of so many things.

Pete Mockaitis
That makes sense. When you say values work, I’m thinking we had Dr. Steven Hayes on the show.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And, in his book, the phrase “values work” comes up many a time. So, when you say values-based work or values work, what does that mean and how does one do it?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, I have to give a plug for him because he is the nicest person of all time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, my gosh, yes.

Dr. Janna Koretz
And his work is incredible, and what he spent his life doing is incredible for all of the ACT workbooks and the books that come with that. I mean, it’s really changed the face of therapy, and he is just a delightful person. So, we talk about him a lot and I do send people to some of his literature and his workbooks because they’re so accessible and they’re so true, of sitting down and doing those exercises. I mean, that would be a more formal way of how we would start that.

You can just put some of the sort of self-reflecting questions we can talk about, like the ones I just talked about, “What would your life look like without this? Who do I admire? Why do I admire them? What about that makes me want to be that way?” There are a lot of like sorts of questions you can ask yourself that start to help people think about things in that way, or you can do more formalized values-based work through ACT, which I recommend to people all the time. I love it. I think it’s great.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those are great questions. And can you lay a few more of those on us?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Okay, let’s see. What do you admire? What would you do if someone gave you $40 million? How would you spend it?

Pete Mockaitis
I love the specific figure there.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, it has to be so big that, whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s not billions. It’s not one million. It’s ample. It’s not yacht money, but, well, it could be, I guess. But it’s like retirement plus, plus, money.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Right. Right. Because, like, billions, it’s like then you’re going to space and that’s not the sphere that we’re talking about. We’re going to bring it down a little bit, but there can’t be any restraint. So, that’s one we do a lot. I also like to talk about, like, “Who are your favorite people to spend time with?” And another one we talk a lot about is “If you could spend more time with your family, why or why would you not do that?” And so, those are some other questions to kind of start thinking about “What is important? And what do I value? And how do I want to go about that, like incorporating that into my life?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we’ve had some guests who talk a little bit about values as sort of a thing almost to be discovered and codified, like joy and discovery. And so, that’s one way we could think about values. Or do you have a recommendation on a codification or documentation or ratification or a writing it down official thing associated with the outcome of this values exploration?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I love that you asked that because it’s so relevant to a project that I’ve been working on. So, on our website, we sort of changed Shalom Schwartz’s values navigator a little bit to fit our clientele a little bit more, but his work is really great, and that kind of goes through, it’s just a little quiz. It’s actually one of the most popular pages on our website. People, thousands of people do it a day, so I think, I think there is something in there that people really feel connected to, and that kind of puts you into some categories.

And what we are doing actually is we are coming, it’s all beta, public beta should be out in a couple of weeks, but private beta is being sorted now. It’s a values-based journaling app called Clearly, and that is a way in which we have people, like, journal and see how in line they are with their values. And we also are incorporating prompts from various people, like myself or other experts in various industries, to kind of help people prompt them to write more about how that works and what it’s going to look like, and, “Are they living in alignment? Why are we not?” So, it’s going to be pretty neat.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. All right. So, there are some assessments to be taken, and that’s handy. Thank you. And some journaling, and all of these is sort of, let’s see, how do I say this? Is there an end point, or is it continuous? And how do we know we’re starting to reap the benefits or rewards of the values work?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think you know when you know because you feel grounded and you feel happy. And I think that’s another thing to think about, too, and part of this conversation is “What is happiness? What does that look like? What is the expectation of happiness look like?” Because it’s not eradicating negativity or negative feelings or anything like that, or negative events. I mean, that’s impossible.

But it’s how to manage that in a way that brings the most joy to your life and living well with all these other things that are happening to you, or with you, or things like that. So, that’s what I would say about that, I guess. Does that answer the question?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a great perspective. Happiness is not eradicating all unpleasant experience. And, boy, if you make that your goal, it’s going to be a bummer.

Dr. Janna Koretz
It’s way more attainable. It’s way more attainable to know that you can’t figure out how to live, like, most of the time, pretty well with all this heavy stuff around you because that’s just what being an adult is. I’ve come to learn myself, you know, that’s just what it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, maybe, could you share with us, perhaps, a story or two of transformation, so we can get a picture of, “Okay, I’m experiencing a career enmeshment, I have not yet done the values work, and then I do the values work, and this is what it looked like, and this is what I discovered and how I live differently”? And then what’s the sort of the happy, the before-after profiles?

Dr. Janna Koretz
So, I mean, I think running a business and being a psychologist lays the groundwork for being enmeshed in your career and kind of being on a treadmill that you know why you’re there, but it’s so easy to get caught in the weeds, like anything else that you’re intensely into. And doing what is needed to complete tasks and to achieve whatever the goal is, you have to check off some boxes, you have to jump through hoops, you have to do all these things, right, and you do become secondary.

What you want becomes secondary because you’re working on these projects that are bigger than you are. Or for a business, right, it’s like now other people rely on you to pay for stuff and support their family, right? It’s, like, that’s a really big responsibility. And, over time, even though I knew that’s what I loved, I love all of that, I love to help people, I love to run the business, I love all of that, I felt so negative to me.

I think probably, like, eight years in, I was just feeling maybe a little burnt out, but just like the joy of it had sort of passed by, and I just really wasn’t sure. It was a little confusing, to be honest. And it’s funny because we do all this work with other people, but all therapists have their own therapist because you cannot do the work by yourself. It’s impossible.

And so, through my own therapy, kind of figuring out that the things that it wasn’t that I didn’t like what I was doing anymore, it’s just that I didn’t have the other things that I was missing from previous parts of my life. So, it’s not that I didn’t want to be a psychologist anymore, I didn’t like running the business because I did. It’s just I couldn’t only do that and be a happy person. That’s just for me, that was not something that went together.

So, then, figuring out what it is that you can realistically add back in is tricky because, at the, time I had a full caseload of clients and I was running a business. Like, when exactly was I supposed to strap on my shoes and go for a run, things like that? But time can be made, and this is a strategy I tell people to do all the time, is I kind of went back to people that I had known for a long time ago and just reconnected with them.

I didn’t necessarily tell them about what was going on with me or anything, but I remember, at the time, telling my husband, “I used to be funny. I used to be a really funny person. Who remembers me when I was funny?” And kind of going back in time, and those people you’ve known from before remember those parts of you vividly, and they kind of bring that out for you, and so then you can start to remember, “Oh yeah, this does feel like me. This is kind of where I’m at.”

And it took a long time in doing that and feeling uncomfortable because I was leaving unanswered emails on my computer at 6:45 at night so I could go to the gym or something occasionally or something like that. I feel like I built out, by doing more, like, a more diverse activities and having more things in my life, I actually enjoyed all of my life more, and I really got back into the flow of the business and feeling really good about it, and things like that.

So, that’s not like a dramatic transformation in that I didn’t go from being like a sailor to running McKinsey or something like that. But I think this is the kind of transformation our clients experiences. They’re not necessarily going to quit their job and go to the Bahamas and start an ice cream shop. That’s not really even the point.

But it’s to realize what you’re missing and become whole again as a person and with your identity, and that’s what brings people joy, is like feeling good about incorporating those different pieces in.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then, could you share a little bit of some of the questions or exercises or things you did that unearthed some of these insights, like, “Hey, I used to be funny. What happened to that?” or, “Oh, shucks, I’m not exercising nearly enough as to feel great”?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think part of what I learned, too, about myself, and I think this is true for our clients also, is there’s not really a time to sit and think, period. Like, just end stop, right? It’s like, we’re kind of always driving, we’re doing laundry, we’re just doing too many things at once. And I always found that when I just did “nothing,” and was thinking, that’s actually when my best ideas would come about work or other things in my life.

But it just feels really silly to do it because you’re basically just staring into space. It doesn’t feel like it’s something that you’re allowed to do. So, yeah, I mean, honestly, right? So, I was prescribed by my own therapist to sit around and just stare into space and think about stuff, and that’s what I did. And it was so uncomfortable in the moment. Like, I hated it so much because, first, all I could do, it’s like when people start to learn to meditate, right? So, all they can think about is their laundry list of things that they’re not doing.

But over time, I got pretty good at thinking, just thinking, and using that time to figure out those bigger questions and asking myself, “Oh, I thought about that. I wonder why that happened.” I kind of had my own stream of consciousness that kind of led me there. So, I think protected thinking time is super important. It’s not like a shiny piece of advice but it’s a good one.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think it’s actually fairly shiny, if I may be so bold. I’ve heard a thousand-ish guests share many nuggets. And what I love about that is it’s the distinction you drew between the thinking we’re doing, it’s even better than thinking while driving and thinking while doing the laundry. It’s completely uninterrupted.

And that’s rather, well, it sounds delightful to me, because a lot of times I think, I read these studies on, “Oh, meditation is so beneficial. I should do the meditation.” It’s like, “Okay, I guess I’ll do that because I’m supposed to because of all the rewards and the optimal benefits versus costs dah, dah, dah, dah.” And sometimes it just really hits the spot and it’s great.

But other times, it’s like, “Well, no. What I really want to do is think about anything and everything and wherever,” and, in a way, it’s like there’s a little bit of a stressor in that there’s always something happening, even if it’s low level, like taking a shower or driving. There’s always sort of something occurring.

And so, having protected thinking time is a fundamentally different practice than a mindfulness meditation, return to the breath, but it is restored. I guess there’s like a Venn diagram overlap. It has some restorative goodness the way that does, and yet it’s a distinct activity.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes, I would agree with that. And even now I try to do that. I go into Boston, into the office, at least once a week, which is a little bit far from where I live. And I do take the train now because the walk from the train station to my office is about a half hour, and I feel bad. My dog is the therapy dog for our office and I often bring her to the office, but there are days where I don’t, and my husband’s always like, “What? Just bring the dog. Like, she’s just there. She’s a great companion.”

I’m like, “I can’t have to think about anything else during that time, or anybody else. Like, she’s going to stop, and people are going to pet her, she’s going to go to the bathroom, all this. I don’t want to listen to a podcast. I just want to be sort of, like, by myself and not have to answer to anybody, sort of.” And I love the dog and I bring her all the time but there are just some days where I feel like I know that I need that protected time, and so I don’t bring her, which makes her a little sad, which then makes me a little sad, so then we don’t do it that often but that’s how I kind of do that because anything feels like a huge interruption to me during that time now.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, for you, personally, how long are these sessions here?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, that walk is a half hour, there and back, so that’s an hour in one day, but then I won’t do it for a couple of weeks. So, Thursday or Friday is a crazy day, and then I can find some time on Saturday. So, I kind of fit it in where I can, and there are just some days where I know that it’s going to be stressful to try to find that time so I don’t do it on those days necessarily. But probably every other day, every three days, for at least like cumulatively, maybe an hour.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And I’m also thinking about, is it Bill Gates, famously, just had his think weeks, where, I don’t know if it’s annually or so, he just disappears with a bunch of books and Diet Cokes into a cabin somewhere.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yeah, he’s got like a house on an island, doesn’t he?

Pete Mockaitis
And then he’s just thinking. And so, that seemed to work out pretty well for him, and it’s working out pretty well for you. So, tell us, what sorts of, it sounds like you don’t even have an agenda by design?

Dr. Janna Koretz
No, no agenda. Can’t have an agenda.

Pete Mockaitis
No questions to be thought of. Just rolling.

Dr. Janna Koretz
I mean, every so often, like, I will think about one thing and use that time to do that, but mostly it’s just wherever the wind blows, that’s where we go. And it’s always very helpful, like I always get something out of it at the end.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have like a notebook with you?

Dr. Janna Koretz
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Sometimes I’ll write down the idea. Well, that’s the thing, too. I mean, not everyone operates the same. Some people might have like a recorder or like record stuff on their phone or they might take notes after or have a journal while they’re doing it. Occasionally, I’ll write something down if it’s really important, and, I don’t know, I feel like I have to write it down, but most of the time I remember those things because they kind of come to me in this aha moment, and I just don’t forget them.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I also love about that is, sometimes, I think and then I’m so excited by the thing I thought about I want to go immediately explore it, it’s like, “Ooh, let’s go see if that already exists, if that’s available, and if I could go buy it or whatever.” It’s like, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll just write that down and continue the thinking.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Or, if you’re excited by it, then I usually write it down because, inevitably, my time is up or I’ve gotten to the office and I have other things to do. But, yeah, I mean, it’s good to come back to that stuff too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so this is fun. Thank you for indulging me with that deep dive. Let’s hear a little bit about stress in the midst of high-pressure careers. What are your top pro tips, do’s and don’ts to deal with that?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Well, my advice is never, I guess shiny is a good word, but I think people always want like this really great advice they never heard of before. And I have a little bit of that because I think we all know what we’re supposed to be doing. And this is kind of what happens to a lot of our clients when they come to our office. A lot of them have been to therapy before, and they go there and the therapist says, “Well, you need to work less. You need to eat more vegetables. You got to sleep more,” all the things.

They already know that, but they can’t do it because of all the reasons. And so, it feels a little invalidating, “If that’s the way you’re supposed to manage stress then, and I can’t do that logistically then, therefore I cannot manage stress, then my situation is hopeless.” And not to say that other therapists are bad or anything. These are all things that we’re telling people are important, but if you’re in a high-pressure career, there’s a lot of nuances that just don’t allow for the same kinds of flexibility that some other people might have.

There are deadlines, there are clients, there are acquisitions, there’s all these things. People are raising money, they have investors that they’re answering to and all of that. So, do I think sleeping more is important? Yes. Do I wish I could sleep more? Yes. Do I think everyone should sleep more? Absolutely. But I know that getting an extra hour of sleep for people is like a really big ask.

So, I think if you can think about those, like, common things that we all know about, you know, sleep, eating, stuff like that, exercise, I think being creative is actually the way to go about it, and think about creative ways to implement those things, and not sort of the prescribed way in which everybody seems to be doing it. The example I always give is like a lot of our clients when they start exercising again, they sign up for like a triathlon or a marathon or something like that because that feels like the right thing to do for them.

But that’s not a sustainable choice most of the time. Occasionally, it is, but most of the time it’s not. And if you can get creative and be okay with something that doesn’t fit into sort of the box or what you expected exercise should be looking like, then that’s actually where the success comes from. And there are these small sorts of incremental changes of adding those things in, are all fine and all really important.

And they help with, like, a mindset shift, because a lot of times, like the initiation is the hard part, and like showing yourself that you can do things differently is the hard part because, especially if people have been in like the same kind of routine for a while, like starting to cook, like that’s really awkward. It’s really hard to start to do that.

And so, being sort of expecting that and knowing that’s part of the process of being okay with that is important. And I think it’s kind of interesting, too, because people, like all of us, we’re always looking to sort of optimize, and so we’re trying to look like, “What is the eating plan? What is a good exercise thing so I can lift and gain muscle and be strong and all these things?” But, oftentimes, we make them really complicated. And it doesn’t have to be that complicated and it doesn’t have to be that prescribed.

If your goal is to eat more home-cooked meals and you cook once a week on a Saturday, like that’s great. You’ve done it now. It doesn’t have to be that now you’re scratch cooking and meal prepping all week on a Sunday, and spending your whole Sunday doing that. So, that’s kind of like the first section of advice I give people, is kind of reorienting them to what’s possible in those kinds of common domains that we know about, and also to get creative about it.

There are all sorts of interesting ways to incorporate those things. I mean, maybe not sleep because then you’re just asleep. I mean, you can put in naps and stuff like that but, I mean, there’s like a thousand different ways to exercise, and a lot of them can be done in your house without any equipment. And so, just kind of figuring out what that looks like, I think, is important. So, that’s where we start usually. I don’t know if that answers the question, but that’s a strong place to start.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah. Well, I think it’s handy in terms of, I think, that’s like a top don’t with regard to stress management, is don’t just look at the moon and stars, like the utmost perfect exercise plan, the perfect amount of sleep, “Oh, yes, I should be sleeping seven to nine hours every night in complete darkness and silence, dah, dah, dah, with a bed that’s dynamically adjusting its temperature for me.” They haven’t sponsored the show yet. I mean, we’ll see.

But, okay, “Well, that’s beyond my reach, so just forget it all, you know.” Rather, it’s like, “Okay, well, what is creative? What is realistic? And what’s fine?” in terms of exercise or give you some more sleep, whatever, that’s really nifty. So, then it sounds like, with regard to the shiny advice, you don’t have a one weird trick to instantly calm down, but rather, “Hey, just do the little stress-relieving things we all know about in reasonable approachable proportions.”

Dr. Janna Koretz
Yes, I think a lot of that ties back into sort of black-and-white thinking. You’re right, it’s like, “It has to be all of it or none of it,” and like, we’re all kind of predisposed to that for various reasons. But the gray is fine, like good enough is excellent. And if you’re just looking to change your behavior, to make new habits, and also gain those advantages from doing all that stuff, it doesn’t have to be wild times. So, yeah, don’t do the big things. And also, if you’re looking to calm down, don’t tell people to calm down. That’s another don’t, right? Don’t do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. And if we find ourselves in the workaholic mode, what are your tips there?

If we are in a zone where it’s like, “I have to do this,” or, “I just am having so much fun, you know, work, work, working away for 13-plus hours a day.” I imagine this comes up frequently with your folks in high-pressure careers. How do you advise them?

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think you have to think about what motivates you in life and what makes you happy, right? It comes back to the value stuff again a little bit, where there are people who work all the time and they’re happy, and that’s fine. You know what I mean? Like, think about like a lot of physicians spend a lot of time at the hospital, and, I mean, they don’t love their 36 hours on call, but they enjoy their job and they’re not going to necessarily quit their job because they really like what they do.

I know a lot of people do like coding. They get into the zone, they’re coding with their headphones on and then, somehow, like eight hours passes. But that’s what makes them happy, they like to build stuff, they like to be creative. So, keep in mind too, like it’s not always bad to have a couple days or kind of like a job where you’re working all the time. It’s when it gets in your way and when it causes you distress and then you have to sit and figure out what it is, why that is, like, “What makes you happy? What doesn’t make you happy? How do you want to spend your time? What is motivating to you?”

Because a lot of times when you ask those questions, it starts out being really obvious, “Well, I’m motivated because I want to do a good job.” “Why do you want to do a good job?” “Because I want to make money.” “Okay, why do you want to make money?” “Because I want to be able to buy all this stuff.” “Okay, why do you want to buy all this stuff?” And you keep going through all those lines of questioning.

It usually comes down to something like, because anxiety or fear-based, “Because I didn’t have money growing up, because I’m afraid I won’t have it. I’m afraid if I don’t make it now, I won’t have it later. I have a family to support. I want to support my parents as they age,” and things like that. Or, people don’t really have a good answer for that, and that’s important, too, to know if you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, then that’s a whole other conversation.

So, the line of inquiry is also incredibly important to kind of figure out what it is you’re doing and why you’re doing it and why you’re working so much.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
I have to tell you, in general, I’m not a quotes person.

But I will share a piece of advice that’s kind of a quote that I do like and I follow, which is, one of my supervisors a long time ago, I was working in a long-term adolescent in-patient unit, it was a state hospital, and there’s like just a lot of chaos that comes with that in terms of even just the systems issues.

And I was complaining one day about, like, “Well, if it’s that, the answer’s so obvious. Why are they doing it this way, the administration, this, that, and the other?” And she was like, “Janna, you got to play by the rules to change the rules.” And I was like, “Ah, yeah.” Like, I’m not in a position right now to change the rules, but I could be one day if I play by the rules and check the boxes and get to the place where I need to be to make the change. I thought that was kind of like an interesting way of thinking about things.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
It’s a controversial thing now, but I did like the Stanford Prison Experiment a lot, not because I think it was a great idea, but I think it really showed dynamics around people and pressure and power that I think are really important that we should be talking about and thinking more about.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Maybe controversial to say, but I’m going to say it anyway, I love The Coddling of the American Mind.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, Jonathan Haidt. All right. And a favorite tool?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Boundary-setting.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Dr. Janna Koretz
Waking up before everybody does.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
I think what maybe I might be known for is asking why maybe a little too much, but for the purpose of really getting people to think about things and wonder why things are the way they are. Like, “Why do we need to do this this way?” And this is true, I feel this way about therapy, in general, and psychology, in general, and just the way the industry is.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
Our website is where we keep all the things, so AzimuthPsych.com, A-Z-I-M-U-T-H, psych. That’s where the burnout calculator, career enmeshment test, the values navigator are, all of the things we do, the people we see, other things that we like, that we share, other resources, where we’ve been in the media, things we’ve written about, stuff like that. It’s all in one place.

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

Dr. Janna Koretz
You can’t think about it too much. Sometimes you just have to do it and see what happens.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Dr. Koretz, thank you. This is fun and I wish you much joy.

Dr. Janna Koretz
Thank you. You as well.

Dec 02
0

1015: The Science Behind Setting, and Achieving Your Biggest Goals with Caroline Miller

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Caroline Miller shares the overlooked science that helps you pursue your most ambitious goals.

You’ll Learn

  1. The top goal-setting myths to abandon immediately 
  2. The two types of goals and how to set them 
  3. The BRIDGE methodology for effective goal-setting 

About Caroline 

For over three decades, Caroline Adams Miller has been a pioneer with her groundbreaking work in the areas of the science of goal setting, grit, happiness, and success. She is recognized as one of the world’s leading positive psychology experts on this research and how it can be applied to one’s life and work for maximum transformation.

She is the author of nine books, including My Name is Caroline, Getting Grit, Positively Caroline and Creating Your Best Life, which the “father of Positive Psychology,” Dr. Martin Seligman, lauded in Flourish as “adding a major missing piece” to the world of goal setting. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and attained one of the first 32 degrees in the world in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

Caroline Miller Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Caroline, welcome back.

Caroline Miller
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about Big Goals. And I’m curious, you’ve been around the block, doing a lot of research, positive psychology, and more, what would you say is your most fascinating discovery you’ve made about us humans and goal-setting, goal-achieving?

Caroline Miller
I think my biggest awareness aha moment is that, 20 years after I learned goal-setting theory, the number one ranked management theory of all time of 73 theories, also known as the 800-pound gorilla, everyone sets goals and no one knows this number one theory, and it floors me to this day that it remains one of the most unknown, but most validated theories ever to come out of psychology.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I’m intrigued. So, if there’s 73 theories, how does a theory get to win number one? I’m imagining a reality TV show which the theories are competing against each other with judges and audience input. How does that work?

Caroline Miller
Well, I only report the news, but I do know I have research showing that academics, management theorists, people in the field who actually know what the science is about when you look at self-efficacy theory or different kinds of bias, etc., goal-setting theory is universally ranked number one because of its importance and because everyone does it.

And if we knew the science, which is so amazing that people don’t, if we knew the science, I do believe we’d be more productive, more engaged and more successful. And as a mother, I also feel strongly that our children would grow up with dreams that they have the tools to accomplish, which I don’t think they have. And I think that’s a huge error we’ve made as a society and as parents to not have this science and teach it.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m intrigued. Like, what kind of lift might we see in terms of our goal attainment rates, peddling around as we do, ignorant of the science versus utilizing all these best practices?

Caroline Miller
I can’t give you a percentage, but what I can tell you is that most people disengage and become overwhelmed by the size of their goals, the fact that they have a big dream and they don’t know where to start. And so, as the mother of three adult children who grew up being told to tell them they were winners and that, if we did this, they would all grow up confident and happy, and they’d be very hard workers.

What instead we found out, now that this era of self-esteem parenting is over, is that for the most part, they’re fragile and they can’t always take feedback or performance reviews. Now, I’m not being universal, not all are like this, but the findings are pretty robust that this is a generation that doesn’t know how to do hard things and break goals down into small component parts and have mastery experiences. But I also speak for the parents.

I mean, I’ve known this thing for 20 years. I’ve been all over the world. I work with CEOs and leaders and companies big and small, countries big and small, and they all set goals and no one has this science. So, I think, universally, we are underperforming and underachieving. And one of the things in Big Goals that I’m really proud of is I dug into the research that shows that it’s mostly white men who have benefited from these productivity systems that started in the 1880s and do not benefit women and people of other cultures, partly because we weren’t around.

We weren’t in the workplace. This is not how we thought the workplace would be, but it hasn’t evolved, and it’s something that isn’t discussed. It’s time to have this bridge between the 20th century and the 21st, and my book addresses that gap that I’m happy to share more about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yeah, I guess I’d like to understand, if you don’t have a precise percentage, perhaps could you tell a story in terms of a transformation unfolding by utilizing the science?

Caroline Miller
I could tell you a million stories. I worked with one executive, a lot of executives, but I’m thinking of one in particular, a CEO of a major, let’s call it, outdoor remodeling company, who through COVID just kept setting the same performance goals for the salespeople and his senior leadership team, but the entire society turned upside down. We were in, what Locke and Latham would call, a mass learning goal condition where everything you did five, ten years ago can’t be done the same way anymore.

We’ve got a distributed workplace. We’ve got artificial intelligence. We’ve got all kinds of supply chain issues. And so, what he did was he hit pause on all of the goals that he had for himself and for his senior leadership team, and he said, “Caroline Miller’s going to come in and teach us about goal-setting theory, and we’re going to now slow down, and we’re going to take all of these goals and turn them into learning goals because we’re learning new ways to do things.”

The world is different. This is a period not unlike after the Black Death, which gave birth to the Renaissance, which became more evidence-based approaches to medicine and art and science and so on and so forth. So, what he did was he changed the entire goal-setting dashboard within the company. People were able to take the time to learn how to do their jobs in new ways because they had to. They couldn’t meet with customers in person anymore. There were different ways of working with computer systems that people had to learn, let alone artificial intelligence. That’s a whole different conversation.

And as people slowed down, they became more curious and engaged in what they were being asked to do, how the onboarding was done. And as a result, the company hit record profitability in the last few years, and he’s a very satisfied customer. But that’s just very typical of what happens when people learn about Locke and Latham’s goal-setting theory and realize that there are two kinds of goals: performance goals and learning goals, and you can’t mix them up.

And when you do, when you take something that the world has never done before, you’ve never done before, a learning goal, and you skip the time that it takes to gather the skills and the education, the knowledge to do this job, and the time to kind of try out “How do I personalize my approach to this?” what you end up is something called goals gone wild, which is embodied by Boeing’s 737 MAX disasters. The Titan Submersible was stocked in rush.

You can’t skip the learning component when you’re doing something for the first time. When you do, people lose their reputations, companies lose their reputations, and in the case of the Titan Submersible, Boeing, other companies, Ford, the Ford Pinto, people lose their lives. So, it’s a serious issue. It’s a simple theory, but the importance of getting it right cannot be overstated.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so lay it on us, what’s sort of our fundamental misconception? Is it the performance learning stuff?

Caroline Miller

I think the fundamental misconception is that people think SMART goals is science, and it’s not. It was this dude, this manager in 1982, who was going to give a presentation. It was this sticky acronym, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, whatever. I mean, the part of the problem that we’ve discovered with SMART goals, because it’s been studied, is not only does it undermine goal achievement, because if you use the word “realistic” for “R,”what you find is that people undershoot their ability to go after hard goals. And Locke and Latham found that the best possible outcome for all goals is challenging and specific.

So, imagine my arm reached out in front of me, or yours, and the goals that we should be shooting for that always get the best outcomes are past our fingertips. So, when you use “R-realistic,” what you find is that people undermine their ability to find out what they’re made of, and they usually shoot and get very mediocre results. But it’s called “jargon mishmash syndrome,” because “smart” means different things to different people. So, it’s not science. It’s just not science.

So, that’s one of the first things that I would say is that people labor under the conception or the misconception that they know the science of goal-setting, and I think we take it for granted that we have accomplished things in our lives, “And if I did this, I can do that,” when, in fact, the science came out in 1990, and it’s still the most unknown, undelivered piece of research from academia into the mass market, and it stuns me every day.

No matter where I’m talking, no matter who I’m working with, their productivity dashboard in their company or in their lives is based on an urban legend, or vision boards, or law of attraction, or some version of that. And we are not supporting ourselves and the people around us, and our children in particular, in the best possible way if we don’t go out and learn this science.

So, I think it is a crisis of unimaginable proportions because we have a generation that is anxious and depressed and disengaged from the workplace and quite often comes right down, as Gallup said in their State of the Workplace in early 2024, “The number one problem facing all workplaces is a lack of productivity based on faulty goal systems.” We don’t have good goal hygiene. And if we don’t know the science, it’s like trying to put a cornerstone down for a building that’s rocky or isn’t going to hold the weight of the building and everything’s going to crumble.

We have to know the science of goal-setting. This to me is an urgent plea for everyone to stop and say, “It’s time to go in an evidence-based direction,” just like we did during the Renaissance after the Black Death. Everything has to come up a notch and I’ve worked on that. Plus, in the book Big Goals, I introduced something called a BRIDGE methodology that then is the gap between “Here’s goal-setting, theory, here’s the right goal, but how are you going to accomplish it?”

And what I’ve brought to bear is all of this science that no one has heard of from academia, from psychology, from motivation, from mindset research, from grit, to help us understand how to accomplish those goals. And as I said earlier, there’s a gender component that people haven’t paid attention to. Not all approaches to productivity and goal setting fit everyone. You have to personalize it based on who you are and where you are.

Pete Mockaitis
Caroline, are you telling me that if I put my dreams on a vision board and secrete them to the universe, the universe is not going to bring them into my reality?

Caroline Miller
Hmm, let me think about that. No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then lay it on us, let’s get these principles associated with the goals theory.

Caroline Miller
Well, what I will say about vision boards is the reason why they hang around so much, I call them these zombie theories, they’re just not dying like SMART goals. They’re dying. They’re hanging around but they won’t go away. There’s some little kernel of something important in vision boards, and that is the science of priming.

When we remind ourselves with pictures or words or aromas, things that enter our conscious and subconscious minds that prime us to act and think in goal-directed ways, we are more likely to accomplish our goals, but that’s a small subset of what must be done. It’s never enough to just have a vision board or to just chant or to write something in lipstick on your mirror.

I think that we’re not taking ourselves seriously if we’re going to just have this one-dimensional approach or magical approach to getting what we want. We can’t skip the hard work piece, that’s just not possible. And you know what, even little kids know that if you give them something that they haven’t worked hard for, they don’t tend to value it. None of us do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, let’s hear the principles fundamentally. How do we set goals?

Caroline Miller
How do we set goals? So, we start with goal-setting theory, basically, “Do I have a performance goal or a learning goal?” In the book, I call it performance goal with checklist goal. So, this is something you’ve done before that’ll fit on a checklist, and you can actually give that checklist to someone else and they’ll have a shot at accomplishing that goal.

So, what it is, it’s like a hotel maid, it’s like a surgeon going into the operating theater and checking “Do I have all the right instruments or the right people around me?” or a pilot in a pre-flight checklist. Checklists are for things you’ve done before and you don’t want to skip a step. And for that reason, you know that you can set a specific outcome by a specific date. And again, Locke and Latham say challenging and specific. That’s a performance goal/checklist goal.

The other kind of goal is a learning goal. So, you start with that, and you can call it a moonshot goal, meaning you haven’t done it before, and the world hasn’t done it before. And then you have to say, “What is it I need to learn in order to accomplish this goal? Who has that knowledge? Is it on Wikipedia? Is there a YouTube? Is there a book? Is there a podcast? Where am I going to flatten my learning curve?”

So, then you go into this BRIDGE methodology I came up with, the brainstorming. But the brainstorming really ought to start with this one prompt that I keep coming back to, “What’s new? What’s new? What do I not know yet? What’s new in the world that would help me become more efficient and effective in this goal?”

And I’ll just tell you one little story that I’m just transfixed by, and that’s this Herculaneum papyri, how they’ve solved this library of charred scrolls. Julius Caesar’s father-in-law in Herculaneum, when Vesuvius dubious erupted, the biggest, most wonderful library in ancient history was charred and these scrolls became like little pieces of firewood. And for years, hundreds of years, I want to say 400 years, we’ve been trying to unroll them.

Guess what happened? During COVID, the former CEO of GitHub got fascinated and bored by the fact that he’s sitting at home every day and he goes on Wikipedia, and he starts looking up ancient tragedies and catastrophes, and he stumbles on this unsolved thing like, “Oh, my God, what do we know now from Silicon Valley, from high particle accelerators, from artificial intelligence that could help us unroll these scrolls?”

Long story short, they now have unrolled, by using artificial intelligence and beaming lights into these scrolls and virtually unwrapping them, they have started to read these ancient scrolls and it’s going to remake everything we know about religion and art and philosophy. It is just stunning. So, you always start with what’s new.

So, in the book, I talk about why traditional brainstorming approaches don’t work, but I have a long set of prompts I have in the book to help people through brainstorming. Relationships. Relationships mean not just “Who do I need to know and have in my life to accomplish this goal? But who do I need to put a container around and keep them out of my life while I’m accomplishing this goal?” People don’t look at that and that’s critical.

And we know research from Shelly Gable at the University of California Santa Barbara, she found that when you share a big goal, a dream with somebody else, their response has to be curious and enthusiastic. That’s the one signal that says to you, “This person has my back, they’re in my corner, and I can tell them more, and they are going to help me accomplish that goal.” So, “Who should be in my life? And who shouldn’t?” Relationships.

Investments, “How am I going to invest my character strengths in the pursuit of this?” We know from positive psychology that knowing your top five-character strengths and using them, deploying them in new and interesting ways to accomplish your goals, or to interact with people throughout the day, makes you more successful. It also makes you happier and it makes you more authentic.

So, the investments can be time, energy, money, character strengths, but you have to think through, “What am I going to sink into this process that I have to build a budget for, build a time budget for, etc.?” So, BRID decision-making. Oh, my gosh, I love this topic. So, when Danny Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for sunk cost theory and all of his work on how do we value the things that we spend time with, he also did a lot of work on bias.

But at the end of his life, he wrote this brilliant book with two other economists called Noise, and he was saying that the biggest mistakes we make in decision-making is when we don’t do a noise audit of how we’ve made previous decisions, identical decisions, “What are we being impacted by? Did our football team win or lose yesterday? And are we making the same decisions as judges in identical cases? Are we paroling these people and keeping these other people in jail?”

Noise is a huge part of how we make decisions. It’s rare for me to find someone who has sat down and made a list of their best decisions and the components of those decisions, and done a noise audit. And I think this is why there’s a big move to teach game theory and Poker, especially to women who don’t always learn how to take risks. Poker, and Texas Hold ‘Em in particular, is how we’re beginning to teach people how to take risks in decision-making situations that they must take, even if they have imperfect information.

Pete Mockaitis
With noise, we’re defining that as our historical track record of decisions? How are we defining noise here?

Caroline Miller
Noise is when we have the exact same decision to make about, let’s say, a referee on a football field, right? And it’s the same player going off sides, and it’s a Sunday or a Thursday night game, and you didn’t get a lot of sleep before the Thursday night game, and you see the same player or the same play unfolding in front of you but you make a different decision. You throw a flag or you don’t throw a flag.

Noise is when you have the same kind of decision to make but you make it differently on different days because of things that are going on in your life, and that’s different from bias. Bias is when you’re biased against a certain gender or a certain class of people, or you’re biased against people who didn’t go to your school and you’re a hiring manager. That’s bias. Noise is when you’re allowing the variables—usually you don’t know this is happening—to interfere with decision-making so that your decisions are uneven.

And what’s interesting is artificial intelligence is proving to be one of the greatest ways to spot and fix noise problems in decision-making because it’s just taking data and making a decision on an algorithm, and that’s really what we need to strive to do. Does that help?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes. So, could you just give me eight examples of noise variables?

Caroline Miller
Another example of a noise variable, I said about a hiring manager, would be, let me think, I’m going to go back to a judge, a judge who is making parole decisions. And during the course of a day, at 8 o’clock in the morning, they make a parole decision and a complicated decision where they give somebody parole instead of sending them back to jail because they had a good night’s sleep, their football team won, but maybe their willpower is a little bit higher in the morning. But they’re making a decision that they won’t always make at the end of the day from decision fatigue. That’s noise.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. So, the variables would have to do with the rest, their rested-ness is noise because it’s not actually a valid consideration in terms of what is optimal for a decision regarding that person’s fate. And so, if they’re tired, they’re hungry, they just got in a fight with somebody, it’s sort of like they’ve got an emotional thing going on.

Caroline Miller
They’re distracted, yup.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’ve also heard that we can estimate the steepness of a hill differently if there’s a friend with us or not. And so, in a way that’s noise. Friendship is noise. It’s somewhat ambiguous, but we’re assessing our prospects based on things that are not intrinsic to the situation on the ground.

Caroline Miller
I know the research you’re speaking of, that’s a little bit different than a decision. That’s a thought. That’s a thought you’re having, and you’re saying this is a more effortful climb or it’s not, based on whether you’re looking up, down, do you have a heavy backpack. I’ll give you another example of noise that I think most people can relate to is a radiologist reading mammogram screens and they look identical.

There’s very little difference between the two mammograms, but depending on the time of day, again, “Did you sleep? Did you have a good lunch? Are you distracted because you got a call from school and your child needs to be picked up?” What you might do is send somebody to come back in for a second mammogram, or say to the other person “You’re clear.” And again, I’ll just say, artificial intelligence is reading scans and removing noise from decision-making. It’s fascinating.

So that’s just another example of noise. Same screen, same X-ray, different decision, based on the noise that’s going on in your life. And what’s interesting is Kahneman said, at the end of his life, and he died in March of this year, he said, “This is a bigger problem that’s so not discussed, bigger than bias.” And we get all this bias training. Noise is a bigger problem and it potentially cost companies and countries billions of dollars.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay. And you said there’s a final component.

Caroline Miller
So, grit. So, I’ve worked closely with Angela Duckworth. I wrote a book called Getting Grit and I’m fascinated by the fact that we can break grit down into components like humility, and patience, and the ability to take risks, and persistence, and perseverance, the ability to stick with a task just a little bit longer.

When you have big goals, it’s baked into that idea, that fact, that you’re going to have to be more than just resilient. You’re going to have to do hard things for a long period of time. So, you have to essentially do a grit assessment on yourself, “Do I have what it takes to actually hang in there through the dark night of the soul? Do I have the people around me who will reflect back to me that I have what it takes to finish what I’m starting right now?”

Grit is a quality that can be cultivated and it can also be contagious. So, Angela Duckworth found at West Point that if you had a low grit score, because she does the grit scale on incoming cadets at West Point, because what they found is your grit score predicts whether or not you drop out that first summer, Beast Barracks, because they couldn’t figure it out.

For a hundred years, they couldn’t figure it out. Leadership scores, grades, whatever, nothing, nothing spoke to the dropout rate during Beast Barracks until the grit scale. And she found that when you room a lower grit score cadet with a higher grit score cadet, it’s contagious because you do a few things differently for longer periods of time. You might even be a mindset. I call it changing the channel. You can learn to change the channel in your brain to go to a place where you hang in there a little bit longer. So, you have to have what’s good grit, and you can build it.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is the higher contagious to the low-grit person or vice versa?

Caroline Miller
Yes, high grit. Well, the lower grit person becomes grittier, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
The higher grit person does not become less gritty? They’re not infected by the lazy person there?

Caroline Miller
No.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Caroline Miller
Because the culture of West Point rewards grit. And that’s something that Locke and Latham also found is they found that people are less happy while they’re pursuing hard goals over a long period of time. They set, again, these challenging and specific goals and they were puzzled, “Why are you a little less happy while you’re pursuing these long-term goals but then happier at the very end?” It’s because society prizes and rewards that kind of behavior.

You want to have good grit. And I’ll quickly say, there are three kinds of bad grit that we all have to look out for. One is stupid grit. I call it stupid grit. It’s like summit fever in mountaineering where you see the top of the mountain and you’re so drunk on getting to the top, or you’re so arrogant that you don’t listen to the Sherpas and you’re not caring about the people you’re roped into. You see a lot of arrogance with stupid grit, and it’s people who think they know better and they won’t change direction. Good grit does not have that component because it has humility baked into it.

And then there’s faux grit. We have so much faux grit, you know, people pretending to do hard things, faking their PhD research, pretending they won the Medal of Honor when, in fact, they bought it on eBay. I mean, so much faux grit; performance-enhancing drugs. And then there’s selfie-grit, which is also bad, and that’s when you do hard things, but you are so obnoxious about it, because you tell everybody that you suck all the oxygen out of the room and that repels people.

So, good grit is important when you have big goals, because you will have to dig a little bit deeper and work harder to achieve them. And then excellence, people need to start at the beginning of their goal-setting strategy with “What am I attempting to hit here? What is my definition of excellence with my behavior, or with this particular outcome?” Because in goal setting, we say that which cannot be measured cannot be achieved.

You must have a measurement in place of the excellence you’re shooting for. And I’ll just remind you, Locke and Latham found that the best possible outcome was always past your fingertips, challenging and specific. Low goals and no goals got mediocre to no results whatsoever. And at the end of every day, believe it or not, we do scan our day subconsciously for what we’re proud of that we did that day. And the things that build what’s called authentic self-esteem are the things we did outside of our comfort zone in pursuit of meaningful goals.

We never build our confidence and pride on doing easy things. And this is why I believe we have really done a tremendous disservice to the generation of young adults now when we took away valedictorians and gave them comfort animals, and we dumbed down the playgrounds, and we just did a lot of things that ended up stripping elite out of their vocabularies, and they didn’t know “What does excellence look like? And how am I going to get there?”

And the minute you introduce that back in, people take more pride in what they’re doing and they change their perception of themselves, “What am I capable of doing? How did I do it? And I’m proud of myself and I also know who has my back. I know who was there for me when it was hard, and when I fell down, and when I needed to get back up.” That’s why we all need to do hard things, because it changes our lives, and I believe it changes the world. And knowing goal-setting theory makes it more possible that we can do these things.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you perhaps give us an example of a worst practice and a best practice approach to, let’s say, we’re tackling a goal to launch some new and improved marketing initiatives to reach record-breaking levels of revenue?

Caroline Miller
So, let’s say you’re at a company and you’re launching sweatshirts, and you’re trying to decide whether or not you’re going to have this font or that font, or this color or that color, and you just want to do a brainstorming session. So, you pull everyone in, 30 people into a conference room, and you start throwing around ideas. And at the end of the day, you’ve come up with maybe one or two good ideas, but, hey, that’s it.

And then you don’t set a target for, “Well, how quickly can we do it?” or, “Is there a better way to do this?” Remember, brainstorming, you also want to know what’s new, “Is there a better, more efficient way? How do we find out where to do that?” You don’t find out any of those things. It’s what we’ve always done before. This is the approach we’ve always used before for brainstorming.

You don’t even stop and think about relationships, “Who in this company also has to know that this is our timeline for achieving this goal? Whose support do we need?” You don’t figure out investments. You don’t even realize that the cost of the kind of material for these sweatshirts has gone up, “Oh, my gosh, your budget is blown.” Your decision-making, you’ve never figured out “What if I have to pivot? What if COVID hits? What if the whole world shuts down? Do I have a playbook for pivoting?” Probably not.

Good grit, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve never faced a situation where I didn’t succeed in this job.” So, then you maybe blame it on somebody else, and excellence is you probably never started with a target. What’s different, what to know what’s good, is when you have this goal, “Okay, I’m going to make the best possible sweatshirts with this font and this color and the rest of it.”

And then you go, “Okay, who around me, who in this world is doing it better than us? Who has set some kind of dimension of excellence that we can look to? Are they using the kind of fabric that doesn’t kind of go into the trash dumps? Is it biodegradable?” So, you study what excellence looks like. And instead of putting all the people who look like each other in the same room where you get, what I call the Habsburg-Jaw effect, where it’s sterile, there are no ideas that actually live past being in that room because they’re not interesting and they’re not diverse.

You do a very different approach where you maybe have people submit their ideas. Instead of being in a room, you want a diverse set of people brainstorming, and you figure out, “Is this a learning goal or a performance goal?” It’s probably a performance goal because you’re making – I hope this isn’t going on too long – because you’re making sweatshirts. So, you’ve done it before and you know you’ve sold 100,000 in six months at this price.

So, you say, “Hey, we’re going to do it with this new fabric, and it’s within our budget, and it’s a performance goal for us so we’re going to sell 200,000 more. And here’s how we’re going to do it because we’ve got this new factory process, we’ve got this new sweatshirt, we’ve got these people who are giving us better prices on fonts, etc.” You go into the decision-making, “What do we do if…?”

Let me give you an example on this, if you don’t mind. Abercrombie & Fitch was about to introduce what they called their best dressed guest line, and they had, just as COVID hit, they had taken pictures of all the models, they had all the clothes made, best dressed guests. It was designed to appeal to millennials who needed five outfits to go to weekend destination weddings, which was the big thing. So, suddenly COVID hits, and they’ve got this marketing line all paid for, they’ve got the budget, they’ve got the models, they’ve got the pictures, and it’s not usable because no one’s getting on a plane, no one’s going to a wedding, and no one’s buying clothes.

They pivoted quickly. They sent cameras to all their employees. They said, “Wear our lounge clothes. Take pictures of yourselves. Those are our ads for the next year and a half.” That kind of agility and that ability to pivot and do that kind of decision-making was such a plus for Abercrombie & Fitch. So, then they reintroduced best dressed guests when COVID passed, and, anyway, that ended up being a big hit too.

So, you have to know, “What’s going to happen if we have a black swan event like COVID?” And then grit, I already explained. And then excellence, you start with “This is a performance goal for us. This is what we’ve done before. What’s challenging and specific?” You name that number and then you measure along the way to make sure that you’re hitting those targets.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, let’s say it’s a learning goal that it’s new and never before done, how do we approach that differently?

Caroline Miller
Okay. So, let’s just take the Apollo spacesuits. So, there was that horrible implosion where three astronauts died in, I think, the Mercury capsule, Gus Grissom and his two colleagues, but Apollo was still going to put a man on the moon. That was their goal. So, they had to make these spacesuits that were going to withstand the kinds of pressures and fires and gases that could leak into the suit. So, what did they do?

They didn’t set an exact date and time by which they would have the suit, but they went and they found people who knew how to deal with stretchy fabric and who could sew with great precision. And what did they do? These engineers went and found these seamstresses at Playtex, the girdle company, and they met with them. And in a room of brainstorming, they honored the knowledge and the wisdom of these teenage and young 20-year-old seamstresses quite often who could sew with precision to 1/32 of an inch.

And instead of saying, “This spacesuit will be ready by September,” they said, “We’re going to get this right and we’re going to incentivize everybody here to have the standard of excellence, that this is going to keep people alive, and it’s going to allow the United States to come back with what we need to learn about the moon.”

So, all the seamstresses had pictures of the astronauts hung over their sewing machines to remind them of the importance of what they were doing. So, they baked in the motivation, and so only the definition of what excellence looked like was “Could this spacesuit allow Neil Armstrong to move and twist and maneuver and reach down and pick up lunar rocks?” It wasn’t, “We’re going to have it done by a certain date.” Excellence is, “It’s got to work and it’s got to pass these tests. And that’s when we’re going to say we have a spacesuit that’s going to go to the moon.” That’s a learning goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Well, tell me, Caroline, any final do’s and don’ts that we should know about setting and achieving big goals?

Caroline Miller
I think the most important one is to assume that you know nothing. And I hate to say that, but 20 years ago when I was handed goal-setting theory at the University of Pennsylvania as one of my first assignments in this Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program, I own Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, every single person, I had their books and I got goal-setting theory and I went home and I looked at all of them. They were all urban legends.

And yet, this is how we have built companies. This is what we’ve instilled in productivity systems. If you don’t know goal-setting theory, you don’t know how to really set goals effectively. Just start with that one assumption, dip into Big Goals, and just learn goal-setting theory in the first three chapters of the book.

Get that and then move on to the BRIDGE methodology, because if you do that, there isn’t any dream that you have that you can’t have a really good shot at achieving because you’ll be able to create a strategy that’s going to get you as close as you can possibly get to that dream or get you there. Because I really do believe that the science changes our lives and it makes us more hopeful and optimistic.

I also want to say that one of the most important things in this book is that women do not typically do as well with all the motivational kind of programs and advice that’s been doled out for 50 years. I’ll just give you an example. When women perform jobs on time and tasks on time and get things done on time, they do not get credit for it. Instead, men often, who work longer hours and who don’t get it done on time, the men get rewarded for being seen as harder working and more committed to the company.

So, it’s really important that when you pursue a goal, you have to know what’s the culture you’re working in and how is that culture going to support you in the process of pursuing and achieving your goals, and that’s just one of many examples in the book. You have to know, “Does my company and does the culture I come from and my gender support using this advice to achieve my goal? Or is it going to backfire?”

Because men tend to approach goals as winning and domination and power and success and often money, and women are more communal. They’re not as agentic. That’s not what women get acculturated and rewarded for. So, you can’t just take the goal-setting advice that’s out there on lots and lots of podcasts.

Because, quite often, we don’t hear voices other than men talking to men about men, like Special Forces and presidents and examples that are unrelatable to a lot of us who are taking in really, really interesting stories and advice, but pause and say “Does this story relate to me and my life and what I do and what I look like?” Because if it doesn’t, make sure you do the research to find somebody who does fit that. That’s going to be the advice that’s going to help you the most.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, thank you. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Caroline Miller
My favorite quote is, “You can’t keep what you don’t give away.”

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

Caroline Miller
My favorite study is the “Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect” by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener. And they found, at the same time, 2005, as I went back to school, that all success in life is preceded by being happy first. So, any goal strategy plan has to start with how you boot up your well-being through positive interventions, like using your strengths, exercise, gratitude, meditation. So, all success in life is preceded by being happy first, so you got to start there.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Caroline Miller
Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman by Phyllis Chessler.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Caroline Miller
I love Perplexity.

Pete Mockaitis
I just started using that. Why do you love it?

Caroline Miller
Because it gives you the sources and citations where it’s getting information from, instead of just kind of being a wild scrape of the internet. And I’ll just say this, I just spent last weekend at Penn with the co-creator of the Google Notebook, which just got rave reviews everywhere. Google Notebook, Steven Johnson is the man I was with at Penn last weekend. He has come up with something extraordinary where you can drag all your sources and websites and links and podcasts and whatever into this one notebook and, oh, my God, you have your own brain.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite habit?

Caroline Miller
Favorite habit is swimming. I get up at five o’clock and I go to swim practice with other master swimmers.

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 often?

Caroline Miller
“You can’t keep what you don’t give away.” And can I give you the backstory on that, because it’s very meaningful to me?

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Caroline Miller
Real quickly. When I was overcoming bulimia almost 40 years ago, at a time when nobody got better, it was really a death sentence. I started to get better one day at a time in a 12-step group in Baltimore, Maryland, and it was just a miracle. I didn’t think I was going to. I’m surprised I’m alive some days. And I was so thrilled and proud and happy that I was eating and healthy and just not doing all the destructive things I’ve been doing for seven or eight years before.

And someone said to me, “Caroline, it’s great that you’re in recovery, but you can’t keep what you don’t give away.” That taught me what gratitude and love and giving is all about. If you have something worth sharing that’s good, that will help somebody else, you can’t keep it unless you turn around and pull someone with you. So, people quote that back to me all the time.

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

Caroline Miller
My website, CarolineMiller.com, or the book Big Goals has its own website. We just loaded lots of case studies on success and failure using the BRIDGE methodology and goal-setting theory and that’s BigGoalsBook.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?

Caroline Miller
I would say choose to do hard things and choose to learn about yourself and your character strengths in the process of doing hard things. And if I have a bonus asterisk point, go to something I have no vested interest in, I don’t get anything for this, the VIA’s Character Strengths Survey. It’s free, 15 minutes, at ViaStrengths.org. And, boy, it ranks your character strengths from 1 to 24. Lock onto your top 5, and use them every day in new and creative ways to show up and succeed. It’s proven and it makes you happier to just find out what your top five are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Caroline, thank you. This is fun. I wish you much luck with all your big goals.

Caroline Miller
Oh, you, too. Thank you so much.